French press review 5 May 2015

Rescued Boko Haram hostages detail their ordeal, while the French press also monitor Burundi clashes between police and demonstrators, and President Francois Hollande's lucrative visit to the Gulf.

We begin with the saga of a 14-year-old Nigerian girl taken hostage by Boko Haram insurgents from her home in north-eastern Nigeria and used as a sex slave before being forcefully married to a man as old as her father. Aïchatou’s testimony is so moving that L’Humanité publishes her ordeal on its front page Tuesday.

She speaks to the Communist party newspaper at length about the barbaric conduct of the insurgents, their attempt to convert her into radical Islam and the destruction of her life. She mourns “the theft of her virginity” in the exclusive interview, denouncing the Islamists as “not Muslims but the worst of devils”.

Libération also carries some of the chilling testimonies made by the women and children rescued on Friday from a Boko Haram Sambissa Forest stronghold where they were held without food and in "inhumane conditions". ”Every day, one of us died, and we were waiting for our turn”, one of the ex-hostages confesses in the article.

Libération is monitoring the situation in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura where police are shooting demonstrators with live bullets protesting against President Pierre Nkurunziza’s plans to seek a third term, in defiance of a constitution that ended the country’s 13-year civil war. This is amid reports that Sylvère Nimpagaritse, the vice president of the Constitutional Court who is called upon to rule on the legality of the president’s new mandate, had fled the country. The paper reports that three people have been killed and 45 others wounded in the capital as the nine-day uprising against Nkurunziza spreads.

Several papers post comments about French President François Hollande’s diplomatic offensive towards the Gulf as he flew from the signing of a multi-billion dollar Rafale fighter jet contract with Qatar to attend the summit of Gulf states in Riyadh. He becomes the first Western leader to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Gulf Cooperation, made up of Saudi, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman, according to Le Figaro. The conservative publication holds that the gesture is perceived in Paris as a gratification towards the pro-Sunni diplomacy defended by France.

La Croix’s editorial focuses on the "diplomacy without qualms" pursued by the current socialist government towards the so-called monarchs of the Arabic peninsula. According to the Catholic daily Hollande’s invitation to the Riyadh summit constitutes a consecration of the privileged defence and diplomatic ties Paris has woven with the Gulf states preoccupied by the growing power of Iran and the redefinition of the US priorities in the region.

For La Croix, Monday’s contract on the purchase by Qatar of 24 Rafale fighter jets shows how France’s close relationship with them can quickly be transformed into lucrative and benefitting commercial contracts.

A campaign by shareholders to cap the wages of corporate chiefs seems to be gaining ground. Le Monde reports that the shareholders of multinationals such as Renault, Danone, Schneider Electric, Veolia, Safran and more than half of France’s CAC 40 companies are quite irritated by their CEOs’ earnings to the point that they want to peg their salaries on performance, not on the impressiveness of their CVs or reputation.

According to the evening paper only 58 per cent of Renault’s shareholders approve the tripling of CEO Carlos Ghosn’s wages. He now earns 7.2 million euros a year. A former CAC 40 boss tells Le Monde that the French people do not know that most CEOs work three times the standard 35-hour working week.