France’s National Assembly on Friday cut half the salary of the deputy accused of uttering racist words against a black colleague in a parliamentary session the day before. Gregoire de Fournas, affiliated with a far-right party, will also be banned from entering Parliament for the next 15 days.
On Thursday (3), the deputy shouted “go back to Africa” ​​while left-wing parliamentarian Carlos Martens Bilongo spoke about immigration policies in the country. The phrase caused reactions from other parliamentarians, and the confusion led the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, to stop the activities.
Due to French phonetics, there are doubts as to who Fournas was addressing. That’s because he could also have said “go back to Africa”, referring to about 1,000 migrants from the continent currently stranded in the Mediterranean Sea on an NGO rescue boat.
The last possibility, by the way, is the one adopted by the far-right deputy and his party in the explanations to the media. “It is a manipulation to distort my statements, as if I had said unpleasant things about a fellow French deputy, who has the same legitimacy as me in this House,” Fournas said on Thursday.
In the same vein, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right and also affiliated with the Réunion National, said that “obviously, the deputy was talking about migrants transported on boats by NGOs”. According to her, the measures taken against Fournas in the Assembly represent a violation of the right to freedom of expression and “the controversy created by political opponents will not deceive the French”.
The phrase, in a way, goes in the opposite direction of the ultra-rightist’s recent political turn, previously seen as extremist. Le Pen has made significant strides in recent years in detoxifying his party’s image and convincing voters that he has moved towards traditional conservatism.
This Friday’s reactions, however, caused many in the centrist government and on the left to say that the episode opened up the “true face” of the National Assembly. This Friday, by the way, the party – the second largest in the Assembly – was the only one to vote against the measures.
Braun-Pivet said that “free democratic debate does not allow for everything, especially racism, whoever is targeted.”
Bilongo, in turn, said he believed the sentence was addressed to him. “It’s shameful that I’ve been reduced to the color of my skin,” he said. The deputy, of Congolese origin, received several expressions of solidarity. French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said racism “has no place in democracy”, and Emmanuel Macron’s allies say the French president has defined the far-rightist’s words as intolerable.
Also on Friday, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of Parliament ahead of the vote. “I am black and these words have been addressed to me before. To hear them in the National Assembly is shocking. It must be the last time,” said Pedro Filipe, 19, a student who joined the protest.
The incident comes after the French government announced a series of measures against irregular immigration, amid accusations by right- and far-right groups that current policies are insufficient to expel immigrants who have been denied residence permits.
This week, the government defended the creation of a residence permit for those who are in an irregular situation in the country, on the condition that they work in sectors with a shortage of manpower.
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