Marius Makon, or Elton Prince, says he doesn’t hate his attacker. (Marius Makon Facebook)
A Cameroon-born actor was attacked during a Sunday coffee run in Madrid and his alleged culprit was let go after police detained her for questioning.
“I have suffered a racist attack this morning in a multiracial coffee shop in our beloved Madrid,” Marius Makon, whose stage name is Elton Prince, began his March 4 Facebook post about the incident.
He had ordered some java (coffee) that day when a woman told him, “I don’t want Black people in this place or in front of me.”
Makon, who relayed the incident in a Facebook post that was translated by El País Tuesday, said he told the woman he “will only be here for a moment and then I’m leaving. I don’t have any interest in staying near you for long.”
“I don’t care, you Black piece of s— get out of here,” the actor says the 33-year-old El Salvadorian woman responded.
When Makon tried to get her to settle down, she didn’t.
“Black piece of s—, I’m white. I can kill you and nothing will happen,” she said. Then, she smashed a bottle of beer on the actor’s head. When she struck a second time, the stage star bled and needed seven stitches for his head wound. Makon filed a police report and the alleged perpetrator was taken into police custody for questioning. Then, she was let go.
Regardless, Makon says he doesn’t despise the woman who assaulted him.
“Now I am in my house and I look through these images [of his injuries] I do not feel any hate towards the woman,” Makon said. “I want to say that I am not angry with her and I don’t know why. I am sad that she feels such hate, that she lives with hate. It saddens me that she does not enjoy life, that she doesn’t leave a small space in her heart to love.”
“Now the problem is in the hands of the law,” he concluded. “The law will decide on the sentence.”
And while Makon may not be fired up over the incident, the Spanish Immigration and Refugee Support Network had called for an “immediate” judgment and has reported the incident as a hate crime.
The SIRSN’s Facebook memo also noted it’s urging Móstoles Town Hall and the Madrid regional government of Cristina Cifuentes to “show their condemnation for what happened.”
“We will not stop until these types of backward, intolerable and feudal-era assaults are stopped,” the organization said according to El País.
