Read The Prism 2049 Page 47

ethnic group.

  Article 15.

  The Administration of the Autonomous Region may organise on a voluntary basis the forces necessary for the preservation of peace and order, and also for the defence of the country, subject, however, to the supervision of the Republic of France, but shall not use them for purposes other than those above specified save with the consent of the Republic of France, Except for such purposes, no military, naval or air forces shall be raised or maintained by the Administration of the Autonomous Region.

  The French Republic shall be entitled at all times to use the roads, railways and ports of the Autonomous Region for the movement of armed forces and the carriage of fuel and supplies.

  Article 16.

  The French Republic shall see that there is no discrimination in the Autonomous Region against the nationals of any Member State of the European Federation (including companies incorporated under its laws) as compared with those of the French Republic or of any foreign State in matters concerning taxation, commerce or navigation, the exercise of industries or professions, or in the treatment of merchant vessels or civil aircraft. Similarly, there shall be no discrimination in the Autonomous Region against goods originating in or destined for any of the said States, and there shall be freedom of transit under equitable conditions across the mandated area.

  Subject as aforesaid and to the other provisions of this agreement, the Administration of the Autonomous Region may, on the advice of the Republic of France, impose such taxes and customs duties as it may consider necessary, and take such steps as it may think best to promote the development of the natural resources of the region and to safeguard the interests of the population. It may not conclude a special customs agreement with any state outside of the European Federation.

  Article 17.

  French and Arabic shall be the official languages of the Autonomous Region. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in the Autonomous Region shall be repeated in French, and any statement or inscription in French shall be repeated in Arabic.

  Article 18.

  It is agreed that if any dispute whatever should arise between the French Republic and another Member of the European Federation relating to the interpretation or the application of the provisions of the agreement, such dispute, if it cannot be settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to the European Court in the Federal Territory of Brussels.

  Article 19.

  The consent of the European Federation is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate.

  The present instrument shall be deposited in original in the archives of the European Federation and certified copies shall be forwarded by the President of the European Federation to all Members states of the Federation.

  Done at Evian the twenty-fourth day of July in the thirty fourth year of the European Federation

  o0o

  Under the terms of the Evian Agreement the transfer of populations between France and its Autonomous Region of Provence commenced, the result was a vast humanitarian crisis.

  Before the partition the population of the region had been three million of which over one million were Gallos. Following the rising and the battle hundreds of thousands of Gallos fled the combat zone, taking refuge outside of the towns and cities that had revolted. Few returned and those who remained left following the signature of the Evian Agreement. Initially there were few forced expulsions from the Autonomous Region but as Paris increased the deportation non-Gallos a climate of retaliation grew.

  Attacks on French property were perpetrated such as that against the Consulate of France when a bomb exploded causing serious damage to its building.

  The French media gave the bombing headlines setting off waves of anger among the Gallos against the Arabo-Muslims. The attack by the angry mobs began against Arabo-Muslim property. The police calmly watched and even encouraged the mobs, in their relentless path of destruction. The authorities reacted by increasing the deportations by trains and buses from the Paris region to Marseille. Screaming slogans the mobs beat and killed Arabs and Blacks.

  Many New French were terrorized and forced to flee their homeland. In Marseille the population responded by destroying churches, war memorials, monuments and statues, manifestations of the France’s glory and its heroes, so as to eliminate future reminders of the French past.

  The remaining Gallos of the Autonomous Region were ill treated or tortured. The elderly ex-Mayor of Marseille, who had refused to leave the city and who had tried to reason with the crowd on the steps of the City Hall, was beaten and dragged through the streets by the mob, dying shortly after.

  The authorities in Paris protested claiming that the aggression against the Muslim population in France was gross exaggerations.

  o0o

  “You’re right, outside of Paris their only other bastions were Lyon and Strasbourg, but that was enough.”

  “So you’re against the Jews.”

  “Yes, not only because I’m an Arab, but because they practised exactly what they accused the Germans of, and also the other enemies of Israel. Don’t forget Boublil was the architect of the expulsions, we call it ethnic cleansing and that’s what it is.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I know I’m right, but there’s not only the expulsions, but the Zonards, the Clodos and the Ombres, who the French have thrown on the junk heap of Lehman’s economic efficiency. This is the reason why Boublil and Lehman are our enemies, targets to be destroyed.”

  Boublil had been a leading activist before the Rebellion in the Teachers Union, demonstrating against the uncontrolled arrivals of non-Gallos at the moment there was a huge rise in the numbers of children in the education system whose level of French was low due to the Arabisation of education in their countries of origin in the Maghrib, the result was pulling down the level of education in French schools to a disastrous level.

  Boublil had made a speech at an annual congress of the Teachers Union declaring, ‘It is beyond our possibilities both financially and materially to provide an education for every child between Casablanca and Cairo or between Algiers and Timbuktu.’

  The cost of education and health care for the refugees and infiltrators had climbed year after year and with the influx after the events in North Africa and the Middle East the system was in a state of collapse.

  “Today Boublil considers the Zonards and Ombres are parasites responsible for their situation, as though they had deliberately chosen exclusion or misery.”

  “What about the police?”

  “Ah, since Jean-Bernard Pogu was named head of the National Police Force he has taken what he calls firm action to rid the City of its non-Gallo infiltrators, first in line were the Arabs and Blacks.”

  “Was that not already the rule?”

  “Yes, but with the new laws and the creation of the Ethnic Affairs Department, it has been Pogu’s task to apply the laws. Using a register of all non-Gallos that had been drawn up according to the exact definitions stated in the act.”

  The ambition of Boublil was to see the implementation of le Martel’s most secret plan code named ‘Savannah’, only known to a tight circle of his very closest lieutenants. The object of the plan was first to recover the lost departments of Provence expulsing the population to Corsica, and second to transport the Clodos and all the other malingerers to Africa, in the colony of Senegal where a new life would be waiting for them to rebuild and repopulate the Nations newly acquired territory.

  Boublil’s idol was General de Gaulle and he liked to recount what he had confided to one of his entourage, ‘During the war, I realised that those people do not like us ... and that the Arabs are inassimilable.’

  Ennis was weary of the constant, ethnic and religious divisions, anti-Arab, anti-poor and now anti-Semitic, each used the same arguments to satisfy to his own vision of France and for the most part linked to their own political desires and ambitions.

  Savannah

  By the early years of th
e century a large part of sub-Saharan Africa had been wasted by a combination of disease, war and natural disasters. The demographic explosion forecast by demographers had not taken place. The ravages of Aids, Ebola and the collapse of civil order had left vast regions emptied of their human populations. The West had long lost its interest in Africa through fear of contagion of both disease and chaos.

  The only region to survive was South Africa, though its black population had been reduced not only in numbers but in spirit accepting a permanent role of service to the whites as a consequence of the inability of its leaders to defend their political and economic place in their country, for the same reasons that had plagued the rest of Africa, tribalism, poverty and disease. The whites imposed their rule as they had always done spreading and reclaiming their lost territories of Botswana, Namibia and Zambia.

  Africa had ceased to be of interest to the USA or Russia once the Cold War had ended. Only the nostalgia of ex-colonial powers lingered on as long as there was an economic advantage to be gained such as oil or minerals.

  Senegal had been emptied of its population and Dakar had almost become a ghost town. When General Mamadou Dongo had offered a large swath of territory to le Martel in exchange for economic aid with the suggestion that it could be repopulated by European Africans encouraged by free land to return home to rebuild the country.

  There was the fertile soil of