French prez leads outrage against magazine that portrayed Black MP as slave

Pic/Twitter

French President Emmanuel Macron led nationwide outrage on Saturday after an ultra-conservative magazine portrayed a black lawmaker as a slave.The French presidency said Macron called Danielle Obono from the far-left party France Unbowed and "expressed his clear condemnation of any form of racism".

The magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, which caters to readers on the right and far right, showed Obono in chains with an iron collar on her neck to illustrate a seven-page imaginary story.

Prime Minister Jean Castex said it was a "revolting publication that calls for clear condemnation" and told Obono that she had the government's backing. Obono tweeted: "The extreme right - odious, stupid and cruel. In brief, like itself."

Macron, a centrist, who raised eyebrows when he gave an interview to Valeurs Actuelles last year and praised it as a "good magazine", has pledged to root out racism. But he also said France will not take down statues of figures linked to the colonial era or the slave trade, as has happened in other countries recently.

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