On March 15, the Identitarian activist Damien Rieu published a video and some photos on X of a fresco located on the Route de Vienne, between the eighth arrondissement of Lyon and Vénissieux, on the perimeter wall of the Saint Jean de Dieu hospital. In his article, he points out that ‘all the representations of living beings in the fresco of the half-millennium’, i.e. the drawn figures, men and women, but also the animals, were painted over with blue and black colour. The ‘Islamists’ had therefore painted over them ‘in accordance with the Koran’s demands’, he explains.
According to LyonMag, this is not the first time the wall has been vandalised. The figures on the painted wall had already been removed under a new layer of paint, according to reports based on Google Street View.
‘We expect a firm and clear condemnation of this provocation from Grégory Doucet,’ reacted Agnès Marion, the national delegate of Identité Libertés, Marion Maréchal’s movement, on X. ‘No Lyonnais can accept this highly symbolic damage, which attacks the artistic and civilising values of the West in order to replace them with those of Sharia law,’ added the former RN candidate for the local elections in Lyon.
In contrast, Idir Boumertit, deputy for the 14th Rhône district of the La France insoumise party, considered that Damien Rieu’s remarks were ‘a scandalous misappropriation of an act of senseless vandalism for his anti-French ideology’. Although the MEP ‘condemns these criminal acts in the strongest terms’, he regretted that ‘enemies of the Republic instrumentalise every little event to gain easy fame against Muslims and Vénissieux’. ‘He concluded by saying: ‘This stupid act can in no way be justified in the Muslim religion.
🔴⚠️ À Vénissieux (69), les islamistes ont recouverts toutes les représentations vivantes de la fresque du demi-millénaire, conformément à l’exigence coranique.
— Damien Rieu (@DamienRieu) March 15, 2025
Mesurant 600m de long sur 300m2, elle fait partie de la tradition des murs peints et trompe l’œil lyonnais. Elle… pic.twitter.com/73ohIPPn6W
Rhône : une fresque recouverte de peinture par des islamistes ? – Valeurs actuelles