Robert Ménard

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Robert Ménard in 2015 in Toulouse

Robert Ménard (born July 6, 1953 in Oran , Algeria ) is a French politician (non-party) and former journalist . He was one of the co-founders of Reporters Without Borders , of which he was general secretary for several years. In 2014 he became mayor of the city of Béziers with the support of the politically moderate and the far right .

Life

origin

Ménard was born into a French North Africa resident ( Pied-noir ), conservative and Catholic family; his father was a print shop owner and a member of the right-wing underground organization Organization de l'armée secrète .

While at school, his family moved to mainland Europe in the Aveyron department , where he grew up in modest circumstances and attended a Christian school. He originally wanted to be a priest, but then chose to study philosophy at the University of Montpellier (UPV). During his studies, influenced by May 1968 , he became politicized and joined the Trotskyist party Ligue communiste révolutionnaire in 1973 , later he found his political home in the socialist party ( Parti socialiste ) or in its left wing Center d'études, de recherches et d'éducation socialiste . After the election of Mitterrand in 1981, he resigned from the party.

journalism

In 1975 he founded the pirate radio station Radio Pomarède and became president of the Association pour la Liberation des Ondes , which brought him opposition from politics and established journalism. He later started the independent magazine Le Petit biterrois and worked from 1983 to 1989 for the political department of Radio France Hérault .

Protest call (2008)

After a trip to Japan and his impressions of the Third World , he was one of the founders of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Reporters Without Borders (ROG) in Montpellier in 1985 , together with the journalists Rémy Loury , Jacques Molénat and Émilien Jubineau . He served as General Secretary for the organization for many years. In 2004 he founded the magazine Médias , which, like the NGO, should focus on the enforcement of international press freedom .

In 2008 he was arrested again when he took action against the invitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the French national holiday in the official gallery in Paris. In the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games , he and other members of Reporters Without Borders were reported to have protested, etc. a. briefly detained at the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral , where they put up a banner with handcuffs (instead of the Olympic rings ) against the human rights situation in the People's Republic of China in connection with the violent Tibetan unrest . In China he drew attention to himself with the slogan "Freedom for China, Freedom for Tibet!"

In the same year he abruptly left ROG and, at the suggestion of Sheikha Musa bint Nasser al-Missned, became president of the Doha Center for Media Freedom in Qatar for less than a year . Differences ended his term of office prematurely.

In 2008 he founded the Mordicus publishing house . From 2011 to 2012 he worked for the private radio station Sud Radio in the south of France . In 2012 he was appointed to the advisory board of a Georgian television station run by the entrepreneur Bidzina Ivanishvili .

politics

In 2014 he ran for a meeting with Marine Le Pen in the French local elections. a. supported by the Gaullist party Debout la République , the national conservative Mouvement pour la France and the right-wing populist to right-wing extremist Front National . In March 2014, referring the UMP and PS candidates to the following places, he was elected mayor of Béziers in the Hérault department in the second ballot with 46.96 percent of the vote .

In the past, the media reported intensive contacts with the extreme political right and the like. a. the Front National, the Bloc identitaire and representatives of the Troisième Voie (“Third Way”) movement. He represents controversial theses a. a. for same-sex marriage , to Islam and to the use of torture or reintroduction of the death penalty . His former colleagues at ROG distanced themselves from his current political ideas in an open letter that appeared in the daily Liberation .

In May 2015 he was accused of violating the equality principle of the French constitution by counting Muslim children.

family

Ménard is a member of the Roman Catholic Church . He is married to Emmanuelle Duverger (former lawyer and editor of Médias ), with whom he published several writings, and has three children.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • with Géraldine Faes: Ces journalists que l'on veut faire taire: Reporters sans Frontières . Editions Albin Michel, Paris 2001.
  • with Emmanuelle Duverger: La Censure des bien-pensants . Editions Albin Michel, Paris 2003.
  • Des libertés et autres chinoiseries: de Reporters sans frontières aux JO de Pékin . R. Laffont, Paris 2008.
  • with Élisabeth Lévy, Léonard Vincent: Les Français sont-ils antisémites? Mordicus, Paris 2009.
  • with Thierry Steiner: Mirages et cheikhs en blanc: enquête sur la face cachée du Qatar, le coffre-fort de la France . Éditions du Moment, Paris 2010.
  • with Emmanuelle Duverger: Vive Le Pen! (= Coups de colère ). Éditions Mordicus, Paris 2011.
  • with Thierry Rolando: Vive l'Algérie française (= Coups de colère ). Éditions Mordicus, Paris 2012.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bénédicte Fournier: Robert Ménard, un esprit libre ( Memento of the original of June 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.valeursactuelles.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Valeurs Actuelles , December 9, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c d Rudolph Chimelli : Journalist Robert Ménard. Change of position of an uncomfortable . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 11, 2013.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Tilman Müller: Henri Nannen Prize 2009. A pain in the ass in the service of democracy . In: Stern , May 3, 2009.
  4. ↑ Marie Guichoux: info Obs: Robert Ménard publie "Vive Le Pen!" . In: Le Nouvel Observateur , March 31, 2011.
  5. ^ Robert Ménard quitte la direction de Reporters sans frontières . In: Le Point , December 26, 2008.
  6. ↑ From Reporters Without Borders to Marine Le Pen , Euronews , March 30, 2014.
  7. ^ Right mayor in France counts Muslim children. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 6, 2015, accessed July 27, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Ménard, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Oran , Algeria