“Death penalty for pedos”, “we will have your skin”… Five people were sentenced Thursday June 13, 2024, in Paris, to suspended prison sentences of two to seven months for having threatened death or violence against the author of comic strip Bastien Vivès, reports theAFP. The five defendants, three men and two women aged 21 to 31, will also have to each pay €500 to €1,000 to the designer, for his moral damage, plus €500 for his lawyer’s fees, ordered the Criminal Court. They appeared for messages posted on social networks, most of them in December 2022.
The author – who was present at the hearing, without speaking – was the subject of heated controversy at the time: several of his works were accused of promoting pedophilia. The controversy and threats received by the author led the Angoulême international comics festival to cancel the exhibition which was to be dedicated to him there.
Most have not read his works
For the representative of the prosecution, these online threats are all the more intolerable as they can encourage other Internet users to ” taking action “. “If you consider that Bastien Vivès’ publications are questionable, you have the right to say so, but not to threaten him with death! », she exclaimed to the attention of the defendants. Most, however, admitted at the bar that they had not really read the works in question.
Read also: Why is the exhibition on the work of Bastien Vivès in Angoulême creating controversy?
“I was blinded by things I read on the internet, it’s stupid”said one, who had sent the designer an image of Kalashnikov bullets, with the words in English “cure for pedophilia”. “I followed a movement. I didn’t know his comics at all.”recognized another, who had written “death penalty for pedos”.
