Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Paris and cities in France on Sunday in solidarity with a teacher who was beheaded for showing students cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Protesters in the Place de la Republique held signs reading: “No to the totalitarianism of thought” and “I am a teacher” in memory of the murdered colleague Samuel Paty.
“You don’t scare us. We are not afraid. You will not divide us. We are France! “tweeted Prime Minister Jean Castex, who joined the Paris rally.
Castex was accompanied by the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and the Minister of the Interior, Marlene Schiappa, who said they were there “in support of teachers, secularism, freedom of expression. ”. Politicians from the other major parties also attended.
Read also | Beheading in Paris: suspect in the attack on a teacher in France was a Chechen teenager
Some in the crowd chanted “I am Samuel,” echoing the “I am Charlie” cry that traveled the world after Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 for publishing cartoons of the Islamic prophet. .
To applause, others recited: “Freedom of speech, freedom of teaching.”
“I am here as a teacher, as a mother, as a French and as a Republican,” said participant Virginie.
The 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack unleashed a wave of Islamist violence and forced France to engage in a national discussion about the place of Islam in a secular society.
After the magazine massacre, around 1.5 million people rallied at the Place de la Republique itself in support of freedom of expression.
‘Things have to change’
Local authorities said about 12,000 people demonstrated in Lyon, eastern France.
In Toulouse, in the southwest, they turned out around 5,000. “The entire educational community is affected, and beyond it, society as a whole,” said the representative of the teachers’ union Bernard Deswarte there.
Hundreds more gathered in Nice, on the south coast, where in 2016 a man killed 86 people when he rammed a truck into a crowd on the national holiday of July 14.
“Everyone is in danger today,” said student Valentine Mule, 18, who was attending the Nice rally. “Things have to change.”
There were other marches in the eastern city of Strasbourg, in Lille in the north, and in the southern cities of Marseille and Montpellier.
Samuel Paty was killed as he was returning home from the school where he taught in a northwestern suburb of Paris on Friday afternoon.
On the mobile phone of his murderer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov from Chechen, shot a photo of the professor and a message in which he confessed to his murder.
Witnesses said the suspect was seen at the school on Friday asking students where he could find Paty.
On Saturday, counter-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said Paty had been threatened online for showing the cartoons to her civics class.
Representations of the prophet are considered taboo in Islam.
Online campaign
The father of a schoolgirl had launched an online call for “mobilization” against the teacher and had requested his dismissal from the school.
The aggrieved father had named Paty and given the school’s address in a social media post just days before the beheading, which President Emmanuel Macron has called an Islamist terror attack.
The father and a known Islamist militant who participated in his campaign against Paty are among those arrested, along with four members of Anzorov’s family.
An eleventh person was detained on Sunday, a judicial source said, without providing details.
Ricard did not say if the attacker had any ties to the school or if he had acted independently in response to the online campaign.
The Russian embassy in Paris said Anzorov’s family came to France from Chechnya when he was six years old to apply for asylum.
Locals in the Norman town of Evreux, where the attacker lived, described him as low-key and said he had a fight as a child but had calmed down as he became increasingly religious in recent years.
Friday’s attack was the second of its kind since a trial began last month for the Charlie Hebdo murders.
The magazine republished the controversial cartoons in the run-up to the trial, and last month a young Pakistani wounded two people with a butcher knife outside Charlie Hebdo’s former office.
‘Doing his job’
According to his school, Paty had given Muslim children the option of leaving the classroom before he showed the cartoons, saying that he did not want to hurt their feelings.
Kamel Kabtane, rector of the Lyon mosque and a high-ranking Muslim figure, told AFP on Sunday that Paty was simply “doing her job” and had been “respectful” in doing so.
France’s defense council ministers agreed on Sunday to step up security at schools when they return after midterm.
Action will also be taken against anyone who expresses support for the attack.
And authorities will investigate the authors of 80 messages supporting the attacker starting Monday, the Elysee added.
A national tribute will be held for Paty on Wednesday.
.
