While waiting – and hoping – for the particularly troubled political situation in Mali to clear up, the City of Thionville has decided to put the actions of its twinning committee with Gao on hold. A real heartbreaker.
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Today at 20:00 | updated today at 21:02
The mayor of Thionville, Pierre Cuny, and the Thionville-Gao and Kénébia-Konko twinning committee, organized this Tuesday morning, March 7, at the La Scala space, a press conference to discuss the situation in Mali and, by ricochet, that of the association thionvilloise. “On November 16, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to suspend all public development aid to Mali, given the attitude of the Malian junta, now allied with the Wagner militia,” recalled Pierre Cuny in the introduction.
A week later, the Malian transitional authorities decided to prohibit in turn, with immediate effect, all activities carried out by NGOs operating in Mali, with funding or with material or technical support from France, including in the humanitarian field. Under these conditions, the Thionville-Gao twinning committee had no choice but to suspend its partnership actions in Gao and in the villages of Kénébia-Konko.
“This dormancy does not mean the end of the association”
“It is a historic twinning, thirty-five years old, which thus finds itself on stand-by”, confirmed the mayor of Thionville. “And not because the City and the twinning committee are disengaging,” he insisted. Just as he insisted that “this dormancy does not mean the end of the association”. Dominique Morlot, historical president of the twinning committee, for his part recalled that such a situation had already arisen in the past. “In the 1990s, Mali had already experienced a troubled period, but three years later, things were back to normal. “. With the omnipresence of small jihadist groups and the more or less proven development of Francophobia, the context is obviously no longer the same.
Dangerous Liaison
“We do not see how not to suspend financial flow operations until the situation is clarified. This could even prove dangerous for the correspondents on site,” adds Pierre Cuny. “We will continue to maintain our friendly relations with our partners and with our project leaders, knowing that three are in progress”, indicated Marie-Amélie Rodde, the current president of the twinning committee. Among these projects, that of waste collection is particularly observed on this side of the Moselle, since it is the work of a former student from Thionville. Will he be able to complete it? “The problem is that we no longer have much contact with our correspondents,” she laments. “Which will not prevent us from being attentive if openings are possible…”
