France’s Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu took a jab at Disney’s latest “Black Panther” movie, accusing the filmmakers of a “false and misleading representation” of French troops.
The plot of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” involves Western countries, particularly France, attempting to steal the resources of a fictional high-tech African country. In one scene in the film, captured mercenaries working on French instructions are brought before the United Nations after attacking a Wakandan outpost in Mali seeking to plunder mineral resources.
Lecornu was responding to a journalist who pointed out that the film’s fictional mercenaries were dressed in the uniforms of the actual French forces of the Barkhane mission in Mali, where Paris’ troops fought Islamic extremists at the request of Mali’s government from 2013 until their withdrawal last August.
“I firmly denounce this misleading and deceptive representation of our Armed Forces,” Lecornu tweeted. “I think about and pay tribute to the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali at its request against Islamist terrorist groups.”
Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last February, France announced the end of a nine-year military operation in Mali, where its troops were sent by former President François Hollande to curb the expansion of terrorist groups in the region.
Though the French soldiers were initially sent at Mali’s request, support for the operation later faded — notably, according to Paris, because of the presence of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, fueling anti-French sentiment in the country.
Less than three weeks before France announced the end of its military operation, the country’s ruling junta expelled Paris’ ambassador to Bamako, and thousands of anti-French protesters gathered in the capital, with some burning cardboard effigies of French President Emmanuel Macron, while other demonstrators were seen waving Russian flags.
