UNIVERSITÉ MONTPELLIER III – PAUL-VALÉRY DÉPARTEMENT D’ÉTUDES ANGLOPHONES MARDI 24 NOVEMBRE 2009 – F108 – 15h15 Enseignant : Frédéric Delord ÉPREUVE D’ANGLAIS POUR NON-SPÉCIALISTES W19AN1 – MASTER 1 – OPTION 2 EXAMEN FINAL Aucun document autorisé (Sauf étudiants étrangers : dictionnaire bilingue langue maternelle-français) Durée de l’épreuve : 2 heures Sujet : RÉDIGEZ EN FRANÇAIS UNE SYNTHÈSE DES 3 TEXTES SUIVANTS : (450 à 550 mots) TEXT 1: Brown to apologise to care home children sent to Australia and Canada Children were cut off from families and some falsely told they were orphans in programme that sent 150,000 abroad between 1920 and 1967. Peter Walker, The Guardian , Monday 16 November 2009 Gordon Brown is to offer a formal apology to tens of thousands of British children forcibly sent to Commonwealth countries during the last century, many of whom faced abuse and a regime of unpaid labour rather than the better life they were promised. The prime minister plans to make the apology in the new year after discussions with charities representing former child migrants and their families, a Downing Street spokeswoman said today. In a letter to a Labour MP who has campaigned on the issue, Brown said that the "time is now right" for an apology, adding: "It is important that we take the time to listen to the voices of the survivors and victims of these misguided policies."Government records show that at least 150,000 children aged between three and 14 were taken abroad, mainly to Australia and Canada, in a programme that began in the 1920s and did not stop until 1967. The children, almost invariably from deprived backgrounds and already in some form of social or charitable care, were cut off from their families or even falsely informed that they were orphans. While their parents were told the child migrants had gone to a better life, in many cases they remained in institutions or were sent to farming families and treated as unpaid labour, and many faced abuse. A key subtext to the programme, particularly in relation to Australia, was the aim of supplying Commonwealth countries with sufficient "white stock". Brown's apology follows other recent government expressions of regret for past policies now seen as inhumane. Soon after Tony Blair took power in 1997, Blair apologised to Irish people for the country's potato famine 150 years before. Ten years later he expressed sorrow for the UK's role in the slave trade, although his words fell short of the unconditional apology demanded by campaigners. While some critics dismissed these as meaningless stunts given the passage of time involved, many of those sent away as part of the Child Migrants Programme are still alive, with about 7,000 living in Australia alone. Sandra Anker, who was sent there from Britain in 1950, aged six, told the BBC she remained deeply angry at what had happened. "Why I was sent out is beyond me. I don't understand it. I was deprived of my rights as a British citizen and I feel the British government have a lot to answer for," she said. "We've suffered all our lives. For the government of England to say sorry to us, it makes it right. Even if it's late, it's better than not at all." News of Brown's move came as Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, this morning made a wider apology to the estimated 500,000 children, many from overseas, who were held in orphanages and other institutions around that country between 1930 and 1970. Rudd – who in 2008 made a landmark apology to the so-called "stolen generations" of aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents – addressed about 900 former child migrants at the parliament building in Canberra. He apologised to thousands of British children who suffered abuse and neglect after being shipped to Australia. "We are sorry," Rudd said. "Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost."The British high commissioner in Australia, the former Labour minister Lady Amos, said the next stage would be for the government to work with the Child Migrants Trust, which campaigns on the issue, on a wording for the apology. The trust's founder, Margaret Humphreys, is in Canberra to hear Rudd's apology. She said: "This is a significant moment in the history of child migration. The recognition is vital if people are to recover." The issue of the UK child migrants was investigated in 1998 by the Commons health select committee, a process which led to the Department of Health drawing up guidance for families to trace those sent away. Kevin Barron, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said he had received a letter from Brown outlining the planned apology and was "very pleased". Ed Balls, the children's secretary, said yesterday the child migrant programme was "a stain on our society". "I think it is important that we say to the children who are now adults and older people, and to their offspring, that this is something that we look back on in shame," he said. TEXT 2: Australia apology to Aborigines Wednesday, 13 February 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7241965.stm The Australian government has made a formal apology for the past wrongs caused by successive governments on the indigenous Aboriginal population. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in parliament to all Aborigines for laws and policies that "inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss". He singled out the "Stolen Generations" of thousands of children forcibly removed from their families. The apology, beamed live around the country on TV, was met with cheers. But some Aborigines say it should have been accompanied with compensation for their suffering. 'Indignity and degradation' In a motion passed unanimously by Australian MPs on Wednesday morning, Mr Rudd acknowledged the "past mistreatment" of all of his country's Aboriginal population. "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and For the indignity and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on degradation thus inflicted these our fellow Australians," the motion said. on a proud people and a Mr Rudd said he apologised "especially" to the Stolen Generations of proud culture, we say young Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents in a policy sorry of assimilation which lasted from the 19th Century to the late 1960s. Text of parliamentary motion TEXT 3: About this blog I'm Nick Bryant , and I'm the BBC's Sydney correspondent. 16 November 2009 Shamed into an apology Following a report from a House of Commons Health Committee in 1998, the British government said the child migrant programme, was "wrong" and expressed regret. The Blair government also helped fund family reunions, along with the Child Migrants Trust, which had been set up by Margaret Humphreys in the late1980s to help victims locate their surviving mothers and fathers, or siblings. In the gardens of the British High Commission in Canberra, I asked the new high commissioner, Baroness Amos, why it had taken so long for the British government to say sorry. She explained that a number of state governments in Australia had delivered apologies, that the Australian national government was on the verge of doing so, and that the time was now right for Britain to follow suit. "We've always said that this was an absolutely shocking period in our history," she said. "And there was a lot of thinking that went on in relation to this... it has taken us some time." She said that the Blair government expressed strong regret after the Health Committee report highlighted the appalling treatment that many child migrants had been exposed to - physical, psychological and, at times, sexual abuse. "We're now going that one step further and apologise" she said. "And this is the next stage in the process." But when I asked whether Gordon Brown would have apologised had not his friend and political ally, Australia's Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, decided to do so, she did not really have an answer. She rejected that formulation, but did not come up with a convincing counterpoint. Many will form the view that the British government has decided to act because the Australian government has decided to say sorry - delivering a national apology to British child migrants at the same time as saying sorry to the so-called Forgotten Australians, tens of thousands of Australians who were abused in institutions and orphanages. The child migrants that I have spoken to go further: they say that Gordon Brown has been shamed into apologising by the Australian government, which has exhibited what they described as greater "moral leadership". .