Robert Menard: French mayor questioned by police over claims files were kept on Muslim school children
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Version 0 of 1. A French mayor has been questioned by police after he claimed his administration used the names of school children in his town to determine how many were Muslim. Robert Ménard, mayor of Béziers in the south of France, was accused of racism after he alleged that Muslim pupils amounted to 64.6 per cent of the total, and that his administration had arrived at that figure by counting the names of children "class by class". Appearing on TV show Mots Croisés on 4 May, Ménard astonished viewers as he said the alleged figures reflected an "immigration problem" and that many parents of the children had "less than perfect" French. "These figures, they are those of my town, we had them. Sorry to say this, but the mayor has, class by class, the names of the children," Ménard said. "I know I don’t have the right to do it. Sorry to say this, but their first names tell us their religion. To say otherwise is to deny the evidence," he added. His comments sparked national outcry, with French prime minister Manuel Valls tweeting: "Shame on the Mayor of Beziers. The Republic makes NO distinction among its children." Honte au Maire de Béziers. La République ne fait AUCUNE distinction parmi ses enfants. MV Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said counting children by religion "sends us back to the darkest hours of our history", referring to French collaboration with the Nazis. Under France's secularism laws, the government does not keep or process statistics on the religion or ethnicity of its citizens. A comment piece in the French daily Le Monde noted that keeping such statistics is prohibited under French law under article 226-19 of the Penal Code, and is punishable by up to five years in prison or a 300,000 euro fine. Robert Menard leaves after being questioned at the Montpellier police station, southern France, on 6 May Public prosecutor Yvon Calvet announced in Montpellier on 6 Maythat he was opening a preliminary inquest concerning Menard's "categorizing of schoolchildren according to their religious beliefs" to create statistics. Ménard was elected with the support of Front National, France’s far-right anti-immigration party led by Marine Le Pen, who has emerged as a powerful political figure in the run up to the 2017 French presidential elections. The town hall of Béziers has denied that there were any lists of children’s names or that anyone had tried to identify which ones were Muslim. "The town of Béziers does not have and has never had files on children attending public schools in the city," it said in a statement on 5 May. "The only existing file to our knowledge identifying public school students in the city is that of National Education." Additional reporting by AP |