Toufik Khiar has lost count of the number of times he has gone to the police station in recent days to report the defacement and removal of his campaign posters for France’s municipal elections, where he came fourth in the first round on Sunday.
The 43-year-old former economics and management professor decided to run for mayor of Kremlin-Bicetre, a town on the southeastern outskirts of Paris, under the Green Party banner. He had been an opposition city councillor there since 2020.
For him, there is no doubt that those who perpetrated these acts of vandalism are far-right supporters "upset to see a person of colour participating in elections", he told Middle East Eye after filing a complaint last week.
It was at the end of February that Khiar suffered the first wave of racist attacks. A friend sent him a photo of one of his posters defaced with hateful graffiti that left no room for ambiguity: "Dirty Arab. Go back home."
Stunned, the former elected official of Algerian origin initially thought it was a joke, before realising the truth. He is shocked and angry.
