Strong confidences. France 5 journalists Mohamed Bouhafsi and Karim Rissouli have been victims of racist messages in recent days, received on social networks or at their homes.
On Instagram, Mohamed Bouhafsi, journalist on the show C to you, revealed numerous private messages of a racist nature of which he was the victim. “‘His Arabs […] We don’t want Arab heads like you anymore, ‘soon it’ll be the end of France for bougnoules like you!'”, we can read. Messages to which the columnist soberly responded: “Can we go back to the old Instagram? Wasn’t it good?” For his part, Karim Rissouli, presenter of the programs C this evening et In society, also on France 5, also received racist insults, but this time at his home.
This Wednesday, June 26, Mohamed Bouhafsi returned to C to you on this particularly heavy climate and this racism of which he is now a victim on a daily basis. “This word did not exist during the 2022 presidential election which I had the chance to follow for C to you. I had never experienced that. I experienced this before, one message every 3-4 weeks. There, it’s 4 or 5 messages per day. It’s also unpleasant for those close to me, I’m thinking of my mother, my sister. We say to ourselves: ‘Why?'”the journalist lamented.
Mohamed Bouhafsi: “I am French, journalist, citizen, that’s all”
Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine then pointed out that it says “something about the climate” et “fears that we may have on the evening of July 8“. Mohamed Bouhafsi then took the floor again to provide an update. “I would like people to stop essentializing me based on my last name, my first name or my supposed origin or supposed religion. If someone said to me for example, ‘Mohamed, your subjects are rubbish’, that wouldn’t bother me.”. And then added: “But I’m tired of people telling me ‘You’re a jerk’, ‘you’re a Muslim’, ‘you’re a dirty Arab’. Who knows my life? Who knows in the evening when I come home what my values, my origins, my religion are.”
And to conclude: “I would like to be essentialized as a journalist, French, who has lived in France since the age of 3 weeks (…) That people stop bringing me back to this Rebeu, Muslim, Arab, Bicotte side. I’m a Frenchman, a journalist, a citizen, that’s all, and nothing else. It’s quite overwhelming to think that we fight every day to unite people and to do that every day. it’s not made for that and we don’t get up in the morning for that“.
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