France’s government spokesman is attacked in the election campaign just days before the crucial elections

PARIS (AP) — As France approaches its crucial parliamentary election on Sunday, several candidates have reported attacks during the campaign, including government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot.

France’s interior minister said on Thursday that 30,000 police officers will be deployed on election day, including 5,000 in the Paris region. Tensions are high as left-wing and moderate groups seek to prevent the nationalist Rassemblement National (Rassemblement National) from winning an absolute majority in parliament, which would be a first for France and a major historic shift.

Candidates complained of hate speech and physical violence in the short and polarizing election campaign.

Thevenot, a candidate for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance, said she was putting up election posters with a lawmaker and a party activist in Meudon, near Paris, on Wednesday evening when they were attacked by a group. Thevenot’s lawmaker and the party activist were taken to hospital.

“The symbolic violence of words was quickly replaced by physical violence,” she told reporters on Thursday as she returned to the campaign trail. “We are still a bit shocked… I remain mobilized.”

She said the motive for the attack was being investigated. The prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation into an armed gang attack on an officer. Four people, including three minors, were in custody, the prosecutor’s office said.

Politicians from all sides condemned this and other attacks on candidates from various parties.

Marie Dauchy, a candidate for the Rassemblement National in Savoy, said she was attacked at a food market during her campaign on Wednesday and announced her withdrawal from the race. Her party’s leader and three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on X that two men had “cowardly” attacked Dauchy.

Nicolas Conquer, a Republican candidate, said on social media that he was attacked on Tuesday while handing out campaign flyers in the Atlantic coast city of Cherbourg. He was accompanied by a minor when the incident occurred and reported it to police, he said.

In the Alps, 77-year-old local official Bernard Dupre was beaten as he put up election posters for former health minister Olivier Veran, Veran said on Thursday. French media showed pictures of Dupre’s bloody eye.

“Let us reject the climate of violence and hatred that is spreading here,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said on Thursday at X.

“This climate is deplorable,” Le Pen said in a television interview.

A few hours before she was targeted, Thevenot had told French broadcaster TF1 about her fears as a person of colour in a “complicated” political situation. Her parents come from the African island of Mauritius.

“I say this not only as a government spokesperson, but rather as the daughter of immigrants and the mother of mixed-race children,” she said, referring to repeated and intensified racist attacks. “They no longer do this anonymously, but with their faces uncovered and even with a certain pride.”

Many people have expressed concern that growing voter support for the fiercely anti-immigration Rassemblement National has led many people in the public to become more openly racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic.

A candidate campaigning for Macron’s camp in a Paris suburb was assigned private security guards by her party after she said she was the target of anti-Semitic abuse.

Anti-black leaflets were found in mailboxes in the Paris suburb of Chatou, shocking local residents. Activist group SOS Racisme filed a lawsuit for incitement to hatred, saying its offices across France had seen a rise in reports of racist comments and actions during the campaign.

Since the short campaign began, the government agency responsible for counting racist acts has not had any up-to-date data.

French daily Le Canard Enchaine reported that Fadila Khattabi, minister for people with disabilities and daughter of Algerian immigrants, burst into tears at a ministerial meeting at the Elysée Palace on Monday as she told a personal story. “Given my origins, I am afraid of racist remarks,” she said, according to the newspaper. “My son, a symbol of republican success, a child of immigrants who became a pharmacist, now wants to leave France for fear of a victory for the Rassemblement National.”

A group called “Antifascist Action Paris Suburbs” called for a protest rally in front of the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, on Sunday evening to oppose the far right. Le Pen condemned the call.

Macron unexpectedly called parliamentary elections for June 9 after his centrist coalition suffered a heavy defeat in the European Parliament elections against the Rassemblement National, plunging the country into a chaotic, sudden election campaign.

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Angela Charlton in Paris took part.

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Follow AP’s coverage of global elections at https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections/

Diane Jeantet, Associated Press