French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said on Thursday he would not resign over his autobiographical novel that describes paying Asian boys for sex and denied having ever engaged in pedophilic acts.
Mitterrand said he “never” considered resigning since a controversy over the book erupted this week after his staunch defense of fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland on a US warrant on child sex charges.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has earlier on Thursday told the minister, the nephew of late Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, that he still had his support, he said.
When The Bad Life, described by its publisher as a “novel inspired by autobiography,” was published in 2005, Mitterrand confirmed he had paid for sex in Asian brothels, but rejected rumors of pedophilia.
The minister, appointed to the rightwing government in June, on Thursday again said he had never paid a minor for sexual favors, and insisted he had “never done any wrong against anyone in my life, never.”
“I absolutely condemn sexual tourism [and] I condemn pedophilia, in which I have never in any way participated, and all the people who accuse me of that type of thing should be ashamed,” the 62-year-old told TFI television.
He made the appearance on national television after French politicians from both left and right demanded he respond to the allegations that his memoir endorses sex tourism.
Mitterrand admitted that with his sexual practices he had “committed an offense against the idea of dignity, human dignity.”
However, the minister, who previously had a successful career as a writer, documentary-maker and television presenter, said that the “offenses” he had committed were commonplace.
“Among all the people who are watching tonight, where is the one who has not at least once in his life made this sort of mistake?” the visibly angry minister told TF1.
The passages in The Bad Life that have sparked controversy deal with the hero’s visits to brothels and boy bars in Thailand and Indonesia. The hero describes the mixture of feverish excitement and guilt he feels as he hands over money for sex with “boys,” whose age he does not state.
“The profusion of boys who are very attractive and immediately available puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to curb or hide,” Mitterrand writes.
When Polanski, who lives in Paris, was detained in Switzerland late last month, Mitterrand called the arrest “absolutely horrifying” and said it showed “a side of America which is frightening.”
But he has since toned down his support, repeating on Thursday that he had reacted emotionally to the detention of the Oscar-winning director he considers a great artist.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion