This December 16, the criminal court of Lyon (Rhône) convicted Mila O. of public insult due to origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion following the publication of a tweet in February 2024. She expressed her intention to appeal.
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Identity activist Mila O. was sentenced Tuesday in Lyon to a suspended fine of 2,000 euros for sending a racist tweet in February 2024, said her lawyer, who intends to appeal.
The influencer will also have to pay 1,000 euros to the Human Rights League (LDH), said Me Robinson Barbier, describing the decision as “defeat for freedom of expression”. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Me Marine Martens, welcomes a decision which “comes to confirm that Mrs. Mila O. is a delinquent”.
“He did a civic act by filing a complaint for the racist comments that were made”. At the end of the deliberations, the plaintiff’s lawyer shows her satisfaction with a court decision “which confirms that the comments were racist and should not have been made in a public space”.
“The facts are established on public racial insults”had estimated in his indictment the prosecutor of the 6th press chamber of the criminal court, before which Mila O. was tried, last October, for “insult due to origin”.
“I sincerely regret having offended certain people”she declared. Grateful to have been “clumsy”she had however claimed “total freedom of expression”.
“A huge proportion of North African families are consanguineous and many have deformed and quite ugly faces, and very small foreheads. Especially the weird migrants who attack us in the street every day”Mila wrote on the social network X, before deleting her message ten minutes after its broadcast.
Accompanied by her lawyer, the 22-year-old young woman expressed her desire to “appeal this decision: there is no question of me paying a single cent to an association such as the Human Rights League, which knows absolutely what it is doing and which aims to put pressure, financially, on people like me who express themselves on factual things, I remind you”.
Accompanied by her lawyer, Mila O. affirmed, on December 16, her intention to appeal. • © France tv
She does not express “no regrets for this tweet” which is, according to her, “factual”. The native of Isère, however, feels that she regrets “perhaps the form: for a question of image, because it was formulated in a not very serious way”.
Mila O. now has one month to appeal this court decision.
Mila O. appeared in the media landscape in 2020, the victim of continued harassment after her online criticism of Islam, which notably forced her to live under police protection. Several suspended prison sentences of up to four months under electronic bracelet have been handed down since 2021 against cyberstalkers who targeted him.
In recent years, Mila has become the muse of the far right: in 2024, she joined the identity collective Némésis, calling itself feminism and participated in the Reconquête! summer universities.
