Paris (AFP)

Several political leaders denounced on Wednesday an attempt to "censor" History or "guilt" the day after the degradation of the statue of Colbert before the National Assembly, the author of which will be tried in mid-August.

The statue of the minister of Louis XIV, targeted for his role in the practice of slavery, had been covered Tuesday evening with red paint on the chest and legs, while a graffiti "Negrophobia of State" was inscribed with the same color on the base. She was cleaned overnight.

A video posted on Twitter by the "Antinegrophobia Brigade" shows the arrest of the author of the tag, which is justified: "What is prohibited is racism. This man (Colbert, editor's note) apology for negrophobia ".

Renowned for his economic and industrial voluntarism, Colbert (1619-1683), is also considered to be on the initiative of the Black Code promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685. The legislative text on slavery in the French colonies and makes in particular the slave a movable good without humanity property of his master.

The episode follows on from anti-racist protests around the world after the death of George Floyd, a black man, during a violent police arrest in the United States. Since then, monuments and statues linked to French colonial history or to the slave trade have been at the center of a memorial controversy.

"Revisiting History" or "wanting to censor it in what is sometimes paradoxical is absurd", reacted on Wednesday the President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand (LREM), questioned by AFP.

"In the life of a seventeenth-century public man, there are bound to be shadows and shadows," he added, saying that "it might not be a bad idea." to enrich these statues with a plaque, a panel which explains why this statue is there, the highlights of a character, the glorious facts as those which are less so ".

Government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye echoed the same idea in the Council of Ministers report.

"I condemn very firmly those who want to erase features of our history", "this negation of what has been the history of our country", she also added, calling on "historians (to ) explain with pedagogy what the facts were and in the context in which they took place ".

For the president of the national rally Marine Le Pen, "to judge history by the principles which are those of today just makes no sense" and "if we do that, we will knock everyone, the general de Gaulle first, Napoleon ".

"The immense silent majority" of the French "is beginning to have enough of this type of requirement, this type of recriminations" coming from "violent, excessive, brutal minorities", she added on LCI.

LR side, the sovereignist deputy Julien Aubert estimated on Twitter "purely dismaying" the degradation of the statue of this "great servant of the State and promoter of our industry".

"Let’s stop this permanent guilt which is really ridiculous", affirmed on Public Senat the deputy LR of the Alpes-Maritimes Éric Ciotti, for whom "we judge with values ​​which come from other countries, and we do not have the same history than the United States. "

The author of the tag will be tried on August 14 before the Paris Criminal Court for "inscription, sign or drawing made on a facade, a public thoroughfare or street furniture," said the Paris prosecutor's office.

© 2020 AFP