Paris | An investigation for “racist insults and incitement to racial hatred” was opened Monday after anti-Semitic messages posted on social networks against one of the candidates in the election of Miss France 2021 on Saturday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
The election as the first runner-up of Miss Provence, April Benayoum, who had indicated that her father was of Israeli origin, sparked numerous anti-Semitic comments on Twitter, triggering strong reactions from the political class.
“Some of the tweets are still online: this is not acceptable,” lamented Monday on BFMTV the Minister for Citizenship Marlène Schiappa, who had made a report to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
“Social networks must take their responsibilities”, she insisted.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, it is the brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP) which was in charge of the investigation and will have to identify the authors of the incriminated messages.
“It is a signal that is sent to their authors to tell them that it is not trivial to make calls to hatred and to utter this kind of anti-Semitic speech since they will, I hope, be prosecuted and they will in any case be held accountable for their actions before the courts, ”Ms. Schiappa said.
The Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, had warned that justice would “open wide the eyes” to the authors of anti-Semitic messages, while the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin, “deeply shocked”, assured that “the police and gendarmerie services (were) mobilized ”.
April Benayoum regretted to the daily La Provence “that we are still there in 2020, we must mobilize so that it stops”.
“I did not try to provoke anyone, France is a cosmopolitan country, the Misses come from different origins, from different cultures, from different regions and that is what is beautiful in this competition”, she added.