President Macron reacts to fan attack on child with cancer

France has reacted in horror to the attack by football fans on an eight-year-old boy with cancer and his family at the match between AC Ajaccio and Olympique Marseille. Kenzo, who is suffering from a brain tumour, and his parents all wore Olympique Marseille shirts on Saturday, which is why they were attacked by the Ajaccio fans at the stadium of the island’s capital of Corsica.

“Kenzo was pushed on an iron bar and they asked his father for his OM jersey. Then they punched him twice,” said Kenzo’s mother, as reported by the newspaper “Le Parisien”. “Don’t you see that it’s a sick child, a child that has cancer, leave it alone,” she called out to the attackers.

Macron: “Completely unacceptable attack”

The Corsican club strongly condemned the attack on little Kenzo. “These individuals in no way represent the values ​​of our club and our island,” it said in a statement. “Even the most extreme stupidity cannot excuse this behavior.”

After France’s Minister of Sport, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, called Kenzo and described the incident as “unacceptable violence that should be punished”, President Emmanuel Macron also spoke up. He called on Monday for “strong” and “clearer” sanctions against the perpetrators who attacked the little boy.

This “completely unacceptable” attack shows a growing trend of violence in sports stadiums “that we cannot get used to,” Macron denounced in a statement to the press during a trip to the monastic island of Mont Saint-Michel.

asz/hf (dpa, SID, EFE)