Opening of an inquiry after Eric Zemmour's remarks on immigration and Islam

The speech did not go unnoticed. The parquet floor of Paris announced Tuesday, October 1, the opening of an investigation for "public insults" and "public provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence", after remarks by polemicist Eric Zemmour targeting immigration and Islam.

The investigations were entrusted to the Human Crime Suppression Brigade (BRDP). In this speech, pronounced Saturday, September 28 during the "Convention of the Right", Éric Zemmour attacked, among others, immigrants "colonizers" and "Islamization of the street".

The investigation was opened for "public insults because of origin or belonging or non-membership of a particular ethnicity, nation, race or religion" and "public provocation to discrimination, hatred or violence, towards a person or group of persons because of their origin or belonging to or not belonging to a particular ethnic group, nation, race or religion ".

>> To read also: Hundreds of referrals of the CSA after the diffusion of the speech of Éric Zemmour on LCI

Sentenced for provocation to religious hatred

The polemicist delivered this speech, broadcast live by the news channel LCI, during the "Convention of the right" organized in Paris by the far-right MP Marion Maréchal and his relatives.

The one who was recently convicted for provoking religious hatred also quoted the writer Renaud Camus, theoretician of the "great replacement" of the white and Christian population by a Muslim immigrant population, and joked about the clothes of the spokesman of the Sibeth Ndiaye government, "summit of the French distinction".

Asked by the AFP, the Superior council of audio-visual (CSA) had indicated to have received "close to 400" referrals related to this diffusion.

An "error of appreciation"

These statements sparked a public outcry, even Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, condemning speeches "nauseating and deeply contrary to the idea that we have of France and the Republic."

LCI, for its part, acknowledged an "error of appreciation". "The broadcast of speech in the state was not the appropriate format for our channel," said Sunday the direction of the TF1 group in a statement. "There was a contradiction and deconstruction of Eric Zemmour's words, but it was after the fact"

With AFP