The facade covered by swastikas. This is the spectacle discovered by the municipal cleaning service this Monday morning, at Cox, a well-known LGBT bar in the 4th arrondissement. "The town hall has been reactive since it had everything erased before we arrived on the scene ... and it's not worse," breathes Frédéric Hervé. For the operator of the premises, it is a first: “It happens to us to receive calls of insults and letters of threats, but one had never had swastikas ever. "
CCTV spoke
A first also for the Club Banana Café, whose executive assistant, Dimitri Morvan, says he is still as shocked: "The Banana is really an opening to tolerance, there, we really took it in the face " A few days earlier, on the night of Thursday to Friday, three individuals also tagged three swastikas on the front of this gay bar, emblematic of the 1st arrondissement of Paris. It was the employees who discovered the damage the next day. If the tags, covered with paint, have disappeared, the culprits have left traces: "We watched the video surveillance and we saw that they were three young men," says Dimitri Morvan. They arrived with their faces uncovered and then put on their hoods before running away again. "
"Symbolic violence"
Two shocking acts that Jean-Luc Romero, newly appointed to the post of assistant responsible for human rights, integration and the fight against discrimination, did not fail to denounce. "There is a similarity between the two acts which is extremely worrying and symbolic violence, both for Jewish people and for homosexuals, which is unacceptable," he asserts. The opportunity for the elected official to warn: "We are facing a minority which has radicalized and we cannot accept it because on a little weak minds, it can have influence". A conviction relayed by Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris: “These messages of hate and homophobia will never have a place in Paris. I want the perpetrators to be quickly identified and judged, ”she said on her Twitter account.
7 similar facts to Paris
The Banana Café has lodged a complaint with the police station of the 3rd arrondissement. A procedure that Stop Homophobia, accompanied by Michaël Bûcheron, LGBT referent in Paris, joins. And these prosecutions, for Terrence Katchadourian, president of the association, are absolutely necessary: "These tags, that concerns us all, homosexuals as Jews, that means all go to the stake ". Faced with these two acts, committed in less than a week's time, he does not hide his concern: “He's a serial tagger, it's a sequel. There will be a third, then a fourth ... It is fundamental to avoid this. " Since the beginning of 2020, the association has noted 16 similar degradation events, including 7 only in Paris. "Many of these tags were on LGBT centers, there were also some on the rainbow pedestrian crossings in the center of Paris or on private places ...".
Le Cox indicated, for its part, also want to file a complaint in the coming days. "We are in the process of viewing the videos of the surveillance cameras around", specifies Frédéric Hervé. A way for the operator not to be intimidated: "We were amazed when we discovered this, but we are not afraid! For its part, the Club Banana Café says it has since received hundreds of messages of support.
