France, Oct. 30 -- Mayor Ali Rabeh wants France to make promoting the "great replacement" theory a criminal offence.

He proposes amending France's 1881 press law to punish people who portray a group as part of a process of population replacement because of their origin, religion, ethnicity or supposed race. He argues that existing penalties for racist speech are insufficient.

His proposal follows an attack in his town, a suburb west of Paris, in which a 26-year-old black French man, Pengo Bossio Wangi, was killed and seven people were injured.

The 39-year-old suspect, Kevin Tessier, has been charged and remanded in custody. Investigators are treating the case as a suspected terrorist attack motivated by the victims' actual or perceived...