France
Slap to Macron puts focus on ultra-right groups
Bubbling beneath France’s political landscape is an assortment of ultra-right groups, a subculture that shot to the nation’s attention when a young man slapped President Emmanuel Macron and blurted out a centuries-old royalist cry.
Ultra-rightist groups are considered increasingly dangerous despite their small following and are on the radar of authorities. Numerous arrests have been made and several groups banned. Challenges to the French identity are often at the center of their ideologies.
During Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Macron stressed the incident a day earlier was “an isolated act by a violent individual” that wouldn’t stop his direct contact with the population.
“No violence can be considered banal in the country,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal said.
Read:French leader Macron is slapped during visit to small town
The town of Tain-l’Hermitage, where the assault occurred, was the president’s most recent stop on a tour designed to “feel the pulse of the country” that’s been laid low by the coronavirus and trying to get back on its feet.
Damien Tarel, 28, the man who slapped the president, and a second man, identified only as Arthur C., also 28, were quickly arrested. Neither had police records, the local prosecutor said.
Tarel told investigators he struck out without thinking, the prosecutor’s office said. He is to appear in court Thursday on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority.
While Tarel’s motives remained unclear, it was his Medieval-era cry “Montjoie! Saint Denis!” as he slapped Macron’s cheek, that pointed to the aggressor’s potential interest in the tiny royalist fringe movement. Social media posts showed he followed royalist TV channels and a smattering of extreme-right figures.
At the home of Arthur C, police found weapons, old books on the art of war, a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf,” and two flags, one symbolizing Communists and another of the Russian revolution, the prosecutor’s office said. He is to be summoned to court next year for illegal possession of arms.
Tarel told investigators he was close to the Yellow Vest movement for social and economic justice, but also held right- or ultra-right political convictions without being a member of a party or group, according to a statement by the prosecutor’s office.
Read: Virus-stricken Macron at presidential retreat with fever
“Testimony of witnesses and (Tarel’s) companion do not add clarity to what motivated” the suspect to slap Macron, the prosecutor’s office said.
In 2018, the royalist call-to-arms dating to Medieval times was cried out by someone who threw a cream pie at the far-left lawmaker, Eric Coquerel. The extreme-right pro-monarchist group Action Francaise took responsibility. Action Francaise did not claim a role in Tuesday’s slapping incident, but hours later tweeted, “Vive la tarte a Tain,” a play on words combining the slang for “slap” (tarte), the French apple desert, tarte tatin, and Tain-l’Hermitage, where the incident occurred.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was among political chiefs to quickly condemn the assault. Le Pen, a candidate in 2022 presidential elections, has spent years working to rid her National Rally party of extremist elements who gravitated around her father’s National Front party, which she renamed.
Obscure to most of France, ultra-right movements are a priority on the radar of investigators.
A probe into an alleged plot uncovered in 2018 against Macron by a mini-group whose members were scattered around France is still in progress. The group, known as Les Barjols, was ordered disbanded.
Mediapart, an online investigative outlet, reported last month that investigators are on alert for the eventual return of ultra-right terrorists. It cited a confidential report from the prosecutor’s office detailing the professionalism and ability to obtain weapons by some groups. It said 17 deaths can be attributed to the ultra-right between 2016-2019, and quoted investigators as counting about 1,000 militants and 2,000 followers of the ultra-right.
Read:Macron's 'republican values' ultimatum to French Muslims
In March, France banned Generation Identity, citing its ideology “inciting hate, violence or discrimination of individuals ... based on origins, race or religion.” The organization was known for spectacular actions to get out its anti-migrant message in what it claimed was a mission to preserve French and European civilization.
Tarel’s social media profile showed an interest in medieval combat and martial arts, confirmed by a friend in an interview on BFMTV. The friend, identified only as Loic, said he was “stunned” by the slap. In October 2018, Tarel put out a call on a social media platform for funds for an association of Medieval martial arts in the town where he and Arthur C. were born and live, Saint-Vallier, with a population of under 4,000.
Four hours before Tuesday’s assault, a TV news show, Le Quotidien, broadcast a brief clip of Tarel, Arthur C. and another man waiting to see Macron. Neither Tarel nor Arthur C. spoke, but the third person said: “There are things that should be said, but unfortunately cannot be said.”
Among the issues, he said, was “the decline of France.”
French leader Macron is slapped during visit to small town
French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped Tuesday in the face by a man during a visit to a small town in southeast France.
Macron’s office confirmed a video that is widely circulating online.
