Incitement to racial hatred inquiry launched into abuse over selection for Orléans festival

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A French state prosecutor has opened an inquiry into incitement to racial hatred after the selection of a mixed-race teenager to play the folk heroine Joan of Arc in annual festivities in Orléans was met with racist abuse from far-right users of social media.

Mathilde Edey Gamassou, 17, was chosen from 250 girls on Monday to play Joan in a spring festival marking the Catholic warrior saint’s breaking of the English siege of Orléans in 1429.

Gamassou, whose father is from Benin and whose mother is Polish, is to ride a horse through the central city dressed in armour for the celebration, which dates back nearly six centuries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration of Joan of Arc (c1412-1431). Photograph: Popperfoto

The announcement was met with a stream of posts on Twitter and far-right websites, branding her selection an exercise in “diversity propaganda” and an attempt to rewrite history.

“Joan of Arc was white,” read one Twitter post. “We are white and proud of being white, don’t change our history.”

Another comment, on the anti-Muslim site Resistance Republicaine, complained: “Next year, Joan of Arc will be in a burqa.”

The local radio station France Bleu Orléans reported that two social media accounts were being investigated over incitement to racial hatred after they compared the teenager to a baboon and used a picture of bananas.

The women’s equality minister, Marlene Schiappa, offered her support to the student.

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“The racist hatred of fascists has no place in the French republic,” she tweeted on Wednesday.

Bénédicte Baranger, the president of the committee in charge of choosing a girl for the role, said she was saddened by some of the reactions.

“This girl was chosen for who she is; an interesting person and a lively spirit,” Baranger said. “She responds to our four criteria: a resident of Orléans for 10 years, a student in an Orléans high school, and a Catholic who gives her time to others. She will deliver our French history to everyone, as have previous Joans before her.”

The mayor of Orléans, Olivier Carré, also defended the teenager.

“In 2018, as for 589 years, the people of Orléans will celebrate Joan of Arc played by a young woman who shows her courage, faith and vision,” he wrote on Twitter. “Mathilde has all these qualities.”

Outside school, Gamassou is a student of opera at the prestigious Orléans Conservatory and is learning to fence.

The end of the brutal six-month siege of Orléans was a turning point in the hundred years war between France and England and the first major French victory.

Over the course of the war, between 1337 and 1453, England lost nearly all its territories on the other side of the Channel.

Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake in 1431, is a heroine for many in France but is particularly venerated by the far right as a symbol of national resistance.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report