Florence,
Now it's been 38 days since you disappeared and I feel the omnipresence of your absence.
Absence of a journalist involved in the defense of democracy values; absence of a very appreciated woman.
Now it's 38 days there is a lack in the journalist profession, as if it was missing some letters in the word "liberty". Or as if an arrow -the arrow of intolerance- sanked into "liberty".
Your absence, this lack, this emptiness are growing every day. And I stumble over the sentence "unwillingness to understand".
That's absolutely certain that the pen of the journalists and the image of the photographs are essential defences facing the war, facing exactions, facing corruption. Your articles, as those of your colleagues, are so much pillars for democracy. One of these pillars will lack, and democracy will shake! So your presence in Iraq disturbs. As Ingrid Bettancourt in Colombia also does. As Enso Baldoni did. But I still do not understand how one can kidnap or murder
Then, which French people could ignore that you disappeared ? Which one and more, which journalist ? Which student in a school of journalism ? Nevertheless, this morning, I read only 650 messages on Liberation's forum and hardly 1200 on that of "Reporters without frontiers" Hardly 1800 support and sympathy messages. I read them all. Only a few come from colleagues. Even so, certainly your kidnappers have direct access to these. Since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, we noticed that terrorist and islamist fighters are masters in the art of communication with internet. But, where? Where are the supports of thousands of journalists, press correspondants, photographs, local reporters, students in journalism? The more the days flow, the less I understand these absences
So Florence, all that, is too much. Much too much.
Get back soon! It will give meaning to the word "liberty", still drastically reduced this morning. Then, I hope we will work together to resolve these unwillingness to understand. For no more Abdel Hussein Khazaal, Guy-Andre Kieffer, Fred Nerac, Giuliana Sgrena and many others at the cover of world newspapers or sticked to the front of town halls!
Thierry
