“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is “false and misleading”, France’s defense minister has said
France’s defense minister has called “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” a superhero movie from Marvel Studios, “false and misleading” in how it seems to show French soldiers in Africa.
In a tweet sent out Sunday about a movie that came out in France and the U.S. in November, Minister Sebastien Lecornu “strongly condemned” the similarities between a fictional group of bad mercenaries and members of the French armed forces.
The plot of the movie is about a made-up African country called Wakanda and how Western countries want to take control of made-up metal resources on the continent.
A scene from the movie that the minister shared on Twitter shows a group of soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs and uniforms that look a lot like those worn by French troops in the Sahel region of Africa being brought before the United Nations in Geneva. In the scene from the movie, mercenaries are caught by Wakandans after they attacked a Mali outpost.
Je condamne fermement cette représentation mensongère et trompeuse de nos forces Armées.
Je pense et rends hommage aux 58 soldats francais qui sont morts en défendant le Mali à sa demande face aux groupes terroristes islamistes. https://t.co/KpnFIcatPt
— Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) on February 12, 2023
Lecornu said, “I’m thinking about and honoring the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali against Islamist terrorist groups at Mali’s request.”
France feels strongly about the issue because it just finished pulling out of Mali after nine years of fighting Islamic extremists with regional troops. Since Mali’s transitional government let Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group set up camp on its land, tensions have also grown between Mali, its African neighbors, and Western countries over the past year.
France just said that it will pull its troops out of Burkina Faso this month, which is what the military leaders of the West African country asked for.
About 3,000 French soldiers are still stationed in the Sahel area, with most of them in Niger and Chad.
