Muslim graves desecrated in French WW1 cemetery

The gravestones of about 59 Muslim soldiers have been daubed with Nazi slogans and swastikas in a WWI cemetery in northeastern France.

The official prosecutors’ office said none of the Muslim graves in the Notre- Dame de Lorette cemetery were destroyed.

According to Reuters, the cemetery is one of France’s largest World War One military cemeteries and was built on the site of a battlefield where many French and German troops died between October 1914 and October 1915.

During World War One, France mobilized more than 600,000 colonial subjects, including many Muslims from Algeria and Tunisia, of whom 78,000 died in the war. About 1.2 million French soldiers were also killed.

France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin vowed to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice, while President Jacque Chirac denounced the desecration as an “unspeakable act that scars the conscience.”

"This desecration is all the more shocking because it affects the graves of fighters who gave their lives for France," President Chirac said.

Rival presidential candidates Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy also denounced the vandalism.

SOS Racism, a rights group, blamed the graves’ desecration on comments made in the presidential election campaign, without pointing to any particular candidate.

"The increase in the xenophobic and stigmatizing comments throughout this presidential election campaign is responsible for racist individuals taking action," it said in a statement.

France hosts Europe’s largest Muslim community, with more than 5 million Muslims living there, making up 8% of the country’s population.

-- AJP and Agencies