French Mayor Faces €1,800 Fine After Bringing Up ‘Problem’ of Muslim Schoolchildren

Pupils attend a Muslim school in Genevilliers in the suburbs of Paris. 

© Michel Setboun / Corbis / Gettyimages.ru

A far-right French mayor has appeared in court on charges of inciting hatred for his remarks last year, in which he said that there were too many Muslim children at the schools in his city, and implied that the ethnic French population is being “replaced.”

Robert Menard, mayor of the southern town of Béziers and an ally of Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration and Eurosceptic National Front party, appeared before Paris Criminal Court on Wednesday for the launch of his trial for incitement of hatred, in relation to two statements he made in 2016.

“In a class in the city center of in my town, 91 percent of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a problem,” he said in an interview on the French news channel LCI in September.

“There are limits to tolerance.”

Beziers, France

In the same month on the first day of school, Menard also wrote a tweet, saying: “These classes represent the most striking proof of the #GreatReplacement in progress. Just look at old class photos.” The Great Replacement is a phrase coined by French writer Renaud Camus, referring to a hypothetical replacement of the ethnic French population in France with immigrants from the former colonies. Camus was convicted and fined for inciting hatred in 2014.

If found guilty, Menard faces a €1,800 fine to be payable within 60 days, and will face a prison term if he refuses to pay up.

In support of the request for punishment, the prosecutor argued that by allowing such a remark the mayor portrayed children as a “burden for the national community.”

“He reduced them to their religion, regardless of whether they are French nationals or do not practice this religion,” the prosecutor said, as cited by AFP.

Meanwhile, Menard has not appeared to show any remorse at the trial, saying that with his controversial rhetoric on the highly debatable topic he did not want to “stigmatize” anybody but aimed to paint a real picture of what is going on in the French schools.

“I do not find it desirable for children and their mothers that there are ghetto schools. And to find solutions, it is necessary to say what it is,” Menard said.

Defending his Camus reference, Menard said that although he did not support the writer’s penchant for conspiracy theories, his observations struck him as “pragmatic” and “telling.”

“It is true that 25 years ago our schools were not composed of the same children as today," Menard said.

When asked by the court why he had picked exactly Camus to write a book about Béziers, Menard argued that his choice has nothing to do with the debate.

Mayor Menard

“He also writes tourist guides,” the mayor retorted.

The lawyer for Menard demanded the court clear him of all charges unless it wants to be known for pronouncing a “death penalty for the freedom of thought.”

This is not the only scandal that has engulfed the controversial mayor. In May 2015, Menard, a former socialist and co-founder of Reporters Without Borders, was accused of racism after he “counted” the names of schoolchildren to determine how many of them were Muslim, coming up with a figure of 64.6 percent. Keeping statistics on people’s race or religion is not permitted in France.

God forbid anyone should know the extent of the #GreatReplacement. Most of the French establishment seems determined to 'politically correct' their way into becoming an Islamic state. France, as we knew it, is becoming increasingly difficult to find and will largely disappear in urban areas by the middle of this century.

In September 2015, Menard again caused outrage after a video emerged of him going around Syrian refugees’ houses telling them, “You are not welcome in this town.”

He was actually going to migrants who were squatting in otherwise empty apartments.

Robert Menard: France's Strongest Far-Right Mayor

Mayoral outlier, or a prototype of mayors to come?

By Lucy Ash
BBC News, Beziers

Robert Menard  Mayor of Beziers, France AFP

A mayor in the south of France has been accused of turning his city into a laboratory of the far right. But what is driving Robert Menard and why is he becoming the most controversial mayor in the country?

Robert Menard used to be a journalist, a socialist and the outspoken founder of an international press group, Reporters Without Borders. But 18 months ago he caused shockwaves by winning the town hall of Beziers, a city of more than 71,000, on a far-right ticket.

Although he is not Front National himself he came to power with the party's support, and this is now the biggest extreme-right stronghold in France. There are plenty of opponents trying to tear the stronghold down though.

The evening I attend a council meeting, protesters jump up and unfurl posters. "Menard, Beziers doesn't belong to you!" reads one. "We Welcome Refugees!" says another. Many more people are trying to squeeze their way through the heavy wooden doors into the chamber, but policemen hold them back.

Unable to bring the meeting to order, the mayor calls a vote on excluding the media and members of the public. It passes and I am obliged to leave, but fierce arguments are continuing in the courtyard outside.

One of the reasons for the anger is the latest issue of the municipal magazine, which carries on its front cover a news agency photo of refugees in Macedonia and a train with a sign saying "Beziers 3,865km". Another sign in the train window says, "Free schools, accommodation, and benefits for all" and the headline screams "They Are Coming!"

