A far-right delegate shouts, “Let them go back to Africa!” in response to a question from a black leftist representative about immigrants rescued in the Mediterranean
The President of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, this Thursday suspended the questioning session on government control, following the controversy sparked in the chamber by a sentence uttered by far-right deputy Grégoire de Founnas and who left considered racist.
The incident happened when Carlos Martens Bilongo, a black deputy from La Francia Insumisa (the Gallic Podemos), asked the government about the immigrants rescued by NGO ships in the Mediterranean. “Let them go back to Africa!” exclaimed Grégoire de Founnas, a representative of Regrouping National, Marine Le Pen’s party.
La Francia Insumisa’s deputies cried out in heaven when they remembered that the far-right deputy had insulted his black colleague. The pronunciation of the sentence, singular and plural, is almost identical in French, hence the confusion. “I am a representative of the people and to be insulted is downright shameful”, Martens Bilongo reacted as he left the conference room. “We are seeing the true face of National Regrouping,” added the delegate of Congolese and Angolan descent.
“When I said ‘Let them return to Africa’, I was not talking about the deputy (Carlos Martens Bilongo), I was talking about the boat of the migrant smugglers,” defended the National Regrouping deputy, who called “a manipulation” by La Francia Insumisa of his statements.
Marine Le Pen also took to Twitter to defend her deputy. “The controversy created by our opponents is gross and will not deceive the French,” added the far-right leader, who has tried to soften her party’s image in recent years. The controversy erupted on the eve of the National Regrouping Congress, in which the new chairman of the formation will be announced.
The National Assembly table will decide tomorrow whether or not the far-right deputy will be punished for his statement, which was also condemned by the government. “Racism has no place in our democracy,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said after the suspension of the session of the National Assembly.
Source: La Verdad
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