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Neutralized. This is what the police say when a murderer is controlled. A language that was not designed to describe what was happening in France this Thursday, what has been happening over and over again for years.
In Nice, the police shot the murderer. Nothing is neutralized with it. The wave of violence and hatred that gripped France is uninterrupted and its ramifications can be felt as far as Germany.
It’s 9 am on Thursday in front of Notre Dame de Nice. In front of the gates of the oldest Roman Catholic church in the city, as the photos show, a blue bicycle is leaning against the railing that no one will pick up later because all hell breaks loose inside and outside the alert level is proclaimed. highest terror for an entire country.
Police report that the massacre begins shortly after the fair begins. The perpetrator attacks the believers, three people are killed and at least six others are injured. Kill the sacristan and a woman in the church. The assailant seriously wounded another woman with a knife, who was able to flee to a bar across the street, where she succumbed to her injuries.
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During the act, the man is said to have shouted “Allahu akbar”. According to the Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, he is said to have kept shouting “Allahu akbar” when the police shot him. And he didn’t stop even after paramedics started sedating him. Investigators will later say that the man is a refugee from Tunisia who came to Europe via Lampedusa and had lived in France since October.
Old wounds, not yet healed
The Nice attack tears open wounds in a country that has already been severely affected by the pandemic. Old wounds and those so fresh they didn’t even have time to heal.
Just two weeks ago, history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded on the street in a Paris suburb by an 18-year-old Islamist. His alleged crime: he showed the cartoons of Muhammad from the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in class to discuss freedom of expression.
There are many indications that the Nice assassination attempt has been copied. Which in turn motivated other copycats to attack as well. Because on the same day, an alleged Islamist attacker attacks passersby in the city of Avignon, in southern France. The police shoot him. A man armed with a knife is arrested in the center of Lyon. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a security guard outside the French consulate is attacked with a knife.
Meanwhile, citizens and parishioners gather in front of Nice’s completely cordoned off basilica, crying in front of the television crew’s cameras. Less than a kilometer from where a killer drove a truck into the crowd on the 2016 national holiday, killing 86 people and injuring many more.
The cruelty of the crime in Notre Dame also recalls an attack on a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy in July 2016, with which the terrorist militia “Islamic State” bragged. At that time, a murderer cut the throat of 80-year-old clergyman Jacques Hamel in the church.
Calls ring hollow
At that time, François Hollande was still president. At the time, politicians demanded that France not be drawn into a civil war by fundamentalists. Similar calls can now be heard again. But they sound hollow.
Because the answer to the most important question so far has been left unanswered by all political leaders: How can the country win the fight against Islamism without dividing? How does the nation – Muslim and non-Muslim – hold together?
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A question that arose after every attack in which the jihadists were the perpetrators. In the last five years, more than 200 people have died in Islamist attacks in France. “Charlie Hebdo”, Bataclan, Nice. Figures for a civil war that everyone wants to avoid. Which may have been going for a long time.
Soldiers on patrol are part of the street scene
The country has learned to face the permanent threat of terrorism. Soldiers patrolling are now part of the urban landscape in city centers. However, David-Olivier Reverdy of the Alliance Police nationale police union said in an interview with BFM-TV on Thursday that it was almost impossible to put police officers permanently in front of all churches in France. .
President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Nice on Thursday, is now faced with the impossible task of hitting the right mark. At the state ceremony of the beheaded teacher Samuel Paty, he advocated defending freedom of speech and showing cartoons critical of religion in the future. A point of view, a message also to his country, behind which he cannot and probably does not want to back down from the new attack. At the same time, you should try not to add fuel to the fire.
On Thursday, Macron announced the first measure to strengthen the protection of churches and schools. The internal anti-terrorist operation of the military will increase from 3,000 to 7,000 soldiers.
Politically, the pressure has been extremely high for a long time. The trial of the alleged supporters of the Charlie Hebdo attackers is currently underway in Paris. And the cartoon dispute had turned into a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Ankara this past weekend. Paris had called the ambassador after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mocked Macron’s mental health check.
The dispute between Macron and Erdogan has consequences
In Muslim countries around the world there were calls for a boycott of French products. It was then said at the Elysee Palace, Macron’s official residence, that further escalation of the dispute should be avoided.
In Germany, security authorities are already watching the dispute between Macron and Erdogan with concern. Some consider that the Turkish head of state is partly responsible. With his agitation against French President Emmanuel Macron, he is not only warming up excited young Turks, but also young Muslims in general, it is said. “Erdogan passes the lighter over the gas station,” a senior security expert told Tagesspiegel a few days ago. The inhibition threshold for attacks is “rejected by Erdogan’s sayings.”
The mayor says: “enough is enough”
In France, representatives from the right of the political spectrum are now calling for a tougher course in the fight against Islamism. With the appointment of his new interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, a confidant of former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of state had already marked a shift to the right last July.
But that didn’t stop Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, from declaring Thursday: “Enough is enough.” According to the conservative politician from the “Les Républicains” party, the time has come to “put Islamic fascism in ours.” To devastate territory ”.
The president of the far-right Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen, used similar bellicose words: For the first time since the Nazi occupation, France is no longer a free country, she said. “Our country is at war, we are at war.”
German security authorities are convinced that Islamist violence is again becoming a major threat in Germany: “Although Germany was silent for a time, the Islamist terrorist threat has always been high,” says one expert. That was proved by the attack in Dresden. There, on October 4, Syrian Abdullah Al HH stabbed a tourist and wounded another.
Minute of silence at Pariser Platz
The police in this country classify 619 Islamists as potential terrorists. Another 500 Islamists are considered “relevant people”, that is, potential supporters of violent criminals. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is assuming even 2000 dangerous people. The intelligence service is numbered higher than the police because it not only focuses on criminals, but also on people from an extremist spectrum as a whole.
In Germany too, right-wing populists are using the attack in France to create a general mood against Muslims and immigrants. And as in France, politics has not found an answer to the question of how they go together: fighting against danger and not dividing the country for it. Recently, SPD Vice President Kevin Kühnert demanded in a guest post that the right-wing extremists not be given the answer. A spontaneous minute of silence was requested on Thursday evening at Pariser Platz.