The French president can be seen greeting the public waiting for him behind traffic barriers in the small town of Tain-l’Hermitage after he visited a high school that is training students to work in hotels and restaurants.
The video shows a man slapping Macron in the face and his bodyguards pushing the man away as the French leader is quickly rushed from the scene.
French news broadcaster BFM TV said two people have been detained by police in the assault.
Macron has not commented yet on the incident and continued his visit.
Speaking at the National Assembly, Prime Minister Jean Castex said “through the head of state, that’s democracy that has been targeted,” in comments prompting loud applauds from lawmakers from all ranks, standing up in a show of support.
“Democracy is about debate, dialogue, confrontation of ideas, expression of legitimate disagreements, of course, but in no case it can be violence, verbal assault and even less physical assault,” Castex said.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen firmly condemned on Twitter “the intolerable physical aggression targeting the president of the Republic.”
Visibly fuming, she said later that while Macron is her top political adversary, the assault was “deeply, deeply reprehensible.”
Less than one year before France’s next presidential election and as the country is gradually reopening its pandemic-hit economy, Macron last week started a political “tour de France,” seeking to visit French regions in the coming months to “feel the pulse of the country.”
Macron has said in an interview he wanted to engage with people in a mass consultation with the French public aimed at “turning the page” of the pandemic — and preparing his possible campaign for a second term.
The attack follows mounting concerns in France about violence targeting elected officials, particularly after the often-violent “yellow vest” economic protest movement that repeatedly clashed with riot officers in 2019.
Village mayors and lawmakers have been among those targeted by physical assaults, death threats and harassment.
But France’s well-protected head of state has been spared until now, which compounded the shockwaves that rippled through French politics in the wake of the attack.
Eyeing variant, France mulls tighter limits for UK tourists
France may introduce stricter coronavirus restrictions for British visitors when tourism reopens this summer to prevent the spread of a worrying virus variant first detected in India and causing concern in Britain, authorities said Sunday.
The possibility of tighter restrictions for British tourists was raised Sunday by Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The minister suggested that Britain could be put in a health category of its own, somewhere in between the strictest measures that France is imposing on visitors from India and 15 other countries, and more relaxed requirements being readied for visitors from the European Union and some other countries.
Without giving specifics, Le Drian said “health measures that are a bit stronger” could be applied for British tourists.
The minister indicated that the government in Paris is watching how the situation develops before making up its mind.
Read:Clinic helps long-haul patients in London’s “COVID triangle”
“We hope that the variant can be controlled in a country which experienced real failures during the pandemic,” he said.
“However, the arrival of the Indian variant and the increase of cases of Indian variant in the United Kingdom pose a problem and so we are vigilant about this (and) in contact with the British authorities,” he added.
“It won’t be the red treatment if we have to do it. It will be an intermediate treatment,” the minister said. “But it is not excluded — this springs to mind because of British tourists — that we have health measures that are a bit stronger.”
From Sunday, Germany already started requiring people arriving from the U.K. to go into quarantine for 14 days. The decision announced last Friday responded to the spread in Britain of the Indian variant.
Under the tighter rules, airlines and others will also only be able to transport German citizens and residents from Britain.
France to announce new virus restrictions in Paris region
France is set to announce new coronavirus restrictions on Thursday, including a potential lockdown in the Paris region and in the north of the country, as the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units spikes.
Sweden is latest country to stop using AstraZeneca vaccine
Sweden on Tuesday became the latest European country to pause use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine amid reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients.
Major European nations suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine
A cascading number of European countries — including Germany, France, Italy and Spain — suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday over reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, though the company and international regulators say there is no evidence the shot is to blame.
An antidote to pandemic blues, with some assembly required
He hunches at the dining room table, putting the finishing touches on his miniature World War II tank. Deep in concentration, he keeps his hand steady as he works to make the scaled-down plastic model look as realistic as possible.
France closes borders to most non-EU travel
France has imposed new Covid-19 border restrictions, but has once again resisted a new nationwide lockdown.
French envoy emphasizes France’s commitment to support Bangladesh
Ambassador of France to Bangladesh Jean-Marin Schuh and Project Officer ii-charge of the water and sanitation sector of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in Dhaka Fanny Nesen have visited the Dhaka Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (DWASA) headquarters.
Uproar in France over proposed limits on filming police
French activists fear that a proposed new security law will deprive them of a potent weapon against abuse — cellphone videos of police activity — threatening their efforts to document possible cases of police brutality, especially in impoverished immigrant neighborhoods.