RENNES, France: After Britain leaves the European Union some 900 Britons serving on local councils in France will also have to give up their seat at the table.
Like all EU citizens living in another member country, Britons in France have the right to vote in local elections and stand for election to their local council.
But in leaving the bloc Britain will forfeit that right, meaning that British residents will no longer be able to represent the communities some have served for years.
Sandra Sheward and her husband moved to the western French region of Brittany 13 years ago.
“Our children fled the nest and we decided to drop out of the rat race in London,” said Sheward, 58, a former training specialist for a property services company.
The pair restored a farmhouse on the edge of Saint-Caradec, a riverside village of 1,200 people, where Sheward was courted by the mayor to join his slate of candidates for the municipal council in 2014.
Being the only non-French councilor, and one who has yet to fully master the language, has not been an obstacle, says Sheward, a born organizer who developed the village’s Christmas art market and helped set up a yoga class, among other activities.
“She doesn’t speak much during council meetings but when she does it’s always very constructive,” Mayor Alain Guillaume said.
In a region that draws large numbers of British tourists and where a number of Britons have second homes, it’s also helpful to have a native English speaker to call on for translations and other assistance.
But if Britain leaves the EU as expected, Sheward will be forced to bow out of politics at the next local elections in 2020.
“French villages are like ghost towns so it has been nice to be on the council. You get to meet more people!” said Sheward, who has applied for residency in France.
“I’d like to be re-elected but it depends on Brexit,” she said, adding with a sigh: “I just wish they’d get on with it so that we too can get on with our lives.”
According to official British statistics, France is home to a little over 157,000 British citizens, making it the biggest expatriate British community after that of Spain.
Outside Paris, large numbers are to be found in Brittany and the southwestern Dordogne region.
France has given them a year after Brexit to apply for residency but many have decided not to wait for divorce day to get their papers in, swamping local authorities.
The government has attempted to fend off panic, with former European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau assuring in March: “We want them to stay. They are an asset for France.”
About 10 kilometers to the west of Sheward’s village in Brittany, an Englishwoman is also a lynchpin of her community.
Jacqueline Bertho, 60, from Yorkshire, ended up in France in 2000 after a divorce, and began a new life in “Kreiz Breizh” — Breton for the center of Brittany, where she lives with her Breton husband and their daughter.
In the village of Saint-Guen (population 450), which is “very rural, like 1960s Britain,” the chatty 60-year-old is a well-known figure. “I’m the mad Englishwoman with the dogs,” she jokes.
While still feeling “very much British,” Bertho says she has thrown herself into community life, volunteering to teach English to local schoolkids, helping the elderly and, since 2014, becoming a member of the council.
A year after her election, Bertho obtained French citizenship, meaning her place in France is assured.
But she worries that other British couples who retired to the region, where they restored old houses and helped revive villages that were in their death throes, will struggle.
“Most won’t be able to become French,” she said, citing their French language skills, which are put to a citizenship test, as a key hurdle.
Tim Richardson, a British winemaker who sits on the council of the Dordogne village of Eymet, is one of those waiting for news on his citizenship application, which he submitted last year.
The father-of-two, who has been living since 1991 in the region nicknamed Dordogneshire after its large British population, is confident of becoming French.
And if he is forced to give up his council seat? “Tant pis (too bad),” he said in a telephone interview.
“It’s not the end of the world. There is no reason I cannot continue helping out in local life.”
Brexit axe looms for British office-holders in France
Brexit axe looms for British office-holders in France
- Britons in France have the right to vote in local elections and stand for election to their local council
- But in leaving the bloc Britain will forfeit that right
Villagers massacred in South Sudan food aid trap
- Civilians killed after being lured from homes with promise of aid, witnesses say
NAIROBI: More than a dozen civilians were killed after being lured from their homes by fighters allied to South Sudan’s government under the pretense of being registered for humanitarian food aid, according to two people who survived the attack.
The killings took place on Saturday morning in the village of Pankor, in Ayod county, in the conflict-hit Jonglei state, about 400km north of the capital, Juba.
Women and children were among the victims.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured. • Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
Several dozen fighters arrived in pickup trucks and announced over a loudspeaker that they had come to register residents for food assistance, said the two survivors.
“They gathered them in a luak,” said one witness, referring to a traditional mud hut used to house cattle.
“People were thinking they would get aid or some help.”
The fighters then bound the hands of several men and opened fire on the group.
The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured.
The government-appointed county commissioner said 16 people were killed.
Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
The images, which were shared with AP by an opposition representative, are too graphic to publish.
Makuach Muot, 34, traveled to Pankor on Sunday for the funerals of eight relatives.
Most of the village’s residents had fled fighting months earlier, he said, leaving behind mainly elderly people and young children.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang could not be reached for comment.
James Chuol Jiek, the government-appointed county commissioner of Ayod, confirmed that more than a dozen people, mostly women and children, had been killed in the attack.
He said the gunmen belonged to the Agwelek militia, a force drawn from the Shilluk ethnic group that has not been fully integrated into the national army but that has been deeply involved in recent military operations.
Jiek said the fighters had left their barracks overnight without their commander’s knowledge.
He said they told him the killings were revenge for attacks by a Nuer militia on Shilluk villages in 2022, during which hundreds of civilians were killed or abducted.
The government county commissioner condemned the killings and said that several officers had been arrested and that the army had disarmed 150 fighters from the battalion involved.
He disputed that people had been lured out for an aid registration. “This is an opposition lie,” he said.
In January, Agwelek militia commander Lt. Gen. Johnson Olony was filmed ordering his forces to kill civilians during military operations in Jonglei state. “Spare no lives,” he said.
“When we arrive there, don’t spare an elderly, don’t spare a chicken, don’t spare a house or anything.”
His remarks drew widespread rebuke from the UN and others. Olony has since apologized.
Armed clashes, aerial bombardments, and years of extreme flooding have left more than half of Ayod county’s population facing severe food insecurity.
Ayod county lies in northern Jonglei state, an opposition stronghold and a flashpoint in renewed fighting that the UN estimates displaced 280,000people since December.
Aid groups have warned that access restrictions to opposition-held parts of the state were endangering civilian lives.
Residents of northern Jonglei are overwhelmingly from the Nuer ethnic group of suspended vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar.
Opposition officials have repeatedly called the government’s actions in Nuer areas of the country “genocidal.”
Reath Tang Muoch, a senior official in the SPLM-IO, called Olony’s remarks “an early indicator of genocidal intent.”
