French investigators have opened an inquiry over alleged racism against French-Malian pop superstar Aya Nakamura following reports she might perform at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, prosecutors said on Friday, March 15.
The 28-year-old superstar is known worldwide for hits like “Djadja”, which has close to a billion video views on YouTube alone. The alleged racist abuse began after media reports said the singer had discussed the possibility of performing a song by 20th-century French music icon Edith Piaf at a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron last month, though neither party has confirmed it.
At a campaign rally on Sunday for the Reconquête! party, led by far-right pundit and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, Nakamura’s name drew boos from the crowd. A small extremist group, the Natives, hung a banner by the River Seine that read: “There’s no way Aya. This is Paris, not the Bamako market.”
The probe follows the filing of a complaint by the France-based International League against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA) on Wednesday, they said.
SOS Racism, another group battling discrimination, said on X that it had also filed an official complaint over “acts of incitement to discrimination and racist cyberbullying” against the artist. It said she had been “the victim of waves of racist hate driven by the far right.”
The Olympics organizing committee told Agence France-Presse on Monday that it had been “very shocked” by the backlash against the singer, and France’s sports minister, Amelie Oudea-Castera, also expressed her support on X.
Nakamura said Tuesday that said she was grateful. “Thanks for the support, especially to my community,” she posted on X. “I feel like I made you discover Edith Piaf and she has been reincarnated in me.”
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