PARIS — Pressure grew on President Emmanuel Macron of France on Wednesday after the suspect in the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris last week was identified as an Algerian woman who had been ordered to leave the country, fueling right-wing accusations that Mr. Macron’s immigration policies were partly to blame.
The bruised body of the girl, identified by French authorities by her first name, Lola, was found on Friday in a plastic trunk in a courtyard of her apartment building in northeastern Paris. Her parents, superintendents for their building, had reported her missing after she failed to return from school. An autopsy later showed that Lola had died of asphyxiation, but her body had cuts in several places, including her face and neck.
National shock over the killing quickly led to political recriminations against Mr. Macron after the authorities identified the main suspect as a 24-year-old Algerian woman who had been in France illegally for the past three years. That she had been ordered to leave the country in August shifted the focus to France’s sluggish deportation process.
Mr. Macron met with the girl’s parents on Tuesday to express his condolences and support and opened a cabinet meeting on Wednesday by “honoring her memory,” a sign of how quickly the killing had morphed into a cause for national concern.
“Like all of you, we are obviously deeply moved by the horror and by the pain,” Olivier Véran, the government spokesman, said on Wednesday in the opening remarks to his weekly news conference, adding that like Lola’s parents, “we want answers, we want to punish, with the firmness required by the atrocities that were committed.”
The right-wing reaction has compounded the pressure for Mr. Macron, who is already facing strikes at oil refineries and depots that have left gas stations dry, protesters in the street over the increased cost of living — including soaring bread prices — and sustained opposition in Parliament, where his government is ramming through a budget bill without a vote.
The suspect in Lola’s killing, who has not been named, was quickly arrested, detained and charged with murder, rape of a minor, torture, acts of barbarity and concealment of a corpse. The authorities have offered no motive. Reports in the French news media said she had no fixed home and no income.
Alexandre Silva, a lawyer for the suspect, has declined to comment about the specifics of the case, but he told reporters after a hearing in Paris on Monday that his client was “entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
Right-wing and far-right politicians assailed the government for being too lax on immigration and accused it of being partly responsible for the killing because of its failure to effectively deport people who have been ordered to leave the country.
Marine Le Pen, the staunchly anti-immigrant far-right leader, was one of several politicians who berated the government in Parliament on Tuesday, calling Lola’s murder “one too many.”
“The suspect in this barbaric act should not have been on our territory,” she said in a tirade against Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister. “Too many crimes and offenses are committed by illegal immigrants that we have not been willing or able to send back home.”
Ms. Borne shot back that Ms. Le Pen lacked “decency,” as she and other ministers accused the right and the far-right of exploiting the murder for political benefit. Éric Dupond-Moretti, the French justice minister, told lawmakers that “using a 12-year-old kid’s coffin like you would a stepping stool” was “shameful.”
But Mr. Macron’s government has also been forced to acknowledge failings.
Over 62,000 people identified by the authorities as being in France illegally were ordered to leave the country in the first half of 2021, according to Interior ministry figures in a recent Senate report. But less than 6 percent of them actually did so, and since Mr. Macron’s election in 2017, that figure has never been higher than 15 percent.
“We must obviously do better,” Mr. Véran, the spokesman, said.
Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party is expected to hold a minute of silence for Lola in front of Parliament in Paris on Thursday. The smaller and even more virulently anti-immigrant party of Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit and former presidential candidate, is organizing a separate rally.
Mr. Zemmour has been particularly vocal about Lola’s murder on Twitter, where on Wednesday he asked “when will we defend our children” against attacks that he said were “always committed by the same people, always at the expense of the same people.”
Dominique Sopo, the president of SOS Racisme, an association that fights discrimination, told BFMTV on Wednesday that the far right was motivated by barely concealed racism that conflated all undocumented immigrants with criminals and ignored Lola’s family’s wishes to stay out of the political fray. “All of this is crassly indecent,” Mr. Sopo said.
Judging all undocumented immigrants on the basis of one person’s alleged crime was unfair, he added, noting that in 2018 an undocumented Malian migrant had been widely celebrated for saving a young boy suspended from a balcony in Paris.
Far right are desperate to get more of this kind of news which, fortunately, are rare. Poor them…
In a 100 years this mass immigration will be regarded as one of the major factors to the decline of the western world.
Everyone should be angry though. You shouldn’t just discount this kind of thing as an anomaly, doing that empowers the Far-right. Gas-lighting the public isn’t popular.
The far-right are such clowns, but it is not funny as it works on minds that receive dopamine from hateful thoughts.
It is sad, but we had deranged person doing such crimes all the times, you can find them since police record were invented. When France was all white, the criminals were all white, now that France aint all white, then such criminals are sometimes white, sometimes not.
For terrorist acts, I understand the link with immigration, but here there is none at all. The person is brown, far right goes apeshit because they have actually nothing reasonable and relevant to propose.
> Fuels Right-Wing Fury
Yes, because only those evil right-wingers are upset about uncontrolled immigration and its issues.
