A far-right deputy shouts “Let them go back to Africa!” in reference to a question from a black leftist representative about immigrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea
The president of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, suspended this Thursday the government control question session, after the controversy aroused in the hemicycle by a phrase pronounced by the far-right deputy Grégoire de Founnas and that the left considers racist.
The incident occurred when Carlos Martens Bilongo, a black deputy from La Francia Insumisa (the Gallic Podemos), asked the Executive about the immigrants rescued by NGO ships in the Mediterranean Sea. “Let them go back to Africa!” shouted Grégoire de Founnas, a representative of Regrouping National, Marine Le Pen’s party.
The deputies of La Francia Insumisa cried out in heaven when they considered that the far-right deputy had offended his black colleague. The pronunciation of the phrase, singular and plural, is almost identical in French, hence the confusion. “I am a deputy of the nation and being insulted is totally shameful,” Martens Bilongo reacted when leaving the hemicycle. “We see the true face of National Regroupment,” added the deputy of Congolese and Angolan origin.
“A Manipulation”
“When I said ‘Let them return to Africa’, I was not talking about the deputy (Carlos Martens Bilongo), I was talking about the migrant smugglers’ boat,” defended the National Regrouping deputy, who denounced “a manipulation” by La Francia Insumisa of his statements .
Grégoire de Fournas evidently spoke of the migrants transported in boats by the NGOs that asked notre collegue dans sa question au gouvernement. The polemic created by us political adversaries is gross and ne trompera pas les Français.
Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) November 3, 2022
Marine Le Pen also came out on Twitter in defense of her deputy. “The controversy created by our adversaries is crude and will not deceive the French,” added the far-right leader, who in recent years has tried to soften the image of her party. The controversy broke out on the eve of the National Regrouping Congress, in which the new president of the formation will be announced.
The table of the National Assembly will decide tomorrow whether or not to sanction the far-right deputy for his statement, which was also condemned by the Government. “Racism has no place in our democracy,” reacted the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, after the suspension of the session of the National Assembly.
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