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The surprised French teachers vowed to continue to encourage the “critical spirit” of their students by raising controversial issues after an Islamic terrorist beheaded a high school teacher who showed his students cartoons of the Prophet as part of a discussion on freedom of expression.
Teachers union representatives met with Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and Prime Minister Jean Castex on Saturday, hours after the death of 47-year-old history and geography teacher Samuel Paty.
Before the meeting, Jean-Remi Girard, president of the secondary school teachers union, said the teachers were “devastated” but would not flinch. “It is terrifying to see that in France in the 21st century, a teacher can be beheaded on the street for doing his job,” Girard said.
“We will continue talking about freedom of expression. If there are difficult subjects, we will continue to teach them. We will try to encourage the critical spirit of our students and explain to them that everyone has the right to disagree ”.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who described the murder as a “typical Islamist terrorist attack,” said France was engaged in an “existential” battle against terrorism.
The 18-year-old killer was born in Moscow but has Chechen roots. His family came to France when he was a child, investigators said. The police were questioning his parents, grandfather and 17-year-old brother and yesterday arrested five others, including the father of a student at the school and an acquaintance of his known to the intelligence services.
A tenth person was taken into custody in connection with the attack later on Saturday, French news channel BFM TV said, citing judicial sources.
Paty was taking a class in moral and civic instruction on October 5 at her school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris. These classes are mandatory and cover topics such as secularism, the death penalty, and abortion.
As part of a discussion on freedom of expression, Paty showed the class some of the controversial Charlie hebdo cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Aware that this might offend some of her Muslim students, Paty suggested that they look away or leave the classroom.
Subsequently, the school received complaints about the use of the cartoon in the lesson and demands that Paty resign.
After a meeting between the school principal, teachers, parents, and education officials, the parents filed an official legal complaint. Paty filed a counterclaim for “defamation.”
The father of a student at the school posted a video on YouTube calling the teacher a “bully” who needed to “go back to school himself” and asking the parents to join him in demanding that the teacher face disciplinary action.
The teacher had gone to the local police station, with the school principal, earlier this month after a legal complaint about his lesson.
He reportedly told investigators that he could not understand what had happened because the daughter of the father who had complained was not in class on the day he showed the cartoon.
The teacher lived near the school and was used to walking through a forest to get home, but had recently decided to change his route to walk through a residential area because he felt threatened.
The university received several “threatening calls” in the following days. Counterterrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard says police are trying to establish facts in the run-up to the crime and whether the killer had accomplices.
Crowds of mourners, including fellow teachers, politicians and local officials and Paty’s former students, gathered outside her school on Saturday.
Even in a country that has faced some of the worst acts of terrorism in Europe for the past eight years, Friday’s assassination was shocking in its savagery, sparking a torrent of anger, anguish and revulsion across France.
In social networks, the hashtag #JeSuisProf (I am a teacher) emerged and went viral, reminiscent of #JeSuisCharlie, the expression of solidarity with 2015 Charlie hebdo after a massacre in their offices.
For France, the fight against terrorism and preventing the radicalization of local jihadists has turned into what Macron described on Friday as an “existential battle.” Paris has been on high alert in recent weeks after the trial of 14 people suspected of being linked to the 2015 attacks began in September.
But for the country’s intelligence agencies and police, the struggle in recent times has shifted not only to thwarting large-scale planned terrorist actions, but also to identifying people, often young, who are not on the radar of the security services and are not marked as a threat.
On the occasion of the opening of the long-awaited hearing – scheduled to last until November – Charlie hebdo He republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including those that led Islamist gunmen Saïd and Chérif Kouachi to attack his offices. killing 12 people, and Amédy Coulibaly for shooting a policeman and killing four people in the Hyper Cacher supermarket.
The reprinting of the cartoons, in turn, caused an 18-year-old man born in Pakistan to stab and seriously injure two people outside the former offices of Charlie hebdo in what French authorities said was “clearly an act of terrorism” three weeks ago.
Ricard said that the teacher had been “killed for teaching” and the attack was an attack on the principle of freedom of expression. “This is the second attack that takes place during the Charlie hebdo judgment that shows the high level of terrorist threat we face, ”said Ricard.
On Frida, Abdallah Zekri, president of the Islamophobia Observatory, described Friday’s beheading as a “terrible and horrendous act committed in the name of my religion under the pretext of Charlie hebdo”.
“This was a criminal and cowardly act that everyone in France must denounce,” he said.
