PARIS (Reuters) – French politician Stephane Claireaux, who is a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling La Republique En Marche party, said on Monday that he had been attacked over the weekend by protesters demonstrating against France’s COVID health pass.
The attack on Claireaux, which occurred on Sunday, comes amid public anger in France after Macron said he wanted to “piss off” unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting the COVID vaccine.
Claireaux is member of Parliament for the constituency of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, a French overseas territory in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
“I am obviously going to launch a legal complaint. Some people think the right decisions are not being made. We are all receiving death threats by mail, at some moment this has to stop,” Claireaux told France Info on Monday.
French Minister of Overseas Annick Girardin condemned the attack on Claireaux. Girardin’s Twitter account posted an image of the incident, which showed protesters hurling mud at Claireaux as he stood outside his house.
“The attack on Stephane Claireaux outside his own house during a demonstration against the health pass is totally unacceptable. The images are extremely shocking,” said Girardin.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Blandine Henault; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten)
