2023-07-10 20:03:49
The Nice prosecutor’s office sees it as a “public provocation to commit a crime or an offence”. Thursday July 6, between two pieces of her concert at the Nuits Guitars festival, in Beaulieu-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes), Izïa Higelin indulged in a long tirade featuring a lynching of Emmanuel Macron.
In a video released on the site et the TikTok account of the cultural media InOut Côte d’Azur, we hear the artist, on a background of guitar chords, state about the President: “He said to himself there, what would be good, I think that what the people wants, what the people want, is to have me hung 20 meters above the ground like a giant human piñata, and that we are all present here with huge bats with nails at the end like in [Orange mécanique]. And there we’d bring him down, but with all the grace and kindness that the southern people have, right above you, and we’d all have our bats with our little nails, and in a bonfire , of living flesh and blood, we would put him on the ground, but nicely, you see…” The article in InOut Côte d’Azur specifies that the digression “started with a sexual game between “Brigitte“ and “Manu“ ( “What a rascal, that one”)”. This Monday, July 10, the singer, interviewed by Ouest-France, affirmed that she “did not incite violence or hatred” and regretted that her remarks were “misinterpreted and decontextualized”.
Consequences on its programming
Questioned by CheckNews, in particular on the basis of the investigation and the comments justifying its opening, the public prosecutor of Nice, Xavier Bonhomme, is content to indicate that it is currently continuing under the authority of his prosecution. On Saturday, he specified that this judicial investigation had been entrusted to “the territorial brigade of the gendarmerie of Beaulieu-sur-Mer and the research brigade”. And added that it did not follow up on a complaint, the prosecutor being able to seize when facts seem to him to concern a penal offense. From Friday, Nice Matin indicated that spectators had gone “to warn the police”. Alongside the legal consequences, Izïa Higelin’s monologue has already had the first consequences on its programming. The city of Marcq-en-Barœul (North) canceled the arrival of the singer, when she was to perform there during a free concert on July 14.
The qualification of “public provocation to commit a crime or an offence” retained by the Nice prosecutor’s office corresponds to an offense punishable by the law of July 29, 1881 on the freedom of the press, which relates more generally to freedom of expression. In this case, reference should be made to articles 23 and 24 of the law of 1881. It shows that provocations can take the form either of “speeches, cries or threats made in public places or meetings”, or of “writings, printed matter, drawings, engravings, paintings, emblems, images or any other media of the writing, word or image sold or distributed, offered for sale or exhibited in public places or meetings, either by placards or posters exposed to public view, or by any means of communication to the public by electronic”. The text does not establish any difference between direct communication to the public and recourse to the media. On the other hand, the Court of Cassation regularly reminds that the provocateur must have had the will to make the remarks made public.
“Reinforced freedom regime for artists”
“If the provocation has been followed by effect”, its author can be prosecuted for complicity and punished according to the crime or misdemeanor committed. But the mere fact of inciting the commission of an offense can be sanctioned, even in the absence of acting out. This is particularly the case when the author of the provocation calls for an attack on “life” or “the integrity of the person”. He then faces a five-year prison sentence and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Izïa Higelin, in the context of an artistic performance, is she concerned by these qualifications? The question is debated, even among specialists. Thus, for Roland Lienhardt, a lawyer practicing in the field of artistic creation, “the constituent elements of this offense could be met in this case”. In the eyes of the council, an artist “is no longer protected by the freedom of artistic creation” when he “crosses the border of fiction, when he says ‘I think’ and thereby indicates that he located in the real world.
Alexis Fournol, a lawyer whose clientele is made up of artists and art market professionals, believes that “all of the remarks made by the artist constitute the description of a graphic offence, namely a physical assault or even murder. But Izïa Higelin never calls for such a scene. And this is the interest of his remarks which seem to me to be more fictional than any real desire to commit an offense or a crime against the President of the Republic. He adds that the European Court of Human Rights recently recalled “that a politician must show greater tolerance towards criticism, especially when the latter takes the form of satire”. Alexis Fournol speaks of a “reinforced system of freedom for artists”: “Jurisprudence confers on artists an increased freedom of expression because their creative activity participates in the exchange of ideas and opinions essential to a democratic society such as ours.”
“As do all artists, poets”
In the same vein, Dalila Madjid, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property law, considers that a tirade pronounced on stage – without any element allowing to know if the artist intends to provoke a passage to the act, “a will to create in the public a state of mind conducive to carrying out a willful attack on the life or physical integrity of another” – “cannot be sufficient to characterize the intentional element of public provocation to commit crimes and misdemeanors”.
Gérard Haas, lawyer in digital law and specialist in intellectual property, also considers that “we can ask ourselves the question of whether it is a message of provocation or rather an artistic creation”. The lawyer takes the side of “the expression of a criticism which is of the order of metaphor, image, fiction, delirium”, “as do all artists, poets”. He describes Izïa Higelin’s words as “clumsy”, but judges that she “does not go there stronger than in certain caricatures”.
Other stage reviews
Moreover, several more or less similar precedents exist. While some have been the subject of controversy, they have not necessarily been prosecuted. Thus, on the occasion of the outcry caused by the content of the tirade of the daughter of Jacques Higelin, another recent scenic criticism of the Head of State resurfaced. During the concert of the group Shaka Ponk during the Solidays festival, at the end of May, a visual animation which represented Emmanuel Macron as a puppeteer, pulling the strings of individuals going to throw themselves into an abyss, and resuming for some people elements of anti-Semitic caricature, had been projected.
This case is reminiscent of yet another, triggered by the “Macron motherfucker” and “Get out Macron!” that the musician Marc Rebillet had chanted at the Touquet Music Beach Festival in August 2022 – before doing it again a few days later during a concert at the Olympia. The electro artist, who for his part was not the subject of any investigation, had thus exposed himself to a sanction on the basis of section 33 of the law of 1881. Which punishes with a fine of 12,000 euros the public insult committed “towards the President of the Republic”.
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