Mixed-race ‘Joan of Arc’ abused

A teenage girl of African and Polish origin chosen as this year’s Joan of Arc for Orleans’s annual celebration of the French icon has been attacked by far-right social media trolls.

News that Mathilde Edey Gamassou would star in the week-long event in April was met with angry posts on Twitter. “Next year, she will be in a burqa,” was the headline on anti-muslim site Résistance Républicaine.