Posted on 04/19/2007 3:20:36 PM PDT by Cornpone
ABLAIN SAINT NAZAIRE, France, April 19, 2007 (AFP) - The gravestones of 52 French Muslim soldiers have been daubed with Nazi slogans in a military cemetery in northeastern France, officials said Thursday.
Swastikas and slogans such as "Heil Hitler" were also painted Wednesday night on the ossuary of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, the biggest military graveyard in the country, said the local prosecutor.
President Jacques Chirac condemned the desecration, saying it was an "unspeakable act that scars the conscience, insults the memory and dishonours its authors."
"This desecration is all the more shocking as it affects the gravestones of combattants who gave their lives for France," said the president in a statement.
The cemetery, near the town of Arras, contains the graves of many thousands of soldiers who died in World War I.
A hundred gendarmes were scouring the site Thursday for clues about the perpetrators.
Rightwing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy also expressed his "profound indignation" over the attack and "condemned in the strongest terms these cowardly and abominable acts."
Sarkozy, the former interior minister and frontrunner in the vote on Sunday, called for the perpetrators to be arrested and "punished in an exemplary manner".
His Socialist rival Segolene Royal also condemned the attack, saying they "violate the memory and the respect owed to all those who participated in the battles of the First World War."
A man is currently being held in the northern city of Lille in connection with an attack on a Jewish cemetery earlier this month in which 51 tombstones were knocked over.
Mixed metaphor?
When the “youths” in France deface the graves of American soldiers at Normandy, the government and the media in France mouth hollow words of outrage behind not-so-concealed smirks. Of course, now they’re genuinely outraged.
This is proably a SWAG, but I think the same scum who plastered all those Jewish gravestones with swatstika are responsible for this.
Either the perps are dumbo French Nazis or it’s a Muslim inside job to claim racism. Both are plausible.
Louis XIII, when first faced with the French people wanting more independence stated, "The People are too stupid to rule themselves".
The French people have spent the past 400+ years proving him right.
Have our soldier’s graves in Normandy been defaced? I hope that’s not true.
No, it’s not true.
Wow, I should be appalled. However, cannot make myself. I am bad.
I vote for the latter.
The Normandy US cemetery is US territory and guarded by Americans.
But graves of British/Canadian WW1 soldiers have been defaced in France.
It’s been some years since the last incident, but it has happened every now and then. Britsh soldiers’ graves also get targeted.
Note these were still graves... of SOLDIERS. Muslim or not... it’s wrong and disgusting.
Can you imagine if it was true? FR would shut down from the traffic. The U.S./Allied war cemetaries are some of the most beautiful and inspiring cemetaries I’ve seen . . . on the level of Arlington, in my opinion.
Swastikas on Mohammadan tombstones ? Why that’s like crosses on Christian ones.
I had a FReeper try to explain to me just yesterday that these soldiers are unworthy of respect because they are French.
I already said I was bad. Now I am disgusting too.
Of course the media will view that as worse than when the Muslims put put people in graves (kill people).
Thanks for the responses, all. It’s “Lock and load” time if they do.
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