French principal’s resignation over veil death threats sparks uproar

March 27, 2024

From AFP via France 24

The headmaster at a high school and college in eastern Paris quit after receiving death threats online following an altercation with a student, officials told AFP on Tuesday.

In late February, he had asked three students to remove their headscarves on school premises, but one of them refused and an altercation ensued, according to prosecutors. He later received death threats online.

According to a school letter sent to teachers, pupils and parents on Tuesday, the principal stood down for “security reasons”, while education officials said he had taken “early retirement”.

“It’s a disgrace,” Bruno Retailleau, the head of the right-wing Republicans faction in the Senate upper house, said on X (former Twitter) on Wednesday.

Marion Marechal, the granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and a popular far-right politician herself, spoke on Sud Radio of a “defeat of the state” in the face of “the Islamist gangrene”.

A 26-year-old man has been arrested for making death threats against the principal on the internet. He is due to stand trial in April.

The newspaper Le Monde named the school as the Lycée Maurice-Ravel in Paris. Earlier this month 100 other school head teachers gathered outside the Sorbonne in Paris, to show their support for their colleague.

According to Liberation (first paragraph only then the paywall hits) the other teachers will not talk about it because they are afraid of the students.