A political statement disrupted the weekend celebrations marking the one-year anniversary of the Paris Olympics.
A massive anti-Israel message, reading “Stop the Genocide in Gaza,” was projected onto the Olympic hot air balloon, orchestrated by Amnesty International to protest Israel’s alleged actions in the Gaza Strip and express solidarity with the Palestinian population.
Amnesty International rented a room at the Regina Hotel, near the Luxembourg Gardens, to beam the message, along with their logo, onto the Olympic flame. The hot air balloon, a popular feature during the Games, will float over Paris each summer until the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
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The projection, executed using a laser from the rooftop of a building on Paris’s central Rue de Rivoli, appeared shortly after 10:30 p.m., captivating onlookers and official guests in attendance. Large police forces swiftly arrived on the scene, surrounding the hotel amid applause from many in the crowd, joined by thousands who recorded the event, according to a witness.
Amnesty International activists were detained within an hour. Notably, the feminist group Femen previously used a nearby building to hang banners and stage topless protests against gatherings of the far-right National Rally party.
Amnesty International France President Anne Savinel-Barras issued a statement to the media, saying that the world cannot remain indifferent to the dehumanization unfolding in Gaza. She stressed that international law serves as their sole compass and called for an immediate end to what the organization describes as “genocide” in the region.
Amnesty reiterated accusations that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, which they claim constitutes a war crime under international law. They urged France, which recently stepped up to recognize a Palestinian state, to move beyond words to concrete actions to halt the violence in Gaza.