The cover story of a French magazine headlined "Roma overdose" has sparked outrage after a summer simmering with tensions over the presence of the minority in France, reports The Daily Telegraph.
The ruling Socialist Party accused Right-wing weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles (Current Values) of inciting violence over its latest edition whose front page picture is a sign of a caravan with a red line through it.
"Handouts, crime, the things we don't have the right to talk about," read the subheadings.
The feature story reports on the "incivility" and "criminality" of some Roma – many from Bulgaria and Romania – in the Loire-Atlantique region. It also publishes the results of a new survey suggesting that 70 per cent of French people are worried about the presence of the Roma people in France.
The cover sparked a furious response on Twitter, while the Socialist Party slammed it as "outrageous, anti-republican and it incites xenophobic violence against a minority of the population."
"These sickening values that are conveyed have nothing to do with current sentiment, they are anti-republican," it said in a statement.
Read more of this report from The Daily Telegraph.