The dangers of being mayor in France: malicious attacks on those who defend immigrants

Being mayor of a city in France and showing solidarity with refugees or asylum seekers or imposing good manners can become life threatening.

At dawn on March 22, Mayor Yannick Morez of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins in western France woke up and He found his house on fire.

“We could have died,” Morez wrote in his resignation letter, which he filed Tuesday. Neither he nor his family were injured. But the fire destroyed his house and two cars parked outside. The fire was a deliberate and targeted attack.

He had decided to open a center for refugees and asylum seekers in Saint Brevin Les Poins, as he had previously done for those coming from La Jungle to Calais. The refugees had not caused a single inconvenience.

But today the far right is growing in France. Mayor and former doctor Yannick Morez has decided to step down, leave the city with his family and find another place to live. He feels “completely abandoned by the state authorities”.

In an increasingly tense political climate, Attacks against mayors in France are multiplying. And some say they were left to their own devices.

The case is still under investigation. But Morez has already decided to seek out a new path, with plans to leave the city he has called home for 32 years by the end of June.

President Emmanuel Macron expressed his solidarity with the mayor in a tweet the day after his resignation, calling the attacks “shameful”. Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne is about to receive the mayor.

One doctor and 14,000 inhabitants

Morez, a former doctor, had been mayor of Saint-Brevin, which has 14,000 inhabitants, since 2017. In the months preceding the attack, the town had been rocked by right-wing protests against the plan to move a local reception center for asylum seekers, close to an elementary school.

Saint-Brevin has been hosting migrants since the ‘La Jungle’ camp near Calais on the north coast of France was dismantled in 2016.

“We’ve never had the slightest problem with migrants,” Morez told a reporter in an interview just days after the attack.

But protests organized by far-right groups have been added repeated threats directed at Morez, who had filed numerous complaints since January last year.

Amidst an increasingly tense political climate, growing support for right-wing ideologies and a distrust of institutions, French mayors are beginning to feel insecure.

Morez detailed the reasons for his resignation in a press release. After a long period of reflection, he has made the decision to step down. Not only did he cite “personal reasons” related to the arson attack, but also mentioning a “lack of support from the state”.

The former mayor says little or no safety measures have been put in place to protect him and his family, despite repeated calls for help.

“Their sense of abandonment can be understood in various ways,” explained Bruno Cautrès, a policy researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). While local officials have voiced their support, the mayor believes no concrete, visible steps have been taken to back him up.

“It is true that people all over the country just they discovered that the mayor was facing threats after his resignation,” Cautrès said.

The government on the defensive

The government disagrees. Secretary of State for Rural Affairs, Dominique Faure, insisted that the French state take concrete steps to support Morez.

“I Can’t Let This Go” he tweeted, before listing the ways the state has supported him. “We set up regular police checkpoints outside his home, searched his home so the authorities could intervene in the event of an incident, and provided security during protests against the asylum center.”

But according to a newspaper article Liberation, most safety measures were taken only after Morez’s house burned down.

After raising the alarm with local officials in January 2022 about the “daily intimidation” he experienced, Morez finally came to the attention of the Nantes public prosecutor in February 2023, requesting a personal security team to protect him and his wife. his family.

He received a response saying the authorities “still they were assessing the risks to see if a security team was needed. Less than two weeks later, Morez had resigned.

The establishment of reception centers for immigrants is part of a national government policy, overseen by the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior.

But Morez “felt left alone when problems arose related to the reception of asylum seekers”, explained Cautrès.

“He certainly would have liked the government to do a better job of explaining the policy and guiding him through the process,” Cautrès said. “They could have worked with him, to raise awareness of the problem at the local level and allay the concerns of the inhabitants,” he said.

The threat posed by opponents to the asylum center might as well have been noticed earlier.

After the repeated demonstrations in Saint-Brevin, organized by the far-right Reconquête (Reconquest) party, led by former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, “it is hard for me to imagine that the police I knew it that was a potential threat,” said Cautrès.

“Probably the mayor felt that the gendarmerie could have intervened before things degenerated in this way,” he concluded.

Other mayors threatened

Morez’s lack of support is a sentiment shared by many mayors in France, who are becoming frequent targets of abuse and attack.

Colas, mayor of Boussy Saint Antoine, in Essone, testified that the harassment has been going on for years.

“These are regular threats”, “These are intentions inspired by far-right theses,” he explained.

“I filed a complaint before the courts for death threats against me, my family and my son,” Mayor Colas continued.

The mayor said that threats always arrive by post, anonymously or in tags, such as at the end of February, when a sign threatening him with death was posted near the Hotel de Ville, home to his office as mayor.

In his opinionthe harassment goes back 8 years, after a police operation in his municipality”. An extreme right-wing militant, who did not live in the municipality, came to disturb the police action. I took it upon myself to evacuate him.”

“After that I was on the list of a list of a facho sphere, who decided to harass me,” explained the mayor.

But with his personal situation, the mayor of Boussy Saint Antoine tries to warn “a very serious situation” where several mayors live.

“At no time should local engagement make us pay the price for threats to their lives,” said Roland Colas.

In 2022, attacks against mayors increased by 15% in France, according to an assessment by the Association of French Mayors.

Anne Francoise Piedallu, mayor of Plougrescant, on the Côtes d’Armor in Brittany, went to court and complained that the brakes on her car they had been dissected.

“If I had gotten into my vehicle, I could have hit someone, injured or killed someone,” the mayor said. He experienced it “as a shock”.

“I felt like my brakes weren’t working and the man in the garage told me they had been cut. At that moment I understood the seriousness of what had happened,” he said. This happened on May 8th.

Stephane Beaudet, a Conservative, ran the town of Courcouronnes as mayor. “Between 2001 and 2003, my car was broken into and set on fire nine times,” says the president of the Ile de France mayors.

At least 1,293 have hung the republican engraving they bear. They are more exposed to violence than a deputy or a senator in the current social climate in France, of demonstrations, rejection of pension reforms, yellow vests, ultra-right, anarchists and the very high cost of living, which has made them one of the most expensive countries in the world, e infuriates the audience.

Social networks also contribute to this violence. “It only takes a few enthusiastic people to activate it,” explains Stéphane Beaudet.

The mayors denounce “insufficient protection”. In a report by the mayors’ association, “of the 229 questioned, 70 per cent admitted to having been physically or verbally attacked”.