The politician was fined 4,000 euros for calling the name Hapsatou Sy an “insult to France”.
Victory for Hapsatou Sy. Far-right politician Eric Zemmour has been found guilty of “racist insult” by the courts. He was thus ordered to pay a fine of 4,000 euros but also 3,000 euros in damages to Hapsatou Sy, as well as 2,000 euros in lawyers’ fees for having declared in 2018 that the first name Hapsatou was “an insult to France”. Me Olivier Pardo, the polemicist’s lawyer has already declared to appeal the decision.
It was on social networks that the entrepreneur welcomed her victory in the first instance. “It is a source of great pride to have stood firm for all these years and to have been able to have Eric Zemmour condemned for racist insults. My first name is my identity, my origins are my strength, and behind me, I hope that many other French people will feel liberated” she tweeted.
Why this condemnation?
Then columnist in 2018 of the show Sunday Earthlings presented by Thierry Ardisson, Eric Zemmour had broached on the set the theme of the integration of immigrants and the origin of first names. During a sequence that caused a stir at the time, the polemicist had launched to Hapsatou Sy that his “mother had been wrong” to have named her thus. The exchange did not stop there, the entrepreneur then asked her: “What would you like my name to be?“, to which Eric Zemmour had replied “Corinne, that would suit you very well”. Here is what the C8 channel had broadcast at the time, yet the heated exchange had continued.
The columnist’s make-up artist, then present in the dressing rooms, had filmed the scene uncensored by the channel. Hapsatou Sy, following the exchange, had told him that his words were “an insult to France”, to which Eric Zemmour had thrown him: “It’s your first name which is an insult to France”. Hapsatou Sy had therefore decided to file a complaint.
This Thursday, January 12, the Paris court therefore decided to sanction the president of “Reconquest!”. The court accepted “outrageous” remarks towards the victim “when they mean that his first name, part of his personality (…) would be the expression of a mark of disrespect, contempt towards France and would undermine his dignity”. Eric Zemmour has already been sentenced by the courts for similar facts. In 2022, he was the subject of 8 complaints of sexual assault and inappropriate behavior whose trials are due to take place in 2023.