Municipal magazine of Beziers AFP

Agence France-Presse sued the mayor and the town hall in Beziers for misusing its photograph, and accused the mayor of scaremongering. Outside the council meeting copies of the magazine have been torn to shreds and strewn all over the floor like confetti.

When I next catch up with Robert Menard in a flower market on Beziers' main street he seems unperturbed. "We didn't get a chance to chat the other night", he laughs. "It was all a bit rock 'n roll wasn't it?"

Just before World War One Beziers grew "fabulously rich" thanks to the surrounding vineyards, he says, because they proved resistant to a disease that ruined the grape harvest elsewhere.

But Beziers is now one of the poorest cities in the country - one third of the population lives below the poverty line - and Menard has vowed to return it to its former glory.

A lot of his efforts have focused on petty crime and immigration.

He has doubled the number of municipal police, and issued them earlier this year with semi-automatic pistols - even though their main concerns are minor offences and traffic violations, and they leave serious crimes and investigations to the police nationale.

At the same time, the town was plastered with giant posters of handguns boasting "From now on police officers have a new friend". "A police force which is armed gets respect," Menard tells me.

"A few years ago we had non-stop anti-social behaviour," says a passer-by clutching a briefcase. "There were fights, people taking drugs on those benches. And for years no-one did anything. Since M. Menard has come, all that's disappeared, and the tourists have come back."

Menard is also responsible for a Singapore-style ban on spitting and a curfew on children in the streets at night. But some accuse him of "social cleansing" and say his initiatives target the poor.

Beziers

And there has been ban on satellite dishes, and hanging out washing in the town centre. "This is the south of France!" says Sofia, a young web designer. "What does he expect people to do with wet clothes? Not everyone can afford a tumble dryer."

Menard's tough line on immigration is illustrated not only by the "They are coming!" headline but also by a now notorious video.

It shows Menard marching into an apartment block in one of Beziers' most deprived neighbourhoods, La Deveze. He has a blunt message for some newly arrived Syrian families (squatting) there - they're not welcome in his town.

La Deveze

At first sight the video looks like a spoof. The diminutive mayor is wearing his red, white and blue sash, flanked by burly police in bulletproof vests. There is also a bespectacled translator who speaks a strangulated English reminiscent of the TV comedy Monty Python.

But Menard is not joking. He berates a dazed-looking young Syrian man in a yellow T-shirt for breaking into the flat and "stealing the water and electricity".

"If you don't leave, the police will make you," Menard tells the man, his wife and a small child before moving on to other flats where seven other Syrian families are squatting.

Ultimately the mayor's attempt to expel the refugees was blocked, as evictions must be ordered by a court. What's more the rent-controlled flats aren't under his jurisdiction. And he said the Syrian children wouldn't be allowed into local schools - if this happened it would be a violation of French law.

The video went viral in France. Some approved while others were appalled and accused him of heartlessness - an accusation he rejects. He says his twinning of Beziers with the largely Christian community of Maaloula near Damascus proves he is not against helping Syrians.

"I liked what you did in la Deveze," one stallholder told Menard as he and I walked through the flower market. "I watched it four times!"

At the same block of flats, a few weeks after the video was filmed, I meet Hakim, the first man who opened the door in the video. He tells me he was bewildered as well as frightened.

Hakim

"I told him I have children - where are we supposed to go?" he says.

Karim Zenouti, the vice-president of the Beziers mosque, says the flats occupied by the Syrians have been empty for several years.

"We know that the mayor is trying to seduce his electorate, the Front National supporters," he says. "And what are the Frontistes doing? They are spreading fear."

Of course they are, and well they should be. There's not enough fear in France for its headlong rush into cultural suicide.

Menard portrays himself as a straight-talker, fighting what he sees as a hypocritical political establishment. His sense of being an outsider may come from his roots in a pied-noir family - the name given to European settlers who once lived in North Africa.

He was nine in 1962 when Algeria became a sovereign state and the family had to leave for France.
Jean Michel du Plaa, who heads the socialist group in Beziers, argues that Menard has moved even further to the right than the Front National and its leader.

"Marine Le Pen tried to detoxify the Front National," he says "but Robert Menard on the contrary is very comfortable with the extreme of the extreme right."

Beziers has become a political laboratory, he says, and citizens feel "like guinea pigs or lab rats".
Some complain Menard is publicity mad and only cares about le buzz or making headlines. They now call him "the mayor of Buzziers".

Others say there's method in his madness and that his in-your-face, far-right policies may help to make the Front National look moderate on issues like security and immigration. And that just might boost Marine Le Pen's chances in her 2017 bid for the French Presidency.

That's asking a lot of one small city mayor.