Over 300 complaints for ” death threat “ have been submitted by elected national representatives or “Which appear in the media”, said the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, Tuesday January 11. These are complaints registered since July and the entry into force of the health pass, then said the minister’s entourage to Agence France-Presse, adding that 60 elected officials had been threatened since the start of the campaign. year 2022.
Emmanuel Macron deplores “the intensification of violence”
“In this particular framework of antivax, there are a lot of complaints for threats », the minister informed on RTL. He felt that there were also threats « in the name of radical Islam » and « of all orders “. According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 1,186 elected officials were targeted in the first eleven months of 2021, including 162 parliamentarians and 605 mayors or deputies victims of physical attacks, an increase of 47% compared to 2020. 419 outrages (+ 30%) were also recorded.
The Minister of the Interior will be received Tuesday evening with the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, by the President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, to take stock of the number of cases identified and the judicial response provided. Traveling to Nice, Emmanuel Macron denounced an attack on Monday “Unacceptable » and lamented « intensification of violence » against the elect.
Questioned on this subject during questions to the government, Tuesday, January 4, the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, denounced “Unacceptable violence”, turned to “Depositaries of public authority, depositaries of universal suffrage”. He promised to punish these “Despicable acts”. “The recourse to violence is democracy, the republican pact that it comes to threaten”, continued the former mayor of Prades.
Several assaults recorded
Damien Abad, president of the Les Républicains (LR) group, also condemned, during a press conference, Monday, January 3, “All threats to deputies”. “There is no imperative mandate, everyone is free to vote”, he stressed to recall the voting freedom of parliamentarians. On Sunday January 9, the deputy for Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon Stéphane Claireaux (LRM) was attacked in front of his home by demonstrators opposed to the health pass. He announced that he would file a complaint.
On December 29, the personal garage of the deputy of Oise Pascal Bois (La République en Marche), in Chambly, was damaged by a fire while hostile inscriptions, possibly linked to the vaccination pass, were tagged on a wall of pregnant at her home.
Since this event, several other deputies have made public the threatening messages they had received, like the deputy for Seine-Maritime Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, spokesperson for the Horizons party, who was threatened with beheading in an email. Calling for a mobilization of political staff, she shared an excerpt from the message she posted on Twitter, claiming that“No threat will dictate[it] [s]a way of voting. You mustn’t let anything go, don’t get used to it ”.