Zuleikha Al-Shayeb: Woman the French dropped from helicopter to her death, By Owei Lakemfa

The article sharply criticizes France, juxtaposing its revolutionary slogan of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" with a history of brutal colonial practices. It argues that despite its ideals, France has been responsible for immense suffering and the devaluation of human life across the globe. The author cites Frantz Fanon's 1961 book, 'The Wretched of the Earth,' which advised fellow Africans to abandon "nauseating mimicry" of Europe and recognize that while Europe talks of Man, it murders men worldwide.

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Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.

France's colonial past is illustrated with several historical defeats. The article mentions the 1803 victory by Black slaves in Haiti, which led to independence and left France seeking retribution. It also recalls the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where Vietnamese forces defeated over 16,000 French soldiers, and the brutal war of recolonization in Algeria, which resulted in the deaths of approximately two million Algerians and the destruction of thousands of villages.

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If we want to destroy the structure of the Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight.

The narrative then focuses on the Algerian resistance, specifically highlighting the role of women and quoting Frantz Fanon again from his 1959 essay 'Algeria Unveiled.' Fanon's analysis suggests the French understood that to defeat the resistance, they must first conquer the women. He described the Algerian woman, particularly one behind the veil, as frustrating the colonizer because she "sees without being seen."

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This woman who sees without being seen, frustrates the colonizer.