Rap clip shot in Oradour-sur-Glane: the singer apologizes, the mayor does not finally file a complaint

What could be the goal of such an approach, so connoted? This is the question everyone is asking. At the end of last week, Philippe Lacroix, the mayor of Oradour-Glane, announced, like the Association of the Families of Martyrs, his intention to file a complaint against a rapper named Arafat after being informed of the broadcast of images of his village appearing in the latter’s clip.

The singer has indeed chosen the village of Haute-Vienne where, on June 10, 1944, 642 villagers, men, women, children were massacred by the Nazis to illustrate his last piece. Certain sequences were thus shot in front of ruins inside the martyr village, without any request or authorization from the town hall.

Contacted by LCI this Monday, January 25, the mayor announces that the complaint, which was to be filed this Monday morning, will ultimately not be. “We received a letter in the night from Sunday to Monday an email to which this rapper from Limoges attached a letter”, he explains. “In this two-page letter, he apologizes and indicates that he regrets his gesture, a gesture whose consequences he had not measured. He states that he visited the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, that he wanted to make these images for his clip denouncing violence against women, and that he never wanted to hit anyone. ”

“I only saw six to seven seconds of this clip. You see a young man leaning against a wall in the village, seeming to express a feeling of pain. Not enough to judge a connection between the song and the context”, had explained the city council this weekend to the newspaper Le Populaire. “The martyr village is a place of memory, it is not a space to exercise one’s freedom of expression “, he reminded. “We owe it to ourselves, the municipality, the Drac, the memorial center to be ceaselessly vigilant and to react whenever the place, even if there is no malicious intention, is not respected as it must be “, had he declared to our colleagues. “A place that (…) symbolizes a form of republican continuity, with always great attention from governments and presidents, whatever their political tendency “.

Faced with scandalized reactions, the rapper keeps a low profile. After the controversy, the clip that was scheduled to arrive on social networks Sunday, January 24 in the evening was not broadcast. Likewise, the teaser which had been published at the end of the week has been withdrawn and is no longer visible.

Arafat did not respond to the media who contacted him in an attempt to understand his choice and his intentions. He had not justified either on the networks this Monday why he had chosen to withdraw the teaser.

Mayor Philippe Lacroix insists that if the rapper had shot shocking images or if he had not apologized, there would of course have been a complaint. “We keep the letter preciously. We believe this young man is sincere in his words. Anyone can make mistakes and have the right to a second chance “, concludes the chosen one.