A conservative French magazine is facing backlash, after it published a cartoon that featured a Black lawmaker in chains. The magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, showed Daniele Obono, a Black member of the French parliament from the far-left party, in chains with an iron collar on her neck in a seven-page imaginary story.

Obono called the publication “extreme right, odious, stupid and cruel.”

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Condemning the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron led a nationwide protest. He called Danielle Obono “unbowed” and “expressed his clear condemnation of any form of racism.” Meanwhile, France’s far-right National rally party, Wallerand de Saint-Just, said the story was “in absolute bad taste.”

The anti-racism body SOS Racisme deplored rising hate speech against African and Arab politicians and said it was mulling what legal measures could be taken to counter this. The magazine responded that it is a fictional story setting the scene of the horrors of slavery organized by the Africans in the 18th century.

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It maintained that the story was “a work of fiction… but never nasty.”

France witnessed several protests in June and July against racial injustice as well as colonial and police brutality, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd’s death at the knee of police in the United States.