Paris.- A French city has annulled the contract for the concert that the singer Izïa had planned for next Thursday due to the controversy generated by a performance last week, in which she suggested a hypothetical lynching of President Emmanuel Macron.
The Marcq City Council in Baroeul (north) announced this Monday that the decision is due to “general interest reasons within its prerogatives of public power.”
“The artist issued scandalous statements, of great violence towards the President of the Republic,” the consistory explained in a statement, adding that the comments are “judicially reprehensible.”
“These words have deeply scandalized, especially taking into account the latest events we have experienced,” the note stressed, referring to the recent riots that affected suburbs and peripheral populations of the country’s main cities, with some 3,700 detainees.
The concert on Thursday night at Marcq en Baroeul (33,000 inhabitants), accompanied by fireworks, is one of many that take place throughout France on the occasion of the National Holiday, on July 14.
The Nice (south-east) prosecutor, Xavier Bonhomme, announced last week the opening of an investigation for “public provocation to commit a crime or offence” during the concert, which took place during a festival in Beaulieu sur Mer.
At the concert, and according to several videos posted on social networks, Izïa suggested hanging Macron in the air like “a giant human piñata” and then lowering him while “we would all have our bat with nails”.
“I already see the big headline of (the newspaper) Nice Mtin tomorrow: Izïa calls to kill Macron,” he said later ironically.
