"Every word of racist hate carries with it the promise of a crime."
Sisters, brothers, comrades, fellow citizens,
We are gathered here, not to weep in silence, but to shout our anger and proclaim our determination.
Because Hichem Miraoui is dead.
Because Hichem Miraoui was murdered because he was an Arab, because he had a Muslim-sounding first name, because he lived, worked and smiled in a country where some still believe that skin color or faith condemns you.
The killer wasn't crazy. He was not isolated. He was the product of an ideology, of a climate: one of racist hatred and the trivialization of the extreme right.
For months, public "debates" have been serving up the same obsessions:
- Insecurity is the immigrant;
- Fraud is Arabic;
- The enemy within is the Muslim.
All repeated, amplified, integrated. And never punished.
This neighbor, who shot Hichem at point-blank range and wounded two Kurdish asylum seekers from Turkey, is an avowed admirer of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and a fanatical relay of the speeches of Bardella, Zemmour and the whole fascist pack that is gangrenous in this country.
And we say: NO.
No to indifference.
No to forgetting.
No to impunity.
For Hichem is not alone. He joins a too-long litany of the dead, the forgotten, the sacrificed on the altar of a France fantasized by the far right:
- Ibrahim Ali, 17, shot in the back in 1995 in Marseille by Front National militants (poster-posters);
- Brahim Bouarram, thrown into the Seine on May 1st by far-right demonstrators;
- Djamel Benjaballah, stalked and run over by a neo-Nazi in Dunkirk in August 2024 - an execution in broad daylight!
- Aboubakar Cissé, stabbed to death in a mosque in April 2025, because he was praying and disturbing a racist armed with his hatred.
More than 380 people, immigrants or children of immigrants, have been murdered since the 1970s in France, victims of racism or security delirium.
20 at least are Tunisians.
And always the same excuses. The same silences. The same injustice.
And what is the Republic doing in the meantime?
It ignites the fires of hatred.
Every morning, every evening, on our TV sets, in the radio microphones, in the editorial forums.
"Journalists", "experts", ministers, MPs spew out their contempt for Muslims, their fear of neighborhoods, their fantasy of the enemy within.
And when our children are outraged, when they march for Gaza or shout "Freedom", they are calledanti-Semites. When they denounce injustice, they are accused of "communitarianism".
When they die, they are insulted even after their death.
When they live, they are rejected.
And meanwhile, what is the justice system doing?
- It does not apply the law against racism.
- It protects the powerful, the haters, the warmongers.
- It allows fascist militias, neo-Nazi leagues and Zemmourian networks to flourish.
But let's be clear:
We won't wait for the next victim. We won't wait for hate to become the norm. We are here. And we're going to fight.
Today we call :
- An end to the impunity of racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic discourse in the public arena, from TV shows to the halls of the French National Assembly and certain media outlets.
- Firm enforcement of the law against racism and anti-Semitism, including against media and political figures.
- A national plan to combat systemic racism in the police, schools and administration.
- Fundamental reform of the institutions that turn a blind eye to, and sometimes collaborate with, far-right ideas.
- Promoting the values of fraternity, tolerance and human dignity in schools and the media.
And we don't forget, no, we don't forget that Hichem comes from a country, Tunisia, where the highest authority of the State, Kaïs Saïed, also blew on the embers of hatred in February 2023, calling for a "purge" against blacks and sub-Saharan migrants, triggering aggressions, arrests, deaths and deportations.
Hatred circulates. Hate goes global.
And it is together, from one side of the Mediterranean to the other, that we must stand in its way.
Comrades, friends
Let this gathering be a starting point, not an end point.
Let it serve to build a broad, popular, mixed, determined and clear-sighted anti-fascist front.
Let it carry the voice of all bereaved families, of all neglected neighborhoods, of all humiliated peoples.
"Fascism is not the extreme right that arrives.
- Albert Camus, so lucidly.
📣 For Hichem.
📣 For Brahim.
📣 For Djamel.
📣 For our children.
📣 For our humanity.
We're here.
And we won't give in.
Racism kills. The far right kills. Inaction kills.
We are alive. And we demand action.
