French prosecutors said Monday they had launched a probe after a 21-year-old man died by suicide following what his family said was years of racist harassment.
His body was found Monday last week in Chatonnay, a village of around 2,000 people in southeastern France.
Rights groups have warned of a rise in racist rhetoric ahead of next year’s presidential election, which the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party hopes to win.
Public prosecutor Olivier Rabot said the victim had left two letters before his death.
Prosecutors have launched an investigation into allegations of “repeated death threats motivated by racial hatred, psychological harassment, incitement to suicide, hazing and racial abuse,” Rabot said.
The parents said their son had suffered racist abuse for several years by young people in the village, their lawyer Elise Rey-Jacquot told AFP.
She said that they abused him at village events, telling him: “You don’t belong here.”
The boy’s uncle told a French broadcaster that the victim’s mother is of Algerian origin and he had developed insecurities about his skin colour.
The family issued a public appeal for witnesses from a party in the neighbouring village of Saint-Jean-de-Bournay, which the young man attended shortly before his suicide.
“He came back extremely shaken because he had allegedly been subjected to insults,” Rey-Jacquot said.
“We recently received testimony indicating that he may have been stripped naked and humiliated there.”
In Chatonnay, several residents on Monday spoke of a troubling atmosphere, with Arnaud Heligon, 53, saying “older generations brought up their children with everyday racism”.
“It’s all around us,” added the logistics team leader.
Alex, a 23-year-old mixed-race woman who did not give her last name, said that her two sisters were harassed at school.
“People tell them, ‘your skin looks like poop.'”
Campaign group SOS Racisme said it had for months been “warning of a resurgence in racist abuse and harassment”.
It said the rise in “openly racist speech” was “the result of its normalisation in public debate”.
“As political leaders increasingly adopt the obsessions and talking points of the far right, and as the media turn racism into a constant subject of controversy, some people now feel entitled to insult, harass, and assault others.”
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