Towards a new conviction for the far-right presidential candidate? Six associations fighting against homophobia announced on Wednesday March 23 that they had filed a complaint in Paris against Eric Zemmour for “disputing a crime against humanity”. They accuse him of having denied the deportation of homosexuals during the Second World War.
The Inter-LGBT, Stop Homophobia, SOS Homophobia, Mousse, Adheos and Quazar associations are aiming with this simple complaint at a precise sentence from Eric Zemmour’s book published in September, France has not said its last word : “The deportation to France of homosexuals because of their ‘sexual orientation’as we say today, is a ‘legend'”.
In this passage of the book, Eric Zemmour at that time reported a disagreement with the ex-boss of the UMP (ancestor of LR), Jean-François Copé, who had excluded the parliamentarian Christian Vanneste from the party. “because of the controversy he had provoked by asserting that the deportation of homosexuals from France was a ‘legend'”. Eric Zemmour adds: Christian Vanneste “is right”.
When the controversy broke out in 2012, the president of the association of the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees of France, Serge Klarsfeld, said that to his knowledge, there had been no “a homosexual deported from France”. “Among the deportees, there were homosexuals but they were deported as Jews, resistance fighters or common rights”added Serge Klarsfeld.
In their complaint, of which AFP was aware, the associations represented by Me Etienne Deshoulières assert on the contrary that “the deportation of homosexuals during the Second World War is an established historical reality”which has been recognized on several occasions by French leaders, such as the former head of state Jacques Chirac in 2005 or the former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 2001.
Based on historical work, they claim that“in France, at least 500 men accused of homosexuality were arrested. Among them, at least 200 were deported during the German occupation”. Other more recent works, based in particular on the French archives, among which Homosexuals in France, from the stake to the death campwritten by historian Arnaud Boulligny, support their complaint.
The associations accuse Eric Zemmour of having “falsified history to justify his homophobic positions” and point out that “this is the first time that legal action has been taken against comments denying the reality of the deportation of homosexuals”.
Eric Zemmour has already been tried, and released at first instance, for “disputing a crime against humanity”: he maintained that Marshal Pétain had “saved” the French Jews. The appeal trial was held in January and the decision will be made after the presidential elections on April 10 and 24.