Sabah Aib, elected Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais on Saturday, is targeted by racist messages because of her origins.
The Miss France competition has several times been accompanied or even disrupted by controversies. This time, it arrives early and targets a young 18-year-old woman, candidate for Miss France 2025. She denounced Tuesday evening a “wave of hatred” on social networks after the announcement of her election as Regional Miss .
Last Saturday at the Arena Stade Couvert in Liévin, Sabah Aib, a second year law student at the Faculty of Lille, was indeed elected Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais 2024. Originally from Besançon, she moved with his mother in Valenciennes at the age of 5. Of Algerian origin on her father’s side and Moroccan on her mother’s side, Sabah now lives in Lille with her boyfriend, an engineering school student.
The election of this Miss from a family of North African origin aroused the pride of the regional delegate of the Miss France Nord-Pas-de-Calais committee, Anne-Sophie Sevrette, who rejoiced in the columns of La Voix du Nord: “If the French open up, Sabah could be the first Miss France with North African origins. It has never happened, it would finally open minds. The message would be strong”. Eve Gilles, the former Miss Nord-Pas-de-Calais who became Miss France last year and whom Sabah dreams of succeeding, for her part showed that she believed in it on France 3: “This year, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Pas-de-Calais still has every chance of winning the title of Miss France.”
“My origins are part of my history, but…”
We do not yet know what the verdict of the big competition, organized on December 14, will be. But for Sabah Aib, the campaign is off to a difficult start. Since his coronation, has been the target of numerous hate messages on social networks due to his origins. Tuesday evening, she published a long message on her Instagram account to denounce this “wave of racist hatred” of which she is the victim and to point out certain obvious facts.
“My name is part of my identity and it has nothing to do with my nationality,” she wrote. “France is a multicultural country and having a name that comes from elsewhere does not change the fact that I am French. I was born in France just like my parents, we consider ourselves first and foremost French. My origins are part of my story, but they don’t define who I am.”
Already racist attacks on the sidelines of Miss France
According to her, her election proves that her region “is rich in diversity and values”, she is proud of it and intends to continue to wear her title “with pride, determination and respect for all”, without letting herself be overcome by hatred. “We are all equal, regardless of our name or our origins,” she insists.
The Miss France committee has been promoting greater diversity among its candidates for several years, in order to better represent today’s French society in all its richness and plurality. But this is not the first time that a Miss France candidate has been the target of racist remarks. Already in December 2020, April Benayoum, Miss Provence, suffered anti-Semitic attacks during the broadcast of the Miss France 2021 ceremony on TF1. An investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office and seven people were fined for public insults of a racist or religious nature. The prosecutor even requested a two-month suspended prison sentence.