Two French churches and a town hall in the French department of Seine-et-Marne were vandalised with pink swastikas just days after 67 gravestones were also desecrated in the same manner.
The pink swastikas were found on churches in the commune of Echouboulains and Ecrennes on Monday morning. More swastikas, also in pink, were found at the town hall in Vaux-le-Pénil.
Mayor of Ecrennes Gilles Nestel commented on the vandalism, saying, “this is the first defacement that we experienced in the commune,” calling the incident “intolerable”, according to French newspaper Le Figaro.
Echouboulains mayor Mathias Vigier had a similar reaction, saying that his local government would aid investigators and provide CCTV footage to help identify suspects.
The acts of vandalism are similar to another incident in Fontainebleau last week where 67 headstones in a cemetery were spray-painted with pink swastikas along with the word “biobanana”. A day later, a nativity scene in Melun was vandalised with pink swastikas.
While the cases all appear to be connected, investigators have not established a formal link between them.
France has seen many incidents in recent years that have involved the desecration of cemeteries, including a bizarre episode in August in which an African migrant claimed responsibility for vandalising 63 graves in Lannemezan.
According to the migrant, originally from Cameroon, he and another man smashed up the graves to make a “pact with the devil” to help his music career.
A year earlier in Cognac, vandals smashed over 100 Christian graves and destroyed stone crosses, statues of angels, and statues of the Virgin Mary.
Anti-Christian attacks have become a problem in France under President Emmanuel Macron’s rule, with a 2019 report claiming that there are, on average, as many as three attacks against churches across the country every day.
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