Six anti-homophobia associations file a complaint against the denial of “the deportation to France of homosexuals because of their ‘sexual orientation'” during the Second World War by Éric Zemmour who describes it as “legend”.
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Six anti-homophobia associations filed a complaint on Wednesday March 23 against the candidate Reconquête! in the presidential election Éric Zemmour for “disputing a crime against humanity”. The complaint by Inter-LGBT, Stop Homophobia, SOS Homophobia, Mousse, Adheos and Quazar targets a sentence taken from Éric Zemmour’s book France has not said its last word. In this work, the polemicist asserts that “the deportation to France of homosexuals because of their ‘sexual orientation’, as we say today is a ‘legend'”. “To deny the existence of a crime against humanity is the most insidious form of incitement to hatred”, denounces on franceinfo Me Étienne Deshoulières, lawyer representing the associations. He judges “unacceptable” d‘”use history to challenge proven historical facts and call for hatred against a group of homosexual people”.
“To deny the historical reality of the violence that has been committed against homosexuals is to deny the reality of the violence that is still being committed today.”
Me Etienne Deshoulièresat franceinfo
The lawyer believes that this consists in holding the victims of these acts “like liars” and “this denunciation of homosexual people who would be liars constitutes a call to hatred”.
Éric Zemmour’s lawyer, Me Olivier Pardo, assures us that this is a “unrest during the presidential campaign”. “Choosing the date [du dépôt de plainte] while the book was released in September is a choice that is not the result of chance and which demonstrates the desire to instrumentalize justice”he adds.
The lawyer representing the anti-homophobia associations denies these accusations. Me Étienne Deshoulières affirms on the contrary that he “there is no particular desire to interfere in the political campaign“. The complaint was prepared during “six months”, by LGBT activists but also a geographer and historians. These have peeled “all the historical archives on the question of the deportation of French homosexuals”. In particular, they made “a meticulous work of counting person by person to establish the reality of this deportation”.
In saying these words, “Éric Zemmour takes on the words of Christian Vanneste” and “therefore denies the reality of this historical fact”, according to the complaint that franceinfo was able to consult. Based on historical work, in their complaint, the associations point out that “the deportation of homosexuals during the Second World War is an established historical reality”having been “the object of recognition by France in 1995”. They therefore accuse Éric Zemmour of having had “obviously the conscience and the will to employ” such remarks “which are of a Holocaust denial nature”.