Doha – French Deputy Naima Moutchou, Vice President of the National Assembly and prominent member of the Horizons party, has filed a complaint after receiving a racially charged letter at the parliament on April 14.
The letter, scrawled on a page torn from a Paris Match magazine featuring her portrait, contained a series of explicitly racist insults targeting her Moroccan heritage and questioning her legitimacy as a French politician.
“You have an Arab face – you have no place in this country that collects all the world’s waste – you take the bread from the French. Get out quickly!” read part of the handwritten message.
It then continued with more inflammatory rhetoric: “We feel nauseous when we see your floured face. You destroy our country, Arabs slaughter our children. We’ve had enough, we are angry about these barbaric crimes that you are part of!”
Moutchou, who represents the Val-d’Oise region, immediately shared the content on social media platform X, accompanying it with a powerful response. “It’s violent, it’s racist, it’s shameful. I have a knot in my stomach and cold anger,” she wrote.
She added a poignant tribute to her family heritage: “And then a thought for my parents, for their sacrifices and their worn hands, their dignity, their silence.”
The deputy stood firm in her identity, declaring, “I am French and I am of Moroccan origin. I will never apologize for being who I am or for defending what I believe is right.”
The incident sparked immediate condemnation across France’s political landscape. National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet led the response, stating “The words of the worst. Racism has no place in our Republic. No form of hate has a place. We must condemn without reservation, fight relentlessly.”
Left-wing parliamentary group leader Mathilde Panot described the message as “infectious,” while offering her “unwavering support.”
Conservative regional president Valérie Pécresse denounced the “abject racist attacks,” and Right-wing deputy Jean-Didier Berger demanded “zero tolerance,” insisting that “the author of these threats must be severely punished.”
Speaking to Le Parisien, Moutchou contextualized the incident within a broader social framework: “Racism is not a mere word, but a serious offense. And it’s time for the Republic to treat it as such,” she asserted.
“These words don’t come by accident. They exist in a climate where hatred is accepted, where public debate tolerates what it should have rejected unconditionally. Racism is not a mere mishap, but a political symptom. If it returns with such force, it’s because we have collectively retreated.”
This is not Moutchou’s first encounter with racist harassment. In June 2023, she filed a similar complaint after receiving an anonymous email containing racist imagery, including pictures of a monkey, a noose, and an offensive gesture alongside her portrait.
The latest incident comes amid rising concerns about violence against elected officials in France, with Interior Ministry figures showing a 32% increase in verbal and physical attacks between 2021 and 2022, jumping from 1,720 to 2,265 reported incidents.
Political scientist Luc Rouban, research director at CNRS and member of Sciences Po’s Political Research Center, sees this as part of a broader trend. “We’re moving toward a brutalization of political life,” he explained to France 3 Paris Île-de-France.
“Political violence is less regulated, it overflows. It’s a problem of social norms. When addressing elected officials, people mix the person and the political representative, considered illegitimate and overprotected. They forget these officials are invested with a mission of general interest.”
The event is also part of a larger pattern now surfacing in the Western European country, with the Interior Ministry’s statistical service reporting an 11% rise in hate crimes during 2024, documenting 9,350 incidents and 7,000 infractions.
The spike in both racially motivated assaults and threats against public officials has spurred renewed demands for enhanced safeguards and educational initiatives to combat what Rouban describes as “an weakening of the school institution, which is no longer really capable of transmitting republican values.”
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