Far-Right Mayor Snubs French Anti-Slavery Day Ceremony
A newly elected mayor from France’s far-right National Front refused to hold an anti-slavery ceremony in his town on Saturday, overshadowing annual events marking the abolition of human trafficking.
France holds a day of remembrance of slavery and its abolition on May 10, the date when it became the first major Western country to officially recognise the slave trade as a crime against humanity.
Several hundred protesters demonstrated in the rain and held their own commemoration in Viller-Cotterets, a small town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Paris, after Mayor Franck Briffaut refused to hold the annual ceremony there.
The town is the final resting place of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who rose to be one of revolutionary France’s highest ranking military officers though born a slave in Haiti.
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