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Despite Corona, thousands gathered at the Place de la République in Paris on Sunday afternoon. “You do not scare us. We are not afraid,” wrote Prime Minister Jean Castex, who was also at the rally.
Investigators assume that the teacher was beheaded by an 18-year-old for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in class. The brutal murder of the 47-year-old history teacher had caused great horror in France. Many people took to the streets in cities such as Marseille or Bordeaux. Prosecutor Jean-François Ricard described the weekend that the teacher wanted to bring his students closer to the issue of freedom of expression in early October. The reason was the discussion about the reissue of cartoons of Muhammad in the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”.
The offender, who was born in Moscow in 2002 according to the prosecution and has Russian-Chechen roots, was shot by the police shortly after the crime. He previously posted a photo of the victim and wrote that he had looked down on the prophet.
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Image Gallery: Paris: Tens of Thousands Demonstrate for Freedom of Expression
Image: afp
Applause for minutes
The Place de la République in Paris was packed with people on Sunday afternoon. At 3 pm sharp, people clapped for minutes to remember the murdered Samuel Paty. The brutal attack hits France amid the second corona wave, which has hit the country hard. In Paris Corona’s highest level of warning applies, gatherings of more than 1,000 people are actually prohibited here, but according to the media, the demonstration is supposed to have been approved by the authorities.
“I’m here to defend freedom of speech, freedom of education,” says 61-year-old Muriel. She is a teacher, but also a citizen. In her hand she holds a sign that says “Je suis enseignant.e”, in German: “I am a teacher.” Like many others, this reminded him of the slogan “Je suis Charlie”. It shaped the days after the devastating murder attack on the editorial staff of “Charlie Hebdo” in 2015. The satirical newspaper had responded to a call for a demonstration. Paris connected.
A young man named Valentin holds up a poster with Muhammad cartoons in the satirical magazine. “If you attack a teacher, you attack the republic,” he says. The Place de la République in eastern Paris is a symbolic place: already after the horror series in January 2015, which also included the attack on “Charlie Hebdo”, people from all over France commemorated the victims there. Since then, the square has become a central place of sympathy after the terrorist attacks.
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Image gallery: Mourning in Paris after the attack
Photo: BERTRAND GUAY (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of an Islamist terrorist act shortly after the crime. A defense council will meet on Sunday under his presidency. On Wednesday, France wants to remember the brutally murdered teacher with a national memorial service. The Islamic community also reacted to the brutal act. Nothing justifies the murder of a person, said the Islamic umbrella organization French Council of Muslim Cults.
The teacher was beheaded Friday afternoon in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine by his attacker near his school. Several people around the perpetrator were still in police custody on Sunday.
The father of a schoolgirl who had mobilized against the teacher online was also taken into police custody. He had distributed a video and publicly criticized the teacher for the cartoons, as prosecutor Ricard said. The prosecutor has not yet established a connection between this father and the abuser. In France, however, there is criticism for not doing something first; after all, there have been threats against the teacher and the school since the beginning of the month.
Just a few weeks ago a man brutally attacked two people with a knife in front of the former “Charlie Hebdo” editorial building. He also gave the reason for the cartoons of Muhammad that the magazine had published. The attacker was actually targeting the editorial office, but did not know that in the meantime he had moved to a secret location.
For years, France has been hit by a wave of Islamist terrorism that has killed more than 250 people so far.
