“We must not let it pass”, reacts the president of the Regional Council after the signs and the comments of RN elected officials

“It’s unacceptable, it’s unhearable, we must not let it go”, reacts Friday April 12 on franceinfo Marie-Guite Dufay, socialist president of the regional council of Burgundy-Franche-Comté. She was reacting to the behavior of elected representatives of the National Rally who held up signs with the slogan “foreign rapists outside” during a council session Thursday. The president denounces “expressions which are totally out of place in a Republican enclosure”.

The posters referred to the sign displayed by an activist from the far-right collective Nemesis on Tuesday during the Besançon carnival. If the president of the RN group on the regional council, Julien Odoul, considers that this inscription does not evoke “not all foreigners”, Marie-Guite Dufay believes that “the conflation ‘he is an immigrant, therefore a rapist’ was obvious”. The president suspended the session following the signs.

Complaints will be filed

In the afternoon, regional councilor RN Thomas Lutz pronounced the German word “untermensch”, an expression meaning “subhuman” used by the Nazis. The elected official from the far-right party explains that he used this word to “qualify the status of opposition elected officials in the regional council”. “We had to see the force with which it was expressed”, “it is really our duty to rebel”, says Marie-Guite Dufay.

“Suits and ties are no longer enough, in any case they are not enough to acquire respectability. We are facing the scourge of racism.”

Marie-Guite Dufay, president of the regional council of Burgundy-Franche-Comté

at franceinfo

Marie-Guite Dufay claims to be “in touch” with a lawyer to file two complaints for “incitement to racial hatred”. One for the signs, the other for the words of Thomas Lutz. LICRA writes, on X, having approached the public prosecutors of Dijon and Besançon. SOS Racisme will also file two complaints.