French screen legend Brigitte Bardot fined for racial slurs against Reunion islanders

French screen legend Brigitte Bardot, 87, was on Thursday fined €20,000 by a court in La Reunion, France's department in the Indian Ocean, over a 2019 letter where she described its inhabitants as "savages".

In March 2019, Brigitte Bardot, who created a foundation bearing her name and working to protect animals, sent an open letter to Amaury de Saint-Quentin, then police chief of Reunion island, in response to what she saw as the mistreatment of animals by its inhabitants.

"The natives have kept their savage genes," the animal rights campaigner wrote, attacking the islanders for their treatment of animals, describing locals as "degenerate savages".

She took aim at the island's Hindu Tamil population for sacrificing goats, evoking the "cannibalism of past centuries" as she lashed "a degenerate population still soaked in barbarous ancestral traditions".

MP Jean-Hugues Ratenon (France Unbowed party), several French anti-racist associations as well as Hindu religious associations and groups had then filed a complaint against the former actress.

France's then overseas territories minister Annick Girardin also told her in a letter at the time after her comments "that racism is not an opinion, it's an offence".

Bardot later apologised, justifying her anger by what she considered to be the "tragic fate" of animals on the island.

Her spokesman Bruno Jacquelin was also fined on Thursday by the court in the main town of Saint-Denis de la Reunion €4,000 for his role in sending the statement to several media outlets at her request.