French anti-immigration activists staged a protest at the Cannes Film Festival, unfurling a banner saying “foreign rapists out”.
The two female demonstrators from Collectif Nemesis, a feminist identarian group for young French and Swiss women, made their way onto the red carpet on Friday as staff tried to cover up the message and tear down the banner.
Director Alice Cordier shared photos of the protest on X, and the group on Sunday posted a video clip of the event on social media showing activists with the same banner in front of the iconic Cannes road sign.
Évidemment la sécurité du @Festival_Cannes nous a très rapidement évacuées . On ne déroule pas le tapis rouge à tous les messages politiques 🤫 #foreignrapistsout #violeursetrangersdehors #festivaldecannes2024 #cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/YGZZmxIYIX
— Collectif Némésis (@Coll_Nemesis) May 24, 2024
“Activists from the Collectif Nemesis group invited themselves to the Cannes film festival demanding that rapists from other countries be expelled from Europe,” Ms Cordier wrote.
“We are launching a #MeTooImmigration movement because our voices count too!”
The group’s official X account wrote: “In this event where patriarchy and VSS [sexual and gender-based violence] are so often denounced, we wanted to call out the over-representation of foreigners in violence against women.”
It went on to list four demands – the explusion of foreign rapists, the application of the obligation to leave France, the use of ethnic crime statistics, and that the state protect women from the “misogyny specific to certain immigrant cultures”.
Aujourd’hui avec @anais_nemesis_ nous avons profité de l’événement #Cirqueetfanfares à #dole pour faire passer notre message : VIOLEURS ÉTRANGERS DEHORS
Jusqu’à ce que de courageux hommes viennent nous arracher VIOLEMMENT notre matériel. #violeursetrangersdehors @collnemesis pic.twitter.com/hPJXbwLAXY— Yona Faedda – Enfant De France (@yona_nms) May 19, 2024
The demonstration came just two weeks after two activists held a banner with the same slogan but in French, in Dole, eastern France.
A short video of the scene shows a man, later identified as a French Communist Party activist, violently tear down the banner.
In April one of the same activists, Yona Faedda, 19, was arrested in Besançon for a similar protest, and detained for 10 hours before being released. Her home was also raided and computer equipment seized.
Signs held at that demonstration read “foreign rapists out” “free us from immigration” and “46 women could have been spared if the OQTF [obligation to leave France] had been applied in 2023”.
A Collectif Nemesis spokesperson said at the time: “What justified such procedures? Our activists are treated as potential terrorists when their only wrong was to demand the application of the law.”
They also pointed out that the town’s mayor had pushed for Afghan refugees to be resettled there, and that one had gone on to rape a young woman.
The Cannes protest received an overwhelmingly positive reaction on X, with Ms Cordier’s posts attracting hundreds of comments.
But the corporate media, both in France and abroad, is yet to write a single article on the topic, although plenty of coverage has been given to Cate Blanchett’s dress in Palestinian colours, a nude pro-Ukraine protester, and other French feminist activists demonstrating about domestic violence.
Police data released in April shows that 77% of the solved rape cases in Paris in 2023 were committed by non-citizens, out of a foreign-born population of 20.3%.
Noticer News contacted Ms Cordier for comment.
