Relatives of French kidnapped in northern Mali in April 2021 continue to mobilize to recall his condition and call for his release.
By Brice Laemle
Thursday, December 8 is a birthday that the relatives of Olivier Dubois would gladly happen. It has been twenty months since the journalist was retained by a jihadist group after being kidnapped in Gao, in northern Mali. Six hundred nine days precisely that the 48 -year -old man has become a currency in spite of himself. In a video broadcast on social networks on May 5, 2021, the French, who lives and works in Mali since 2015, said in the hands of the support group of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a jihadist alliance in the Sahel , linked to Al-Qaida. Today there remains the only French hostage identified in the world, since the Liberation, in October 2020, of Sophie Pétronin, also removed in Mali.
Working for the freelance – in the article – for the daily Liberation and for the weekly Le Point and Jeune Afrique, the independent journalist is described by his loved ones as someone solar, curious, love to debate and make this which surrounds it. His friend Marc de Boni, a former big reporter in Le Figaro, draws up the painting of a person who understood very early that decisive events were played in Mali. “He had seized that the country would become the epicenter of phenomena with geopolitical repercussions affecting the whole world today,” he said, before renting the great rigor of Olivier Dubois. A professionalism which unfortunately did not prevent its kidnapping on Thursday, April 8, 2021.
Since that date, several actions have been carried out by his relatives and support for the freedom of the press to raise awareness of the hostage condition of Olivier Dubois, in particular through several demonstrations, of the stands or a petition. For Nicolas Hénin, a former journalist having been hostage in Syria for ten months in 2013-2014, the various support committees make it possible to maintain realistic pressure on French and Malian political leaders. “It is also interesting vis-à-vis terrorist groups, which depict us as individualists, to show that we squeeze our elbows and that we do not give up,” he argues. Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), for example, had the portrait of Mr. Dubois project on the Pantheon, in Paris, banners were hung on the pediment of several town halls, and bracelets from the SOS Otages association were distributed. But that is no longer enough: public opinion seems more absent than before.
“Links with more diffuse editorials”
“It’s a double penalty on a daily basis”, denounces his half-sister bodily Bernard. “Senior to suffer his absence and that it is difficult to be talked about from her ordeal,” said the one who campaigns to evoke the anxiety experienced by her family to the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. This slightest media mobilization is also explained by his status as a freelance journalist for the written press, while the latter play, however, an essential role in international information. “Like any freelancer, the links with the editorial staff are more diffuse, analyzes Elise Descamps, a freelance journalist and a member of the support committee. However, they take so many risks, all with an increased precariousness on a daily basis.”
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