- Marc Marquez quickest in Australian MotoGP practice
- 'Like Texas': Spain's arid south draws Western film shoots
- With record production, Moldova plum farmers hail EU integration
- Nigerians sacrifice cars as cost of living crisis worsens
- Liverpool face Chelsea title test, Ten Hag fights to avoid sack
- Dodgers roll while Guardians fry Yankees in MLB playoff thriller
- Top Texas court stays execution of autistic man in 'shaken baby' case
- China posts slowest growth in over a year as property woes drag
- Asian markets swing as China economic growth slows
- Pogba's shadow looms over Juve as revitalised Lazio come to town
- 'Unbelievable' Raphinha leading Barca into tricky triple-header
- In-form Marmoush and Frankfurt hope to tackle history at wounded Leverkusen
- Britain's Lammy in China to 'challenge' Beijing on Russia support
- Manila's car counters help address 'world's worst traffic'
- British racing attendances falling behind, says Qatar Racing's manager
- Rain forces cancellation of opening practice for Australian MotoGP
- Dupont 'beyond surprise' for Toulouse's Kinghorn
- Drought forces Big Tech to rethink thirsty LatAm data centers
- Countries under pressure to fork out for nature at UN conference
- Biden, allies in Berlin to renew Gaza truce call after Hamas leader killed
- Guardians rally to fry Yankees in 10 innings in MLB playoff thriller
- World Bank president focused on job creation ahead of annual meetings
- World Bank chief says lender's climate goals likely safe under Trump
- Japan's core inflation rate slows in September
- Israel PM says killing of Hamas chief 'beginning of the end' of Gaza war
- King Charles set to arrive in Australia for landmark tour
- Nadal defeated by 'animal' Alcaraz in Saudi Arabia as career nears end
- US Supreme Court denies stay of execution to Texas man in 'shaken baby' case
- US charges Indian agent over alleged plot to kill Sikh separatist
- Musk stumps for Trump in key US swing state
- TikTok, Facebook approve ads with US election disinformation, study says
- Purdy and 49ers face Chiefs in Super Bowl rematch
- Kenya deputy president ousted in historic impeachment
- Israel military says Sinwar killed in firefight while tracked by drone
- One Direction members 'devastated' by Liam Payne's death
- Norris shrugs off Red Bull 'trick' of the trade at US Grand Prix
- Global stocks climb as ECB cuts rates and tech rebounds
- Chelsea, Lyon ease to wins in Women's Champions League
- China expected to post slowing growth as economic woes drag
- Yamasaki brings keirin world title home as Japan takes two track golds
- Netflix adds millions of subscribers but growth slows
- 'Deeply misguided' to wall US off with tariffs: Yellen
- Biden farewell visit to Berlin focused on Ukraine, Mideast wars
- EU leaders urge new laws to speed up migrant returns
- Sinwar killing a blow to Hamas but impact on war uncertain
- Mitzi Gaynor, star of 'South Pacific,' dies aged 93
- Trump says Zelensky 'should never have let' Ukraine war start
- Harris woos undecided voters as Trump riles critics over Ukraine
- Hayes turns focus to US women's World Cup goal
- Zelensky seeks EU, NATO backing for 'victory plan'
SCS | 0.53% | 13.21 | $ | |
NGG | -1.41% | 67.19 | $ | |
BCE | 0.03% | 33.49 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.52% | 25.02 | $ | |
CMSC | -0.52% | 24.79 | $ | |
GSK | -0.64% | 38.96 | $ | |
BCC | -3.38% | 142.2 | $ | |
RIO | -1.32% | 65.09 | $ | |
JRI | -0.15% | 13.15 | $ | |
RBGPF | 0.69% | 60.92 | $ | |
BTI | -1.22% | 35.37 | $ | |
RYCEF | 0.68% | 7.4 | $ | |
VOD | -1.23% | 9.73 | $ | |
RELX | 0.91% | 48.59 | $ | |
AZN | -0.37% | 78.02 | $ | |
BP | 1.25% | 31.32 | $ |
Armenian Resistance fighter joins France's Pantheon heroes
A stateless Armenian poet who died fighting the Nazi occupation of France during World War II on Wednesday becomes the first non-French Resistance fighter to enter the Pantheon mausoleum for national heroes.
The belated honour to Missak Manouchian has been seen as long overdue recognition of the bravery of foreign communists -- many Jewish -- who fought the Nazis alongside French Resistants.
"Jewish, Hungarian, Polish, Armenians, communists, they gave their lives for our country," President Emmanuel Macron said this weekend.
"It's a way of ensuring all forms of internal Resistance enter (the Pantheon), including some too long forgotten," he told communist newspaper L'Humanite.
The bodies of Manouchian and his wife Melinee, also a member of the Resistance, will be transferred from the Parisian cemetery where they were buried together to the Pantheon.
The names of 23 of his communist comrades-in-arm -- including Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Romanian fighters -- will be added to a commemorative plaque inside the monument.
- Refugee turned fighter -
Manouchian arrived in France as a young man in the mid-1920s, after fleeing World-War-I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a child to French-mandate Lebanon.
He joined the French communist party's armed resistance in 1943, soon leading dozens of foreigners fighting the German occupiers in the Paris region.
Under his watch they carried out sabotage, derailed trains, attacked German soldiers and assassinated a German SS colonel in charge of the forced enlistment of French workers.
Manouchian was arrested in November 1943 and tortured, before being shot dead by firing squad aged 37 with around 20 of his comrades in February 1944.
After their death sentences, a Nazi propaganda poster showing images of ten from the group on a red background, which became known as the "red poster", sought to demonise them as members of a "criminal army".
But it backfired, and later inspired a poem by French poet Louis Aragon, a song and several films.
- Foreign fighters -
Manouchian -- who pursued poetry and literature while working in a shipyard and a factory before the war -- had requested French nationality in 1933 and 1940, both times without success.
He was one of many foreigners in the French Resistance.
They were mostly "anti-Nazi Germans and Austrians, Spanish Republicans who had fled Francoism, anti-fascist Italians, Poles who had fled anti-Semitism, Armenians, and Jews from eastern Europe and Germany," according to the French defence ministry.
It is unclear how many exactly of the 2.2 million foreigners in France at the time joined the Resistance.
But of the 1,000 Resistance fighters executed by the Nazis at the Mont-Valerien fort outside Paris during the occupation, 185 were foreign, historian Denis Peschanski told AFP.
That was a much higher proportion of foreigners than in the country's pre-war population of some 40 million.
- 'Quiet heroism' -
Under Macron, since 2017 three people have been awarded a place inside the Pantheon: writer Maurice Genevoix, women's rights icon Simone Veil, and US-born entertainer and French Resistance member Josephine Baker.
Baker -- the first black woman to receive the honour -- had been awarded French nationality before the war.
Last year the president said Manouchian would receive the honour too, paying tribute to his "bravery" and "quiet heroism".
At the time, parliament was debating a controversial immigration bill, which Macron eventually signed into law earlier this year.
He has also called for former French justice minister Robert Badinter, who in 1981 brought an end to capital punishment in France, to be "pantheonised" after he died earlier this month.
D.Schneider--BTB