A French parliamentarian, a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, said on Monday (10) that he was attacked with algae and mud in front of his house by protesters against the Covid-19 vaccine passport.
Deputy Stéphane Claireaux, from the Republic on the Move (LREM), was attacked on Sunday (9) in front of his home in Saint Pierre-et-Miquelon, a French overseas territory located on the Canadian coast.
“Obviously I am going to file a lawsuit. We are all receiving death threats in the mail, at some point this has to stop,” Claireaux told France Info, comparing the incident to “stoning”.
He said he went out to talk to protesters when he began to be beaten and insulted, adding that one of them ripped off his mask, saying that the coronavirus does not exist.
The assault came just days after Macron said he wants to “annoy” unvaccinated French people, making their lives so complicated that they end up sticking to the immunizer.
Overseas Territories Minister Annick Girardin condemned the attack and posted a video of the incident on her Twitter account, with protesters throwing mud at Claireaux in front of his house. “The images are shocking,” Girardin said.
Macron, during a visit to the city of Nice (southeastern France), also condemned the attack, saying it was “intolerable” and “unacceptable”.
While political rivals of Macron, who has yet to confirm his candidacy in the April presidential election, condemned the attack, they also pointed to the tension created by the French president last week with his controversial remarks.
“To the unvaccinated, I really want to irritate them. And that’s what we will continue to do, until the end,” said the head of state in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien last Tuesday (4), as his government seeks the implementation of the controversial vaccination pass.
In a statement to RMC radio, the deputy of the Republicans (right) party, Éric Ciotti, called for “sanctions against those who use violence in a somewhat crazy way, with delusional arguments”, but also criticized Macron’s “provocations” in search of “conflict”. for electoral reasons.
“The President of the Republic acted like an arsonist in his speech last week, because he attacked unvaccinated people, instead of trying to convince them”, evaluated the candidate for the Presidency of the Republican party, Valérie Pécresse, in a conversation with France Info.
For his part, the head of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, said that “some anti-vaccinations use the president’s provocations to justify their violence.” The attack is “absolutely unacceptable,” tweeted fellow ecologist Julien Bayou.
LREM leader in the Chamber, Christophe Castaner, said that in 2021, 322 threats were recorded against deputies, most of them from his party.
Macron’s statements and the record of Covid-19 cases in the midst of the fifth wave marked by the omicron variant have put health back at the forefront of the election campaign.
For observers, with this controversy, the president of the center intended to impose the theme of Covid-19 on the campaign. For now, Macron leads the polls, followed by right-wing and far-right candidates.
Macron was also attacked a few times by Frenchmen who were unhappy with their government. In June 2021, he was slapped in the face during a visit to a city in the south of the country. In September, he was beaten up at a food fair.
In late 2018, during the yellow vest protests — a movement that began after an attempt to raise fuel taxes — he was also attacked after his car was blocked by protesters.
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