When Children Die

On June 8, France was shaken by news of a horrific attack in the town of Annecy, where a Syrian refugee, Abdelmasih H., stabbed six people with a knife—among them four children under the age of four. The attack on the children playing in a park by the lake evoked memories of October 14 last year, when a homeless man discovered the body of 12-year-old Lola in a courtyard of a building in Paris’s 19th arrondissement. Before her death, the girl had been tortured and raped. Surveillance footage quickly led to the suspect: 24-year-old Dahbia B., an Algerian national without legal status in France, who had already been issued a deportation order.

Just two days after the Annecy attack, another child was murdered on the other side of France, in the Breton village of Saint-Herbot. Eleven-year-old Solaine, British by heritage but born in France, was shot dead by an enraged neighbor—an elderly pensioner from Antwerp, Belgium—who also seriously wounded her father.

These tragic events are part of a very grim statistic. In France, up to 100 children under the age of 15 die violent deaths each year, most often due to domestic violence. Foreign nationals, such as those suspected in these three cases, represent a very small fraction of this morbid statistic. Yet, they attract significantly more attention—perhaps with the exception of the murder in Brittany. While the media extensively covered Solaine’s death, there were no mass demonstrations or political exploitation of the tragedy by far-right extremists. When the perpetrator is from Antwerp, nationality is treated as a coincidence. But if he’s from Syria or Algeria, it’s cited as evidence of an escalating threat—one that the notorious racist and former (and likely future) presidential candidate Éric Zemmour dubbed “Francocide.” According to Zemmour, migrants from the East kill the French simply for being French.

Before continuing, let me be very clear: I have no intention of ranking or relativizing these unfathomable crimes. Each attack is a grave criminal act. The victims—those who lost their lives and the young children in Annecy who, thankfully, survived—as well as their loved ones, are owed justice. The perpetrators must be prosecuted and punished for their horrific acts. A thorough investigation of all circumstances surrounding the crimes is also necessary—not only to understand what happened, but to do everything possible to prevent such tragedies in the future. Within that context, the nationality of the suspects and victims is one factor to consider. If it proves relevant, it must inform both the legal classification of the crime (as an aggravating circumstance) and any future prevention measures. But if no such link is found, highlighting nationality becomes nothing more than indecent political exploitation of a tragedy—a cynical attempt to gain politically from the murder of children.

Karine Bourdié, president of the French Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, called this shameful tactic “the instrumentalization of tragedy to light a fire at the entrance to a cemetery.” We have no shortage of similar hate-mongers here at home. When reality fails to supply enough scandal to fuel intolerance, they simply invent it. Remember the fabricated claim about 57 rapes supposedly committed by migrants in Ljubljana this year?

Following Lola’s death, extremists in France began organizing public protests under a single banner: migrants are to blame, and so is President Macron for his supposedly lax immigration policy. Under pressure, even the president began pointing fingers at undocumented foreigners. In a television interview shortly after Lola’s murder, Macron initially denied any link between crime rates and migration, but then claimed that in Paris—“due to geographic and administrative reasons”—nearly half of all crimes are committed by migrants without legal status or still awaiting it.

That statement drew criticism. First, Macron lumped together asylum seekers, undocumented foreigners, and legal residents like me and my family. He also confused arrest statistics with conviction data. Most importantly, experts pointed out that his insinuation of a link between rising migrant numbers and increasing crime was based on flimsy and misinterpreted data.

A different picture emerged from a study by the CEPII research institute, which operates under the office of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. It found no such correlation. The only exception—statistically minor—was a slight uptick in petty thefts. But even that disappears, according to the study, when migrants have access to the labor market. In other words, people steal when they’re hungry—and stop when they can earn a living.

Yet over half of the French public (and not only them) still associate their sense of insecurity with the supposed “threat” posed by migrants. The CEPII study attributes this to biased and sensationalist media coverage. Years ago, when the German regional paper Sächsische Zeitung began systematically reporting the nationality of crime suspects—including when they were German—fear of foreigners among readers dropped by 20%, and support for the far-right AfD declined by a similar margin.

Lola’s death in France further confirmed this dynamic. The controversial television host Cyril Hanouna—repeatedly sanctioned for hate speech—declared on air that Lola’s suspected killer should be imprisoned for life without trial or psychiatric evaluation. In his view, migrants simply don’t deserve the protections of the rule of law. His show set viewership records. Hatred sells.

The bigger problem with Macron’s statement was that he offered his poorly founded data in direct response to a question about the circumstances of Lola’s tragic death. In doing so—perhaps unintentionally—he lent credence to far-right conspiracies linking migration to the murder of a 12-year-old girl.

Causal links are complex, sensitive, and often abused. So far, investigations and expert opinions suggest that the suspects' actions weren’t linked to the victims' nationalities, nor part of any broader organized pattern, as claimed by far-right conspiracy theorists. None of the three crimes are being investigated as terrorism. Psychiatric experts found Dahbia B. mentally competent but suffering from serious and complex personality disorders and a complete lack of empathy. Abdelmasih H., the Annecy attacker, has been placed in psychiatric care. The murderer in Brittany—who extremists conveniently ignore—acted out of a long-standing neighborhood dispute and was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

To me, the causal link lies elsewhere: in the deliberate stoking of hatred toward migrants for political gain on one side, and increasingly indifferent or even inhumane policies toward people fleeing to Europe on the other. Under the pressure of public opinion inflamed by extremists—enabled by weak and opportunistic politicians—society increasingly denies help to those in need. Organizations that save lives are harassed. Coast guards ignore distress calls—if they’re not doing worse.

And it has consequences. After the latest tragic shipwreck off the Greek coast, hundreds are missing, including a hundred children. Their chances of survival are now virtually nil. “Who forced them onto that boat?” many will growl. But the real question—what and who paved their path to death—is legitimate. On one side: desperation, fear, and hope—often a result of crises in which the West has its share of responsibility. On the other: criminals who traffic in human lives. But also our own indifference and intolerance, which have helped turn the Mediterranean into a mass grave.

Fortunately, many people still care—people who manage to preserve their humanity even in the most difficult moments. When far-right parades marched through French streets after Lola’s death, her parents were not among them. From their home in northern France, where they had retreated to grieve in peace, they issued a statement through their lawyer demanding that protesters and politicians stop exploiting their daughter for political purposes. “Allow us to preserve the memory of our little girl with respect and dignity.”