French Action paid tribute to Joan of Arc, after the lifting of the ban by the Prefecture
Members of the royalist Action Française movement gather in front of the statue of Joan…
French Action paid tribute to Joan of Arc, after the lifting of the ban by the Prefecture
Members of the royalist Action Française movement gather in front of the statue of Joan of Arc, in Paris, on May 14, 2023. THOMAS SAMSON / AFP
They are a small handful of different small groups, from early morning, Sunday May 14, to have gathered around the golden statue of Joan of Arc, place des Pyramides, in the 1er district of Paris, for a tribute. The third age came in force, the sonotone on the alert and the drop in the nose, while the French Action (AF) gathered its battalions of young people on the Place de l’Opéra, a few hundred meters away, before this procession don’t join the statue, too.
The six far-right rallies planned for this weekend had been banned by the Prefecture of Police, at the request of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. But the symposium on Saturday and the demonstration on Sunday by the royalists of Action Française were finally authorized by the administrative court. However, there is some confusion around Joan of Arc about who has the right to be there.
A few meager troops of the National Union of Combatants, with its flags, the Banners 2000 ociation and its pious banners in homage to “Saint Therese of Lisieux”, “Our Lady of France”, and to Jeanne, of course, are present. The survivors of Place d’armes, a group of former soldiers came, including Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, its president, released from anonymity in April 2021 after the launch ofa “call from the generals”which threatened the regime with a “intervention of our active comrades” For “save our civilizational values”.
The demonstration of this small movement, the day before in Denfert-Rochereau (14e district), had been banned, the ociation had taken refuge in a café while denouncing this “unacceptable situation” and came in compensation to attend the homage of the Republic to Joan of Arc. Because there is an official tribute every year, with a representative of the prefect, another from Gérard Larcher, the president of the Senate, who laid a wreath, from Yaël Braun-Pivet, that of the National embly, and from Anne Hidago, the mayor of Paris, followed by a ringtone to the dead and a skinny Marseillaise a cappella.
“We are pestiferous”
The Prefecture tolerated the presence of those banned from the day before, and took great care to avoid shaking their hands, before gently evacuating them. “We are pestiferous”, grumbles Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernardac. The leaders of the ociations have however unearthed an email which authorized them to be there, the police courteously informed them that they were invited to the official ceremony, but that it was over. Disappointment of the ociation “for the XVe centenary of France »who had prepared several moving songs, such as Remember Joan (to a poem by Sainte-Thérèse, and to the music of the March by Robert Bruce, performed by Brother Henry).
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