A right-wing mayor in the south of France has caused a storm of protests after apparently suggesting that Roma people whose camps are on fire should be left to burn. In a recording obtained by Mediapart, Luc Jousse, the mayor of Roquebrune-sur-Argens near Saint-Tropez who is a member of the main opposition UMP party, is heard saying at a public meeting that the fire brigade had been called nine times to tackle fires at a local Roma camp.
In the recording, below, captured on a member of the public’s mobile phone, the mayor then adds: “Nine times, fires started which were then put out by the SDIS [editor's note, local fire department], with the last one started by [the Roma] themselves. You know what they do: they steal electric cables and then they burn them to recover the copper and they themselves start the fires in their own caravans. What a joke! It's almost a shame that the emergency services were called so early!” Immediately afterwards the mayor is heard saying: “I didn't say it, I didn't say it. No...the Roma, it's a nightmare, a nightmare.”
The comments, made at a meeting on November 12th to discuss the efforts of locals to help prevent bush fires, were immediately condemned by the leadership of his own party. The head of the UMP group of MPs at the National Assembly, Christian Jacob, told BFMTV that the remarks were “shocking” and “unacceptable”, and hinted that the mayor could face sanctions or even expulsion from the party, though he also urged: “Let's wait for all the facts.” The UMP, meanwhile, issued a statement saying that a party meeting on December 11th would decide on the “appropriate punishment” for Jousse.
The spokesman for the Socialist Party's MPs in the Assembly, Thierry Mandon, meanwhile said that there was “absolutely no excuse, no justification” for the mayor's comments. “This elected representative has sullied the tricolour sash [editor's note, a symbol of the state, worn by mayors] and he is no longer worthy to wear it,” the MP said in a statement. “He must resign immediately and his party the UMP must no longer accept within it men and comments which dishonour it.”
The mayor refused to talk to Mediapart about the recording. However Luc Jousse later told his local regional newspaper Var-Matin that he did not remember making the remark, but said in any case it was not the question of fires at Roma camps that worried him. “The court judgement expelling the last Roma people remaining in the commune was given to us two months ago now,” he said. “And the sous-prefecture [editor's note, in charge of law and order on behalf of the state] still hasn't enforced it. That's what makes me mad!”
The mayor also told news agency AFP that Mediapart was indulging in “political manipulation” against him and he was angered by the suggestion that he “wanted to see the Roma burn”, pointing out that it was he who had called the fire brigade to all nine fires. Then on BFMTV the mayor of Roquebrune-sur-Argens claimed that in fact he had been relaying the “infuriated comments” of “a member of the public who had said 'You called the emergency services too soon'”. Jousse added: “I had the misfortune to repeat this sentence which raised a smile.” He added that he was “sorry to have relayed this phrase”.
However this version of events was disputed by Gilbert Branchet, the head of a local protest group the Indignés de Roquebrune. He says he has heard the entire recording of nearly three hours of the public meeting, in which he says at no point did the mayor repeat comments made by the public. “No, that really comes from him, it was never a response to a question,” Branchet said of the mayor's Roma remarks.
Luc Jousse, who is seeking a third term in office in next year’s local elections, was comfortably elected in 2008 with 64.2% of the vote. However, the incumbent mayor is currently facing considerable opposition from groups of local residents, including Indignés de Roquebrune. The mayor is also the target of a preliminary investigation opened by the prosecutor Danielle Drouy-Ayral at nearby Draguignan in May 2013 into suspicions of misuse of public funds and illegal conflict of interest at the council. This followed a scathing report from the regional financial watchdog for local authorities the Chambre régionale des comptes de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur earlier the same month.
To add to the mayor's problems, the far-right Front national (FN), which did not field a candidate for mayor in the town's elections in 2008, has now targeted Roquebrune-sur-Argens in next year's poll. “Roquebrune-sur-Argens is one of the winnable towns in the [département of] Var, like Fréjus or Six-Fours-les-Plages,” says the FN's local party secretary Frédéric Boccaletti.
The comments by Luc Jousse follow other anti-Roma comments by mayors in recent months. At the end of July Gilles Bourdouleix, the mayor of Cholet in west France for the centrist party the UDI, said after 150 Roma caravans had arrived on a plot of land in his town: “Perhaps Hitler didn't kill enough.” He was forced to resign from his party. Then in September another UMP mayor Régis Cauche, from Croix in the north of the country, said that if one of his inhabitants “went beyond the point of no return” in their actions against a member of the Roma community, he would support them. He later clarified his comments, saying he meant that as a private citizen – not as mayor - he would support someone defending their rights as a property owner.
UPDATE: Later on Thursday December 5th the UMP federation for the Var département announced that Jousse has been suspended from the local party, pending the hearing on December 11th.
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English version by Michael Streeter