While the Israeli offensive continues in Gaza, international news this month was notably marked by the adoption of a new, long-awaited support plan for Ukraine by the American Congress, the commemoration of 30 years since the genocide in Rwanda, the first anniversary of a conflict in Sudan that caused thousands of deaths and triggered a humanitarian catastrophe. In eight drawings, “La Matinale” looks back at the highlights of the past month.
American parliamentarians ended up adopting, on Tuesday April 23, a vast package of military and economic assistance planned for Ukraine after months of transpartisan negotiations. After the vote a few days earlier by the House of Representatives, the Senate step was a formality. The final text, promulgated by Joe Biden on Wednesday April 24, includes an aid plan of 95.3 billion dollars (approximately 89 billion euros) intended for Ukraine (which receives 61 billion), Israel and Taiwan, as well as an ultimatum to the Chinese social network TikTok.
In London, the House of Commons adopted the “Rwanda Security Act” on Tuesday, April 23, paving the way for the expulsion to this East African country of asylum seekers who arrived illegally in the Kingdom -United. The migrants will be detained before being sent to Kigali, where their application is supposed to be processed in exchange for substantial assistance. This text provoked strong reactions, its many detractors deeming it contrary to international law, impossible to implement, immoral, complicated and expensive.
Thirty years ago, from April to July 1994, between 800,000 and one million men, women and children, mainly Tutsi, were massacred by a regime of Hutu extremists.At the BK Arena in Kigali , a huge enclosure with walls, ceilings and floors covered in black for the occasion, some 5,000 people gathered on April 7. Only a work was illuminated symbolizing a tree whose “the roots represent the memory of the past”, and the branches, “the protection that families did not have during the genocide and on which they can now count”.
On April 15, 2023, a conflict broke out between forces loyal to the head of the Sudanese army, Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane, and those of Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the Rapid Support Forces. Burned villages, bombed cities, mass rapes, civilians and children forcibly conscripted: twelve months of war imploded this nation of 44 million inhabitants. In total, nearly 8 million Sudanese have been forced to flee the fighting. Among them, more than 1.6 million people have taken refuge in neighboring countries.
The Bordeaux court ordered, on April 2, the organizations responsible for the sanitation of the Arcachon basin (Gironde) to carry out emergency work under penalty of daily penalties of 1,000 euros per day of delay to remedy to water pollution observed after poisoning linked to the consumption of oysters. A victory for oyster farmers in the Arcachon basin and environmental defense associations.
The affair broke out on December 27, 2023, at the peak of the end-of-year holidays. The Gironde prefecture then banned the sale of oysters after an explosion of cases of gastroenteritis linked to the consumption of oysters contaminated with norovirus.
In an interview given to several regional press titles on Saturday April 6, the Prime Minister specified the measures he intends to put in place to try to respond to the crisis in the city healthcare system, with the desire to recover 15-20 million medical slots. Gabriel Attal therefore wants certain unfulfilled appointments to be punished in the future with a financial penalty of 5 euros, payable by the offending patient – a sanction known as the “rabbit tax”. “We can no longer afford” these unfulfilled appointments, declared the head of government, who wants the implementation of an “accountability mechanism” through a legal text.
For the first time since coming to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the formation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is no longer the first but the second party in the country. At the end of the municipal elections of March 31, its rival and historical opponent, the Kemalist and nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) regained first place. The election constitutes a real debacle for the head of state, whose party lost more than 5 million votes and the main cities of the country. Across Turkey, 64% of the population is now locally governed by CHP mayors.