Before I tell you about how kidnapping à la française goes, I would like to describe the circumstances in which I learnt about the way the French kidnap some people.

Well, well … I was in the second year of my life in France (2009), washing the dishes and cooking dinner while listening to the 8 o’clock news. That was when a story caught my attention.

At this time, I forgot that I had my pan on the stove and I stood dumbfound watching TV for a few minutes, while a deep sense of love by the French invaded my heart.

Paralysed, I heard the story about parents who had kidnapped the principal of their children’s school because he did not take any decision on their repeated requests regarding the removal of a teacher they were convinced was inept to his job.

Here’s what happened: Two out of three days, the children got back home in tears complaining about their teacher, who did not seem very tolerant towards his students.

Parents began to talk between themselves and found out that the situation affected many of them. So they decided to talk to the teacher, however nothing changed, and their kids kept coming back home crying.

At this time, they decided to get together and ask to the school principal to relieve this teacher from his duties.

Time passed and the news story told that the situation remained the same and the disgruntled parents signed a petition.

Apparently this didn’t work either and this led them to act more consistently: They decided to kidnap the school principal and made him sign the teacher’s dismissal letter .

And that’s a kidnapping à la française!

And the most interesting thing about all this is that the French are not limited to kidnapping school principals. I’ve seen many times on TV reports about the kidnapping of the directors of large companies by their own employees.

The reason? The employees weren’t being paid or they’d be fired as a result of mass layoffs. But they weren’t ready to accept those situations and suffer their consequences without a fight.

You can imagine my face after realizing that my dinner was burning!

At least I hope you can imagine my expression of a stunned Brazilian housewife watching such reports on the 8 o’clock news. In fact, contrary to what happens in Brazil, kidnapping in France do not take place to ask for large sums of money in exchange of someone’s life. It was used primarily as a way to have your voice heard, to fight for your beliefs.

In this particular case, it was about parents who were convinced that there was a real problem with their children’s teacher, and after several attempts trying to find a civilized solution, they employed greater resources to solve the problem.

Now you see why I love these people?

They are crazy and only by living here you can see what they do every day to fight for their beliefs and rights.

They know how to come together to change things that do not suit them, and to this day I can not stop admiring their strength of mind.

My dear friends, I didn’t know any of this before living here, because unfortunately the Brazilian media would never report such kind of news. They might tell you that François Hollande, the French president, cheated on his wife, but this kind of subversive thinking should not come to the knowledge of the Brazilian people.

This is because the government has not really an interest in the people becoming aware of the power they can have when they unite.

For them, the proliferation of stupid TV shows is better, because that keeps the people alienated and in their place, while those who are in control can remain there, even with all its injustices.

It is time for the Brazilian people to write its own history, and to stop being afraid to act and accepting as absolute truth what those who are above them say.

And it is time for Brazilians to begin to think for themselves and fight for a fairer country, with equality and true freedom.

Enough of “order for the poor and progress for the rich”!

It is time we build a new home, a new Brazil!

Before you leave, here’s a curious fact: in French we have two words, two verbs used to speak about abducting someone (kidnapper and séquestrer), which have a distinctive meaning while in Portuguese we use a single word (sequestrar), so we have no distinctive meaning.

The first word, kidnapper, comes from the English; to kidnap, which means removing a person for ransom, expecting a sum of money to release that person.
The second word, séquestrer, is an offense that basically means keeping a person illegally locked, but not for ransom.

So why the French have two words while the Brazilians and Portuguese have just one? Is it because it became important for the French to dissociate the money related dimension from the more general one, what might limit the usage of the word?

In any case, when Brazilians speak about kidnapping, unfortunately it has a single meaning for them: it is about a loved one, a relative, a child, a mom, a dad that was taken from them to be exchanged against a large amount of money.

For the record: in 6 years living in France, I’ve never heard on TV a report about someone removed under such conditions, while in Brazil this type of thing is common in the news and it has become part of our daily lives. As an example: in my entourage I have two people that have been abducted for ransom.

I think it’s time for the Brazilian people to begin to abduct the right people for the right reasons.

So please: stop abducting your fellow citizens for money, but rather “kidnappez” corrupt politicians, those who are stealing behind your backs and can remain living in total impunity.

If you want to kidnap, do it in style, do it à la française: To defend your rights and assert your beliefs!