6 comments
PARIS — Pressure grew on President Emmanuel Macron of France on Wednesday after the suspect in the killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris last week was identified as an Algerian woman who had been ordered to leave the country, fueling right-wing accusations that Mr. Macron’s immigration policies were partly to blame.
The bruised body of the girl, identified by French authorities by her first name, Lola, was found on Friday in a plastic trunk in a courtyard of her apartment building in northeastern Paris. Her parents, superintendents for their building, had reported her missing after she failed to return from school. An autopsy later showed that Lola had died of asphyxiation, but her body had cuts in several places, including her face and neck.
National shock over the killing quickly led to political recriminations against Mr. Macron after the authorities identified the main suspect as a 24-year-old Algerian woman who had been in France illegally for the past three years. That she had been ordered to leave the country in August shifted the focus to France’s sluggish deportation process.
Mr. Macron met with the girl’s parents on Tuesday to express his condolences and support and opened a cabinet meeting on Wednesday by “honoring her memory,” a sign of how quickly the killing had morphed into a cause for national concern.
“Like all of you, we are obviously deeply moved by the horror and by the pain,” Olivier Véran, the government spokesman, said on Wednesday in the opening remarks to his weekly news conference, adding that like Lola’s parents, “we want answers, we want to punish, with the firmness required by the atrocities that were committed.”
The right-wing reaction has compounded the pressure for Mr. Macron, who is already facing strikes at oil refineries and depots that have left gas stations dry, protesters in the street over the increased cost of living — including soaring bread prices — and sustained opposition in Parliament, where his government is ramming through a budget bill without a vote.
The suspect in Lola’s killing, who has not been named, was quickly arrested, detained and charged with murder, rape of a minor, torture, acts of barbarity and concealment of a corpse. The authorities have offered no motive. Reports in the French news media said she had no fixed home and no income.
Alexandre Silva, a lawyer for the suspect, has declined to comment about the specifics of the case, but he told reporters after a hearing in Paris on Monday that his client was “entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
Right-wing and far-right politicians assailed the government for being too lax on immigration and accused it of being partly responsible for the killing because of its failure to effectively deport people who have been ordered to leave the country.
Marine Le Pen, the staunchly anti-immigrant far-right leader, was one of several politicians who berated the government in Parliament on Tuesday, calling Lola’s murder “one too many.”
“The suspect in this barbaric act should not have been on our territory,” she said in a tirade against Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister. “Too many crimes and offenses are committed by illegal immigrants that we have not been willing or able to send back home.”
Ms. Borne shot back that Ms. Le Pen lacked “decency,” as she and other ministers accused the right and the far-right of exploiting the murder for political benefit. Éric Dupond-Moretti, the French justice minister, told lawmakers that “using a 12-year-old kid’s coffin like you would a stepping stool” was “shameful.”
But Mr. Macron’s government has also been forced to acknowledge failings.
Over 62,000 people identified by the authorities as being in France illegally were ordered to leave the country in the first half of 2021, according to Interior ministry figures in a recent Senate report. But less than 6 percent of them actually did so, and since Mr. Macron’s election in 2017, that figure has never been higher than 15 percent.
“We must obviously do better,” Mr. Véran, the spokesman, said.
Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party is expected to hold a minute of silence for Lola in front of Parliament in Paris on Thursday. The smaller and even more virulently anti-immigrant party of Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit and former presidential candidate, is organizing a separate rally.
Mr. Zemmour has been particularly vocal about Lola’s murder on Twitter, where on Wednesday he asked “when will we defend our children” against attacks that he said were “always committed by the same people, always at the expense of the same people.”
Dominique Sopo, the president of SOS Racisme, an association that fights discrimination, told BFMTV on Wednesday that the far right was motivated by barely concealed racism that conflated all undocumented immigrants with criminals and ignored Lola’s family’s wishes to stay out of the political fray. “All of this is crassly indecent,” Mr. Sopo said.
Judging all undocumented immigrants on the basis of one person’s alleged crime was unfair, he added, noting that in 2018 an undocumented Malian migrant had been widely celebrated for saving a young boy suspended from a balcony in Paris.
Far right are desperate to get more of this kind of news which, fortunately, are rare. Poor them…
In a 100 years this mass immigration will be regarded as one of the major factors to the decline of the western world.
Everyone should be angry though. You shouldn’t just discount this kind of thing as an anomaly, doing that empowers the Far-right. Gas-lighting the public isn’t popular.
The far-right are such clowns, but it is not funny as it works on minds that receive dopamine from hateful thoughts.
It is sad, but we had deranged person doing such crimes all the times, you can find them since police record were invented. When France was all white, the criminals were all white, now that France aint all white, then such criminals are sometimes white, sometimes not.
For terrorist acts, I understand the link with immigration, but here there is none at all. The person is brown, far right goes apeshit because they have actually nothing reasonable and relevant to propose.
> Fuels Right-Wing Fury
Yes, because only those evil right-wingers are upset about uncontrolled immigration and its issues.
Way to politicize the death of a girl.