Paris’ protection minister on Sunday condemned the most recent installment of Marvel’s Black Panther franchise, which depicts French troops caught making an attempt to steal assets belonging to the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.
“I strongly condemn this false and deceptive representation of our armed forces,” Sebastien Lecornu wrote on Twitter, responding to a clip from the November film posted by a journalist.
The scene activates a bunch of certain French troopers being introduced right into a U.N. assembly, embarrassing Paris’ ambassador to the world physique, after they had been caught on a secret mission to a Wakandan base in Mali.
Journalist Jean Bexon, who posted the Black Panther clip, famous, “The evil French mercenaries operating in Mali are dressed like soldiers from Operation Barkhane,” a real-life army mission.
France is especially delicate to its picture in West Africa after army juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso demanded the departure of French troops, deployed to the Sahel area since 2013 to combat jihadists.
“I am thinking of and honoring the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali, at its request, in the face of Islamist terrorist groups,” Lecornu wrote.
The protection ministry instructed AFP that France was not calling for withdrawal or censorship of a murals.
But “no revisionism can be allowed about France’s recent actions in Mali: we intervened at the county’s own request to fight armed terrorist groups, far from the story told in the film, namely a French army coming to pillage natural resources,” the ministry added.
People near Lecornu mentioned he was “angry at seeing the film”, which was launched as Russia seems to be making progress in turning West African populations towards France and its army deployments.
Mali referred to as on Russia’s Wagner mercenary group to strengthen its military as soon as French troops left — though the junta continues to disclaim hiring the fighters — and there was hypothesis that Burkina might observe swimsuit.
Online, cartoons unfold by pro-Russian accounts and influencers have proven France sending skeletons and a large snake to “conquer all of Africa”, in movies analyzed this month by AFP Factcheck.
Armed white males in Wagner fight fatigues are seen coming to the rescue of troopers carrying the flags of Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
“We face a steamroller that plays with the perceptions of local people who are in existential difficulty” from battle and famine, a French army supply acknowledged earlier this month.
In November, President Emmanuel Macron burdened that at present “influence” is a “strategic priority”.
© 2023 AFP