I strongly condemn this misleading and misleading representation of our Armed Forces.
I think and pay tribute to the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali at its request once morest Islamist terrorist groups. https://t.co/KpnFIcatPt
— Sebastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) February 12, 2023
The film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” by Ryan Coogler, released in France at the end of 2022, depicts French soldiers prisoners kneeling before the queen of Wakanda, a fictional kingdom, in an outfit similar to those of French soldiers deployed in Mali until last August. Also in the film, a French minister is summoned before the United Nations and arrested for the acts committed by her soldiers.
Sébastien Lecornu’s entourage emphasizes “the anger of the minister seeing the film”while France also regularly accuses Russia of waging an information war by manipulating public opinion on its action in the region.
RE (see): Russia – Africa: a video feeds the propaganda around the Wagner militia
The ministry admits the freedom of a “artistic work” of which France does not claim either the withdrawal or the censorship.
On the other hand, “there can be no revisionism regarding France’s recent action in Mali: we intervened at the country’s request to fight once morest armed terrorist groups far from the story told in the film, namely a French army which comes to plunder its natural resources”the statement added.
“It is the minister’s role to defend the results of operations Serval and Barkhane”deployed in 2013 and 2014 respectively at the request of Bamako to fight once morest jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
The double coup in Mali in 2020 and 2021 sealed the operation. The last French soldier left the country at the end of August. Since then, relations have been icy between Paris and Bamako, which, according to Paris, offered the services of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, which the junta denies.
The Minister’s reaction is also part of Paris’ desire to respond “to the narratives of our competitors” in Africa, we recognize at the ministry. A direct allusion to the deterioration of the image of France in public opinion in the Sahel, amplified in particular by Russian propaganda, in particular by the galaxy of media organs linked to the Wagner group.
(RE)read: In Africa, anti-France cartoons, in the service of Russian propaganda
The very latest National Strategic Review (RNS), presented by President Emmanuel Macron last November, thus erected among the “strategic functions” of defense the concept “d’influence” which includes the fight once morest false information for the purpose of destabilization.