French Interior Minister fined for racist remarks

PARIS - French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux has been fined 750 euro (620 pounds) after being found guilty of making a racist remark to a young man of Arab origin during an informal political gathering last year.

According to The Guardian, Hortefeux was captured on video joking with party activists while having his photograph taken alongside another party member of Arab origins.

In the video, taken last September, a woman says: “Amine is a Catholic. He eats pork and drinks alcohol.”

“Ah, well that won’t do at all. He doesn’t fit the prototype at all,” Hortefeux is then heard saying to much laughter.

Another voice in the crowd says, “He is one of us … he is our little Arab.”

Hortefeux then replies, “We always need one. It’s when there are lots of them that there are problems.”

The minister has consistently denied he was being racist and says his remarks concerned the number of photographs that were being taken of him with people from his own region in France.

The court ruling said his comment “is incontestably offensive, if not contemptuous, for the people concerned,” adding that the minister’s body language shows he “did not want to be heard by others beyond this circle of friends.” (ANI)