The mayor of a French town at the center of a racially motivated murder earlier this month has received several death threats for speaking out about a section of her town’s population that refuses to integrate into French society.
Marie-Hélène Thoraval is the mayor of Romans-sur-Isère which was home to the youth gang, many of whom were of a migration background, that traveled to the nearby village of Crépol on Nov. 19 and vowed to “stab White people”.
They gatecrashed a winter ball in the village hall and wounded nine people, including 16-year-old Thomas who was stabbed to death.
Speaking to the Europe 1 radio station earlier this week, Thoraval lamented the fact that some within her community “refuse any form of citizenship and integration”.
She has since revealed that she received a flurry of death threats for her remarks.
In an interview with BFMTV on Thursday, the French mayor spoke to two anonymous calls made to the town hall switchboard on Wednesday morning “with a message that was more like intimidation, asking me if I had a Kalashnikov at home and if I had security guards”.
“It went up a notch in the afternoon when I received a private message on Instagram specifying that I was to be decapitated, that my skull would be juggled, and that all that would be done within a month,” she added.
“These are real death threats,” Thoraval told the broadcaster, revealing she had filed police complaints due to the nature of the messages.
“In these messages, I am described as a fascist. I imagine where that comes from,” she added.
Despite the intimidation, Thoraval expressed her desire to continue “saying out loud what I think quietly. That, I will continue.”
She further warned that “there was one before Thomas and there will be one after Thomas,” referencing the French teenager who lost his life in the racially motivated attack on Nov. 19.
Nine people were initially arrested for their involvement in the gang attack. Reports in the French media noted their use of Arabic slurs for White people as they stabbed several partygoers before being tracked down by police more than 400 kilometers away in Toulouse where it is thought they were attempting to flee the country.