when returnees from Indochina were parked in camps in France

“The Chinese? They are short, yellow people, with almond-shaped eyes, who always smile”, “They eat dog, turtles”, “You speak French well, for an Asian”, “Grain of rice”, “Opposite lemon”, “You all look the same“… These little sentences, sometimes heard at school, outline the contours of a racism that has long been downplayed in France. A hidden discrimination from which many members of the Asian community suffer and which sometimes has dramatic consequences.

The documentary I’m not Chinese: history of anti-Asian racismproduced by journalist Emilie Tran-Nguyen, presenter on franceinfo, and broadcast Sunday February 4 at 9 p.m. on France 5, seeks to understand the roots of this racism ordinary by giving the floor to French people of Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian origin… The journalist of Vietnamese origin also traces the history of her own family to denounce the racial stereotypes of which she was a victim.

The film, which looks at the discrimination and attacks targeting people of Asian origin since the Covid-19 epidemic, also highlights the casualness with which this racism is treated. In question, the a priori “positive” from which Asians benefit, often considered to be “hardworking and discreet”. A minority “model”in a way, but which remains prey to a distrust and which were victims, in silence, of the first generations forced to settle in France at the beginning of the 1950s.

“It was horrible”

While the Indochina War (the Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia today) ends, hundreds of Asian refugees, who fought alongside the French, are forced to flee their country and arrive in France in 1954. A migratory wave which worries and which France decides to park in camps.

“We had to bring them back, it was basically the moral act at the end of the conflict. (…) But we cannot integrate them into the heart of our lives either. We consider that they are still different .”

Pascal Blanchard, historian

in the documentary “I am not Chinese”

These returnees are grouped in remote rural areas. The fear of “yellow peril”a term with racist connotations that appeared in France in 1901, is omnipresent in people’s minds. “The inhabitants of these camps do not necessarily have the connection, nor the opportunity, nor the possibility in fact of interacting with the local residents, the villagers. They are completely cut off from the outside world”confirms sociologist Simeng Wang in the documentary.

These villages are closely monitored by the police or the army, preventing these returnees from Indochina from moving around as they wish. Some of them will spend their lives there. Madeleine Mariani was 10 years old when she arrived in France with her mother, brothers and sisters. “We landed in Noyant (Maine-et-Loire)with the rest of the returnees, she confides in the documentary. It was horrible.”

“A small village in Auvergne, which had never seen foreigners, saw all these people arrive. It was total rejection. (…) The other children made fun of us if we wanted to play with them .”

Madeleine Mariani, repatriated from Indochina

in the documentary “I am not Chinese”

This racism has become a little more diffuse, less frontal, over the years. But if previous generations did not allow themselves to denounce this xenophobia, it is no longer the same for their children or grandchildren. French people of Asian origin no longer hesitate to make their voices heard and to report the hostility they sometimes face.

The documentary I am not Chinese: history of anti-Asian racism, directed by Emilie Tran-Nguyen, is broadcast Sunday February 4 at 9 p.m. on France 5 and on the France.tv platform.