A man lights his cigarette with the flame of the unknown soldier in Paris

“I immediately seize the public prosecutor of the Paris so that this individual is found. However, that exemplary sanctions are taken,” announced on X Patricia Mirallès, Minister Delegate responsible for memory and veterans.

“We do not shuffle the memory of France with impunity,” she said.

The burial of the unknown soldier has been installed under the Arc de Triomphe since November 11. Furthermore, 1920 in memory of soldiers who died for France during the First World War. An eternal flame has been burning there since 1923.

Filmed by a tourist

On the video. a man squatted near the flame of the unknown soldier, under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, to light a cigarette there and leaves quietly, under the gaze of a few tourists.

These images were relayed Tuesday by several accounts on X, in particular the union of internal security executives.

AFP was not able to immediately go man lights his cigarette flame up the exact origin of this video. which notably aroused indignation to the extreme right of the French political class.

The conservative daily Le Figaro claims that the scene was filmed by a Latvian tourist passing through Paris “Monday August. 4 shortly before 9:00 p.m., and posted for the first time on the Tiktok social network in stride, before being massively shared” on X.

Not just an incivility

“He did not seem to be alcoholic or under the influence of drugs. On the contrary. he was manifestly aware of what he was doing, and proud to have done it,” testified the one who presents herself as the author of the video in Le Figaro.

It is an “insult to our dead, our history, our nation”, deplored Patricia Mirallès.

“It is not a simple incivility: it is an outrage in memory of those who fell for France,” she added. “This flame does not heat a cigarette: man lights his cigarette flame it watches over the sacrifice of millions of our soldiers,” she said.