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France will not give up cartoons, President Emmanuel Macron promised Wednesday in a tribute to teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to students in a lesson on freedom of expression.
French President Emmanuel Macron pays his respects at the coffin of Samuel Paty’s coffin inside the courtyard of the Sorbonne University in Paris on October 21, 2020, during a national tribute to French teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded for showing cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in his civics class. Image: AFP
PARIS – France will not renounce cartoons, President Emmanuel Macron promised Wednesday in a tribute to teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to students in a lesson on freedom of expression.
“We will not give up cartoons,” Macron said at a solemn ceremony at the Sorbonne University attended by the family of the slain teacher.
The president said that Paty was murdered by “cowards” for representing the secular democratic values of the French Republic.
Paty’s coffin stood in the center of the university’s courtyard, adorned with French flags, as students, a friend and a fellow history professor paid moving tributes to the father of a 47-year-old.
The ceremony began with the song One from Irish rock band U2 played over loudspeakers at the request of the Paty family and ended with applause.
Paty was killed on his way home from school last Friday by Chechnya-born 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, who posted a picture of the teacher’s severed head on Twitter before police shot him dead.
Paty became the subject of an online hate campaign after she showed cartoons of the Prophet to students in a civics class to spark a debate on free speech.
The same images had unleashed a bloody assault by Islamist gunmen five years ago on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed, including cartoonists.
Macron said that Paty was assassinated “because he embodied the Republic.”
The president added: “They killed him because the Islamists want our future,” while swearing that “they will never have it.”
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