In the final stretch before France holds high-stakes parliamentary elections on Sunday, several candidates were reportedly attacked on the campaign trail, including government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot.
France’s interior minister said on Thursday that 30,000 police officers would be deployed on voting day, including 5,000 in the Paris region. Tensions are high as left-wing and moderate groups try to prevent an anti-immigration, nationalist national rally from winning a legislative majority in what would be a first and major historic shift for France.
Candidates complained of hate speech and physical violence during the short and polarizing early election campaign.
Trevino, a candidate in President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, said she, a deputy and a party activist were attacked by a group on Wednesday night while putting up election posters in Meudon, near Paris. Trevino’s deputy and party activist were taken to hospital.
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French Government Spokesperson Prisca Thevenot will hold the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, July 3, 2024, at the Elysée Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
“Symbolic verbal violence was quickly replaced by physical violence,” she told reporters on Thursday back on the campaign trail.
She said the motive for the attack was under investigation. The prosecutor’s office said it had launched an investigation into a group’s armed attacks on public officials. Prosecutors said four people, including three minors, were detained.
Politicians from all parties condemned this attack and other attacks on candidates of all parties.
Savoy National Rally candidate Marie Dauchy said she was attacked at a food market during her campaign on Wednesday and announced she was giving up her candidacy. Her party leader and three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on X that two men attacked Dochi “cowardly”.
Republican candidate Nicolas Konkel said on social media that he was attacked while distributing election leaflets in the Atlantic coast city of Cherbourg on Tuesday. He said he was accompanied by a minor when the incident occurred and reported it to police.
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In the Alps, local official Bernard Dupre, 77, was beaten while hanging a campaign poster for former health minister Olivier Veran, Veran said Thursday. French media showed footage of Dupre’s bloodied eyes.
“Let us resist the spreading climate of violence and hatred,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Thursday.
“This atmosphere is regrettable,” Le Pen said in a television interview.
Hours before she was targeted, Trevino shared with French broadcaster TF1 her anxieties as a person of color in a “complex” political situation. Her parents are from the African island of Mauritius.
“I say this not just as a government spokesperson, but as a daughter of immigrants and a mother of mixed-race children,” she said, citing repeated and intensifying racist attacks. “They are no longer anonymous, they are open-faced, even with a certain sense of pride.”
Many have expressed concern that a surge in voter support for fierce anti-immigration rallies across the country has made people more willing to use racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic language in public.
A candidate campaigning for Macron’s camp in a Paris suburb had her party assign private security after she said she was the target of anti-Semitic slurs.
Residents of the Paris suburb of Chateau were shocked after pamphlets targeting black people appeared in their mailboxes. Campaign group SOS Racisme launched legal proceedings for inciting hatred and said its offices across France had seen an increase in reports of racist speech and behavior during the campaign.
The government agency that counts racist acts does not have the latest data since the short-lived movement began.
French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported that Fadila Khattabi, the minister for people with disabilities and the daughter of Algerian immigrants, shed tears as she shared a personal story at a ministerial meeting at the Elysee Palace on Monday. “Given where I come from, I fear racist comments,” she said, according to the newspaper. “My son is a symbol of Republican success, an immigrant child who became a pharmacist and now has a national interest in He wanted to leave France out of fear of victory.”
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On Sunday evening, a group called Action Anti-Fascist Faubourg Paris called for a protest outside the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, to confront the far-right. Le Pen condemned the call.
On June 9, Macron announced an unexpected legislative election after he suffered a crushing defeat at the National Assembly in France’s election for the European Parliament, plunging the country into a chaotic and sudden legislative campaign.
