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A memorial for the Armenian Genocide in the French city of Villeurbanne was desecrated on July 3, Asbarez reports. 

Some letters of an inscription on the memorial, which read “Recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” are now missing. The memorial had been unveiled in 2005 ahead of the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by Mayor Jean-Paul Bret.

“The desecration of the Armenian Genocide memorial in Villeurbanne on the night of July 3 is a new outrage to the memory of the million and a half Armenians exterminated in 1915 under the command of the Young Turk government,” the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF) said in a statement, Nouvelles d’Armenia reports.

According to CCAF, this new attack, which came less than eight days after the vandalism of a Missak Manouchian statue in Marseille, is a new affront to human dignity, a blow to the fraternity between peoples and democratic values, and a direct aggression against the Armenian community of France.

The statement emphasizes that this provocation months before the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide proves the need to adopt a law criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, as pledged by the former and current authorities of France.