Ahead of France’s key parliamentary elections on Sunday, several candidates, including government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot, have reported attacks while campaigning.
France’s interior minister said Thursday that 30,000 police officers would be deployed on election day, including 5,000 in the Paris region. Tensions have risen as left-wing and moderate groups try to stop the anti-immigration, nationalist Rally National party from winning an absolute majority in parliament that would mark a historic first for France.
Candidates have alleged both hate speech and physical violence in the campaign leading up to a fast and polarizing general election.
Thevenot, the candidate for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition, said she, her deputy and a party activist were putting up election posters in Meudon, near Paris, on Wednesday night when they were attacked by a group. The deputy and the party activist were taken to hospital.
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French government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot leaves the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
“Verbal and symbolic violence was quickly replaced by physical violence,” she told reporters on the campaign trail Thursday. “We’re still a little bit shocked… I’m not upset.”
She said the motive for the attack was under investigation. Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into a case of gang assault with a weapon against a public servant. Four people, including three minors, have been detained, the prosecutors said.
Politicians from all parties condemned the attack and the attacks on their candidates.
Marie Dorsey, the National Coalition candidate for Savoy, announced she was withdrawing from the race after saying she was assaulted in a food market while campaigning on Wednesday. The party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate, told X-TV that two men had “vilely” assaulted Dorsey.
Republican candidate Nicolas Konkel said on social media that he was assaulted while handing out election leaflets in the Atlantic coast city of Cherbourg on Tuesday. He said he was with a minor at the time of the incident and called police.
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In the Alps, 77-year-old local government employee Bernard Dupré was assaulted while putting up election posters for former Health Minister Olivier Veran, Veran said on Thursday. French media showed footage of Dupré’s bloodied eye.
“Let’s reject this climate of violence and hatred that is spreading,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told X TV on Thursday.
“The situation is deplorable,” Le Pen said in a television interview.
Hours before she was targeted, Ms Thevenot, whose parents are from the African island of Mauritius, had spoken to French broadcaster TF1 about the fears she faces as a person of colour in a complex political climate.
“I say this not only as a spokesperson for the government, but as the daughter of immigrants and the mother of a mixed-race child,” she said, pointing to the repeated and intensifying racist attacks. “They are no longer anonymous, they no longer hide their faces and they attack with a certain pride.”
The surge in voter support for virulently anti-immigration rallies across the country has many worried that people are becoming more comfortable using racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic language in public.
A woman campaigning for Macron’s candidate in the Paris suburbs was assigned private security by her party after claiming she was the target of anti-Semitic abuse.
Residents in the Paris suburb of Chatou were shocked when pamphlets targeting black people were placed in letterboxes, leading activist group SOS Racism to file a lawsuit for inciting hatred, saying it had received an increase in reports of racist comments and behaviour at its offices across France during the campaign.
The government agency that tallies racist acts did not have up-to-date data from the start of the brief campaign.
French newspaper Le Canard Anchaîne reported that Fadila Khatabi, minister of state for disabled people and the daughter of Algerian immigrants, was in tears as she shared her personal experiences at a cabinet meeting at the Elysée Palace on Monday. “Given where I come from, I am afraid of racist remarks,” Khatabi said, according to the paper. “My son, a symbol of Republican success, the son of immigrants and a pharmacist, now wants to leave France because he is afraid of the victory of the National Coalition.”
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A group called Anti-Fascist Action Paris Suburbs called for protests outside the National Assembly, the lower house, on Sunday night to counter the far right as the election results came in. Le Pen denounced the calls.
President Macron called surprise legislative elections for June 9 after his centrist coalition suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Rally National in European Parliament elections, plunging France into a chaotic and sudden legislative drive.
