In France, an investigation was launched into “threats” and “incitement to hatred” after the cancellation of a singer’s concert, the flag-bearer of the LGBT+ community claimed, which should have taken place on Wednesday at a former church in the east of the country.
Bilal Hassani, France’s former Eurovision representative, had given up performing on Wednesday in a church in Metz that had been desecrated for 500 years and turned into a performance hall, under pressure from local Catholic and traditionalist movements who advocate “profanation” during the denounced Holy Week.
The threats against the young 23-year-old singer, an LGBT icon in France, prompted the Metz prosecutor’s office to open a judicial investigation against X, which also includes acts of “incitement to hatred” and “commissioning of a felony or misdemeanor”. because of sexual orientation.
In this case, the Stop Homophobia and Mousse associations have also filed a lawsuit against the Association of Traditionalist Catholics Civitas for discrimination based on gender identity.
After the concert’s cancellation, Metz’s right-wing mayor, François Grosdidier, regretted that the producer of Bilal Hassani’s tour, the multinational Live Nation, had given in to “a form of intellectual terrorism to the detriment of culture”.
Another concert recently made headlines in France. In June 2021, singer Eddy de Pretto, who came out as gay in 2017, was targeted by a massive cyberbullying campaign after he performed at the Saint-Eustache church in Paris and performed one of his songs in which he used the term ” sodomites”.
In December 2022, 11 people who had participated in this cyberbullying were sentenced in Paris to suspended prison terms of between three and six months.