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PARIS: Irish rap group Kneecap, one of whose members faces a British terror charge for allegedly supporting Hezbollah, are to perform outside Paris on Sunday, despite objections from French Jewish groups and government officials.
The local authorities have also withdrawn their subsidies for the music festival where the trio will play — the annual Rock en Seine festival, held in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud — after organizers kept the controversial band on the program for their slot from 1630 GMT.
Strongly backing the Palestinian cause and bitterly criticizing Israel, the group from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, have turned concerts into political events.
Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged in England in May accused of displaying a flag of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah during a London concert in November.
They played a closely scrutinized concert at the Glastonbury Festival in June, where Chara declared: “Israel are war criminals.”
The group later missed playing at the Sziget Festival in Budapest after being barred from entering the country by the Hungarian authorities, a close ally of Israel.
Kneecap, who also focus on Irish republicanism, are controversial within the UK and Ireland, more than two-and-a-half-decades after the peace agreement that aimed to end the conflict over the status of Northern Ireland.
The group takes its name from the deliberate shooting of the limbs, known as “kneecapping,” carried out by Irish Republicans as punishment attacks during the decades of unrest.


“We are confident that the group will perform in the correct manner,” Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine, told AFP ahead of the festival.
The municipality of Saint-Cloud for the first time withdrew its 40,000-euro ($47,000) subsidy from Rock en Seine.
The wider Ile-de-France region that includes Paris also canceled its funding for the 2025 edition.
However, such moves do not jeopardize the viability of the festival, whose budget was between 16 million and 17 million euros this year.
The group has already played twice in France this summer — at the Eurockeennes festival in Belfort and the Cabaret Vert in Charleville-Mezieres — both times without incident.
But the concert comes against a background of concerns about alleged high levels of antisemitism in France in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel and the devastating assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that Israel launched in response.
“They are desecrating the memory of the 50 French victims of Hamas on October 7, as well as all the French victims of Hezbollah,” said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), calling for the concert to be canceled.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said vigilance would be required against “any comments of an antisemitic nature, apology for terrorism or incitement to hatred” at the event.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of two types of new antiair missiles, state media said Sunday, displaying his expanding military capabilities as the South Korean and US militaries carry out joint drills.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the test Saturday proved the missiles effective in countering aerial threats such as drones and cruise missiles, and that Kim assigned unspecified “important” tasks to defense scientists ahead of a major political conference expected early next year.
The report did not specify the missiles that were tested or where the event took place. It did not mention any remarks by Kim directed at Washington or Seoul.
The test coincided with new South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s trip to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, where they vowed to strengthen bilateral cooperation and their trilateral partnership with the United States to address common challenges, including North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Lee was to depart for Washington on Sunday for a summit with US President Donald Trump.
Kim’s government has repeatedly dismissed calls by Seoul and Washington to restart long-stalled negotiations aimed at winding down his nuclear weapons and missiles programs, as he continues to prioritize Russia as part of a foreign policy aimed at expanding ties with nations confronting the United States.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kim has sent thousands of troops and large shipments of weapons, including artillery and ballistic missiles, to help fuel President Vladimir Putin’s warfighting.
That has raised concerns Moscow could provide technology that strengthens Kim’s nuclear-armed military, with experts pointing to North Korea’s aging anti-air and radar systems as a likely area of cooperation.
South Korea’s previous conservative government said in November that Russia supplied missiles and other equipment to help strengthen air defenses of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, but did not specify which systems were provided.
Kim held a ceremony in Pyongyang last week to honor North Korean soldiers who fought in Ukraine, awarding state “hero” titles to those who returned and placing medals beside 101 portraits of the fallen, praising them as “great men, great heroes and great patriots,” state media reported.
According to South Korean assessments, North Korea has sent around 15,000 troops to Russia since last fall and about 600 of them have died in combat. Kim has also agreed to send thousands of military construction workers and deminers to Russia’s Kursk region, a deployment South Korean intelligence believes could happen soon.