French mayor launches 'migrants are coming' poster campaign

A far-right French mayor has launched a poster campaign warning that "migrants are coming," after the French government plans to send 40 people from the "jungle" camp in Calais to the southern French town of Béziers and to expand reception centers in the town.

The poster, which reads, "The state is imposing them on us: That's it, they are coming," was put in many parts of the town in Oct. 11. The French mayor responsible, Robert Ménard, also shared the anti-migrant poster on his Facebook page, saying, "We are informing the population." He also called for a referendum asking residents whether they want to welcome refugees.

The French government announced the redistribution of recently arrived refugees across the country on Sept. 5. Their arrival sparked protests in many French towns as they claimed their villages could become "lawless" like the Calais camp in northern France. After the French government announced its plans to close down the Calais Jungle camp and send 12,000 migrants to various towns across France, French mayors from the far-right Front National (FN) united against the possible flow of migrants into their towns, fearing of them becoming new "jungle" camps.

France was shaken by a scandal concerning ethnic and racial profiling of Muslims perpetrated by a French mayor in 2015. The far-right mayor of the town of Beziers, Robert Menard, in southern France, confessed that he kept files on the number of Muslim students in his town, Le Monde reported. Speaking on France 2, he claimed he had statistical information on the religious affiliation of students enrolled in schools in his town, noting that 64.6 percent of them were Muslims. Keeping personal information and files is prohibited by a 1978 law on data protection. The illegal act of filing information on Muslim students came under fire from French political leaders.