Red faces at Moulin Rouge for racist ban

The Moulin Rouge cabaret, home of the frilly-knickered can-can girl and a Paris landmark for more than a century, achieved notoriety of a different kind yesterday when a court found its management guilty of racial discrimination.

The court fined the Association du Bal du Moulin Rouge, which manages the nightclub's non-performing staff 10,000 euros for persistently refusing to employ coloured people in positions where they might be seen by the public.

A secretary for the company, Micheline Beuzit, was also fined 3,000 euros after telling a Senegalese man who had applied for a job as a waiter that the Moulin Rouge "doesn't take blacks in the theatre, only in the kitchens".

Labour inspectors found that the Moulin Rouge, whose distinctive windmill arms have risen above the rooftops of seedy Pigalle since 1889, had not hired a single coloured person as a performer or waiter for 40 years - but that 100% of its kitchen staff were of African origin.

Abdoulaye Marega, 23, who was turned away when he applied for a waiter's job in January 2001, was awarded 4,500 euros in damages. The French anti-racism group SOS Racisme, which backed his case and carried out an undercover testing operation with other coloured candidates to prove systematic discrimination, won 2,300 euros in costs.

"I am absolutely delighted," Mr Marega, who now works as a sous-chef in a Paris restaurant, said. "Those who say France is racist are wrong. France is a country of liberties and equalities."

The staff manager of the Moulin Rouge, André Poussimour, told the court that since the case had started, two coloured people had been hired to work in the auditorium.

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