Banksy needles France on refugees with mural blitz
PARIS: The mysterious British street artist Banksy appears to have taken aim at the French government’s crackdown on migrants in a series of new murals in Paris.
The world’s best known graffiti painter apparently “blitzed” the French capital over the last few days, leaving as many as six works on walls across the city.
None of the works were signed – as has been Banksy’s wont in recent years – but experts said that they look genuine.
The most political takes issue with France’s tough anti-migrant policy, with nearly 40 makeshift camps razed in Paris in the last three years and President Emmanuel Macron determined that the city does not become a magnet for refugees.
In the mural a young black girl sprays a pink wallpaper pattern over a swastika on a wall next to her sleeping bag and teddy bear in an attempt to make her patch of pavement more cosy.
The image is on a wall in northern Paris next to an official refugee shelter which was controversially closed in March despite protests from the city’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Since then around 2,000 migrants, including children and teenagers, have been sleeping rough along canals and under motorway bridges.
Banksy, a long-time supporter of the refugee cause, has not yet confirmed the works are his.
However, he has often travelled to make powerful political points with his art about everything from Brexit to the fate of the Palestinians.
In 2015, he painted a mural on the edge of the Calais “jungle” camp built by migrants trying to get to Britain, which has since been razed by the authorities.
The Son of a Migrant from Syria depicted Apple co-founder Steve Jobs – who was of Syrian descent – carrying a knapsack and an Apple computer. He sprayed another, his take on Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, on the wall of a house in the northern French port – a reference to the shipwrecked hopes of migrants trying to cross the English Channel.