In Brazil, the Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining (MAM) is active in opposing what it regards as the unbridled exploitation of indigenous populations and their land by private mining companies, whose polluting activities are further fuelled by the market demands of energy transition. At the UN COP30 climate talks in the Brazilian city of Belém, centred on the issue of energy transition, Mediapart met with MAM activist Jeremias Santos, who in this interview denounces the harm extractivism is causing to human health and the environment in his country, in a process which is "driving new forms of colonialism".
A shipment of reprocessed uranium from French nuclear power plants has left the Channel port of Dunkirk to be enriched at a specialised Russian industrial plant run by the country’s nuclear energy group Rosatom, before being in part returned to France for further use in civil reactors. The shipment, loaded at the weekend on a Russian-operated, Panama-registered cargo vessel, was described by Greenpeace as a "cargo of shame", and “immoral”, while both French utility giant EDF, which operates the country’s nuclear power plants, and the French economy ministry, declined to comment.
Mediapart in May began publishing a series of reports regularly sent to it from inside the Gaza Strip by two young Palestinians who chronicled the everyday events of life and death, displacement and hunger, in the Strip. One of them, Nour Elassy, a 22-year-old journalist, poet and writer left Gaza and her family in July for France, after she was offered a place at the country's prestigious social sciences school, the EHESS. In this latest contribution to Mediapart, written in France, she denounces the grim reality of conditions in Gaza after last month's tenuous ceasefire was introduced, and how the twisted use of language has become a weapon of the conflict.
Emmanuel Domenach, 38, survived the shooting massacre at the Bataclan music hall in Paris on November 13th 2015, when terrorists belonging to the so-called Islamic State group led a series of attacks across the French capital which claimed the lives of 131 people, including 92 inside the Bataclan. On the tenth anniversary of that horrific night, marked by numerous ceremonies throughout the day, he reflects on how the process of a collective remembrance of the events, and the questions it raises, can help avoid history repeating itself.
A French minister recently suggested that people on welfare benefits who do not have children should no longer get the traditional Christmas bonus payment provided by the state. In doing so, report Marie Turcan and Faïza Zerouala, the government is discreetly reviving the notion that there is a social pecking order concerning those who have children and those who do not. As a result, it is spreading ideas that are popular with the far-right.
After serving 21 days behind bars, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been freed from custody. The ex-head of state was released from La Santé prison in Paris where he had been starting a five-year sentence after being convicted in September of criminal conspiracy in the Libyan election funding scandal. It came after a successful appeal against incarceration was made to the court of appeal. However, Sarkozy, who is also appealing his conviction, is subject to a court order that bars him from meeting political ally and current justice minister Gérald Darmanin, who had controversially visited him in prison.
Mediapart and Liberation newspaper last week published videos showing how gendarmes policed a protest at a controversial irrigation reservoir at Sainte-Soline in western France in 2023. Footage from officers' body cameras shows banned and dangerous instructions being given by superiors and a disturbing satisfaction over wounding the “enemy”. Michel Forst, a French citizen who is United Nations Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, says the videos show that the police violence was “not simply a matter of ‘individual misconduct’”, and in an interview with Mediapart he calls for “judicial proceedings” against those responsible.
Achieved on the back of a breakdown in Franco-Algerian relations, Rassemblement National's first parliamentary victory late last month underlines the extent to which the far-right's rise to power is driven by the resurgence of a colonial issue that France has still not resolved. As Mediapart's co-founder and former publishing editor Edwy Plenel writes, a desire for revenge over Algerian independence goes well beyond the ranks of the far-right party itself.
Mediapart and Libération have published worrying evidence about the policing of a protest at the site of a controversial crop irrigation reservoir at Sainte-Soline in western France in 2023 which led to brutal clashes. In particular, footage from the gendarmes’ own body cameras shows banned and dangerous instructions being given by superiors, the use of bellicose language, and a disturbing satisfaction in wounding the “enemy”. Faced with these revelations, interior minister Laurent Nuñez has ordered an administrative inquiry into the behaviour of the gendarmes, two and a half years after the events. Camille Polloni, Laura Wojcik and Sarah Benhaïda report.
The multinational cement manufacturer Lafarge went on trial in Paris on November 4th, accused of knowingly financing terrorist groups in Syria between 2012 and 2014, in a case set to last until mid-December. Several former executives, including ex-CEO Bruno Lafont, are also in the dock in what is effectively a legal process where corporate greed is on trial.
