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Before yesterdayThe Guardian

‘Here I found respect for who I am’: the French citizens who choose to leave

27 June 2024 at 11:34

Scores of highly qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds have left the country in recent years

Even as she climbed up the corporate ladder in France, Ophélie Rizki’s after-work routine remained unchanged. Each evening as she got into her car to drive home, she would make a beeline for her headscarf, feeling herself slowly becoming whole again as she covered her hair.

She had never been explicitly told that she couldn’t wear her hijab at work, nor had she asked. But as politicians in France continued to spar over headscarves, two decades after parliament voted to ban them in school, she worried about the impact that choosing to keep her hair covered would have on her career. “You don’t ask the question, you know it’s not something you can do,” she said.

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© Photograph: Supplied

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© Photograph: Supplied

As a child, I was relentlessly abused by a Catholic priest. As an adult, it almost killed me twice

25 June 2024 at 00:00

Gerard Gorman faced unimaginable horror as an 11-year-old boarder in County Armagh. The pain haunted him for decades – then he took on the church

It was November 1970 and Northern Ireland was sliding into the Troubles, but for Gerard Gorman, a new pupil at St Colman’s College, the horror of that era began when Fr Malachy Finegan summoned him into a room, closed the door and told him to sit on a sofa.

Gorman was 11 years old and small for his age, with big blue eyes. Two months earlier, he had started as a boarder at the Catholic boys’ school in Newry, County Armagh. Staff tended to be aloof or intimidating, except Finegan, the religious education teacher, who was solicitous and avuncular.

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© Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Paul Faith/The Guardian

The fake news divide: how Modi’s rule is fracturing India – video

Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.

Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.


But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.

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© Photograph: the Guardian

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© Photograph: the Guardian

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