France: #Couloirshumanitaires Have Opened Today

“A victory over shame, death and fatality!”: tweeted Jean Fontanieu, general secretary of the FEP (Fédération de l’Entraide Protestante) when announcing the arrival of the first French humanitarian corridors tonight at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The FEP, that has always been active in the reception of refugees, is one of the co-promoters of the French ecumenical project following the Italian experience and thanks to which, with the yesterday last arrival in Fiumicino, 850 refugees, mostly Syrian reached Italy from Lebanon.

“When people of good will join, then you can offer hope. The foreigner is our neighbour – Fontanieu tweeted. Five Christian partners have been able to persuade the institutions into opening this French corridor. On July 5, thanks to humanitarian corridors, desperate men and women will be able to start again.”

At night landed sixteen people with a regular Air France Beirut-Paris flight: four families of Syrians and Iraqis, including a disabled person and three small children. To welcome these first groups there will be promoters of the French pilot project which has planned to accommodate 500 people over 18 months. Together with FEP’s representatives, there will be representatives of the Community of Sant’Egidio, the FPF, the French Episcopal Conference and French Secours catholique-Caritas Francia. As anticipated by the NEV agency on June 29, to mark the occasion, together with François Clavairoly, pastor of the FPF, there will be pastor Luca Maria Negro, president of the FCEI to symbolically pass the witness – (in the tweet below in the picture with Jean Fontanieu, Aude Millet and François Clavailory).