PARIS — Paris’ protection minister on Sunday condemned the newest installment of Marvel’s Black Panther franchise, which depicts French troops caught making an attempt to steal assets belonging to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.
“I strongly condemn this false and deceptive representation of our armed forces,” Sebastien Lecornu wrote on Twitter, responding to a clip from the November film posted by a journalist.
The scene activates a bunch of sure French troopers being introduced right into a UN assembly, embarrassing Paris’ ambassador to the world physique, after they have been caught on a secret mission to a Wakandan base in Mali.
Journalist Jean Bexon, who posted the Black Panther clip, famous, “The evil French mercenaries operating in Mali are dressed like soldiers from Operation Barkhane,” a real-life army mission.
France is especially delicate to its picture in West Africa after army juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso demanded the departure of French troops, deployed to the Sahel area since 2013 to combat jihadists.
“I am thinking of and honoring the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali, at its request, in the face of Islamist terrorist groups,” Lecornu wrote.
The protection ministry informed AFP that France was not calling for withdrawal or censorship of a murals.
But “no revisionism can be allowed about France’s recent actions in Mali: we intervened at the county’s own request to fight armed terrorist groups, far from the story told in the film, namely a French army coming to pillage natural resources,” the ministry added.
People near Lecornu stated he was “angry at seeing the film,” which was launched as Russia seems to be making progress in turning West African populations towards France and its army deployments.
Mali known as on Russia’s Wagner mercenary group to bolster its military as soon as French troops left—though the junta continues to disclaim hiring the fighters—and there was hypothesis that Burkina could comply with go well with.
Online, cartoons unfold by pro-Russian accounts and influencers have proven France sending skeletons and a large snake to “conquer all of Africa,” in movies analyzed this month by AFP Factcheck.
Armed white males in Wagner fight fatigues are seen coming to the rescue of troopers carrying the flags of Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
“We face a steamroller that plays with the perceptions of local people who are in existential difficulty” from warfare and famine, a French army supply acknowledged earlier this month.
In November, President Emmanuel Macron pressured that as we speak “influence” is a “strategic priority.” — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
