Romanian Embassy in France doesn't consider French Railway discriminatory poster diplomatic incident

Romanian Embassy in France political councillor Maria Ibra does not consider the French Railway Society initiative to warn passengers through posters „to be very vigilant” towards Romanian citizens and take care of their luggage a diplomatic incident. The Romanian Embassy employee told France Soir reporters that the „FNRS have already apologised, but I don’t think we can ask for more. For the moment, the Government from Bucharest did not send instructions on the issue.

Human rights League vice-president Malik Salemkour feels otherwise: „This is a call to racial hate and the stigmatisation of a nationality”, he told France Soir. According to him, the French National Railway Society had „a healthy reaction”, staring an internal investigation and deciding to redraw the posters.

On February 1, writer Mouloud Akkouche, travelling by train in the Midi-Pyrenees region discovered the following poster:

„In the last weeks many concerns occurred addressing Romanians.

there have been many luggage thefts.

We ask you to be very vigilant.

Actually, everything that Romanians do must be reported to the FNRS security service dialling 19# or 01 40 23 19 99″.

At that point, the writer thought it was a joke, but he dialled the number and FNRS were at the other end of the line. Then he photographed the poster and sent it to Rue89.

Contacted by French journalists, FNRS communication service from Midi-Pyrenees admits that „this note existed”.