“The State has never recognized its responsibility,” regrets Senator Hussein Bourgi

Hussein Bourgi is at the origin of a bill to rehabilitate and compensate former convicts for homosexuality between 1942 and 1982, which arrives in the Senate on Wednesday. “There are around 50,000 to 60,000 people who have been worried in France,” estimates Hussein Bourgi on franceinfo.

“The State has never recognized its responsibility”, in the condemnation of homosexuals in France, regrets Wednesday November 22 on franceinfo the socialist senator of Hérault Hussein Bourgi. The man who is also a member of the national office of the PS and regional councilor for Occitanie is at the origin of a bill to rehabilitate and compensate former convicts for homosexuality between 1942 and 1982, which arrives in the Senate on Wednesday.

franceinfo: Would you say that France is lagging significantly behind?

Hussein Bourgi: France is significantly behind in this area, compared to other neighboring countries such as Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and recently Austria, which passed a law to this effect. about a fortnight ago. The last witnesses, the last actors, the last victims, disappear little by little, and it seems to me that the time has now come to pass this law, quite simply to recognize the errors and mistakes of the past.

Until today, the State has never recognized its responsibility in this discrimination against homosexuals?

No, the State has never recognized its responsibility. The only thing that happened in 1982, after the election of François Mitterrand, was that Robert Badinter, Gisèle Halimi and Raymond Forni had decriminalized homosexuality. I remind you, homosexuality in France has no longer been penalized since the French Revolution. In 1791, in the Napoleonic code, there was no mention of homosexuality. It was not until 1942, the arrival of Pétain in power, that homosexuality was penalized, and then there was a second law which was passed […] in 1960 which considered homosexuality a social scourge. So, in 1982, it was these laws that were repealed, […] but there has never been any recognition of these past errors with regard to these men and women.

There is a figure of 10,000 people affected, according to available records. A priori, the Vichy years are missing, from 1942 to 1945, and then after 1978, so it is impossible to have a complete count?

There are around 50,000 to 60,000 people who have been worried in France. This goes from the arrest, from police custody which can last two to three days, until the trial and therefore the conviction of a fine, suspended prison sentence or prison sentence, which was around three to three days. six months on average. The most illustrious personality in France who was convicted under these laws is Charles Trenet, the singer. Unfortunately, this reality remains a little-known page in the history of our country.

Were we arrested for nothing, for example a kiss in the street between two men?

Yes, or a denunciation, this was the case in Nantes, for example. We have very documented cases, where it was a denunciation by a neighbor against a couple of men, who were arrested at their home, taken to the police station and sentenced because of these laws, which were liberticidal laws at the time. ‘era. We were going to track people’s privacy, we were going to track what concerns the identity of each and every person.

If this law is approved by Parliament, France will allocate an allowance to each victim, approximately 10,000 euros, to each victim who requests compensation, except that many are dead today?

Many victims have died, and those who are still alive are often very old. Some, who are 90 years old, 95 years old, tell me ‘we are very tired, we are in the twilight of our lives, we are not here to ask for money, what matters more to us is that our country recognizes mistakes and broken lives’. I’m talking to you about someone, for example, who was forced to leave his town, to go into exile, as he himself says, to settle in another town to rebuild himself and who doesn’t returned to his town only seventeen years later for his father’s funeral. On the day of his trial, there was a journalist, who the next day published the report of the hearing and who illustrated it with a photo of the window of his father’s business.

Is there unanimous support for your bill or are you facing opposition?

I think that the bill will be adopted on the recognition of France’s responsibility. There is a general consensus emerging in the Senate. What is mainly debated is the question of reparation.