An investigation was opened in Paris after the complaint for discrimination filed by an association which criticizes the advertising agency of the Paris metro for not having agreed this fall to display a campaign in support of the Hamas hostages, the prosecution said on Tuesday. This preliminary investigation was entrusted to the Brigade for the Repression of Personal Delinquency (BRDP), specified the public prosecutor, requested by AFP.
When contacted, the Mediatransports agency indicated that it had been informed of the opening of this investigation but had no comment to make.
The attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas, perpetrated on October 7, 2023 in Israel, resulted in the death of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped, 91 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom are dead according to the Israeli army. According to the Hamas Ministry of Health – whose figures the UN considers reliable – the Israeli response has killed at least 47,107 people in the Gaza Strip.
Before the first anniversary of the massacres, the “Tous 7 Oct” association explained that it contacted the Mediatransports agency, the first French public transport agency, at the beginning of September 2024. She wanted to buy “around ten digital screens in order to broadcast the faces of the 101 remaining hostages” in the Paris metro, according to the complaint, filed in October and of which AFP became aware.
Except that Mediatransports refused to broadcast “the posters of 99 of the 101 hostages”, invoking the “principle of neutrality” and explaining that it could only display French hostages.
-However, the association recalls representing “indiscriminately all hostages held by Hamas”, regardless of nationality. And therefore accuses Mediatransport of discrimination. The “principle of neutrality” is “a smokescreen”, insists the association, represented by lawyers Robin Binsard and Rebecca Childs: the management, belonging “in no way” to the public service, is not required to do so, and above all Mediatransports has already “promoted certain militant messages”, such as an old campaign to alert about the more than 5,000 Colombian hostages then held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Requested by the AFP at the time of filing the complaint, Mediatransports notably justified its decision by “too great a risk of disturbing public order in the current national and international geopolitical context”. “This is why we indicated to the association that only visuals concerning French hostages could have been broadcast,” added the management, citing in particular a campaign by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), showing the French hostages.
According to the public prosecutor, the investigations launched must make it possible to “verify the interests to act and the regulations in force”.
