A tribute and a symbol, that of the Sorbonne, the temple of knowledge and knowledge.
The rampart against obscurantism.
Emmanuel Macron chaired a moving national tribute ceremony on Wednesday evening, organized in honor of Samuel Paty.
Beheaded in the middle of the street by an Islamist terrorist, who murdered him for presenting caricatures of Muhammad to his fourth grade students, this history and geography teacher was awarded the Legion of Honor posthumously.
He was also made a Commander of the Academic Palms, while his 5-year-old son became a ward of the nation.
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“Samuel Paty embodied the teacher Jaurès dreamed of,
” said the head of state.
The one who shows what civilization is, the one who had set himself the task of making republicans. "
Throughout his speech, it is a tribute to the profession of teachers and the role of the latter in the Republic that Emmanuel Macron has deployed.
“Friday night, I first believed in random madness, in absurd arbitrariness.
Another victim of gratuitous terrorism,
he continued.
Samuel Paty became, on Friday, the face of the Republic.
Of our desire to smash terrorists, to reduce Islamists. ”
Then, Emmanuel Macron assured him:
"We will not give up caricatures, drawings."
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Previously, the letter Albert Camus had written to his teacher Louis Germain after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature had been read.
“Without you, without this loving hand that you extended to the poor little child that I was, without your teaching and your example, none of this would have happened,”
the writer confides in it.
In total, some 400 people were present in the courtyard of the prestigious Parisian university on Wednesday evening.
Many invitations had been issued by the Élysée, in agreement with the family of the deceased.
In addition to the former presidents and former prime ministers, as well as the entire government, the national representation and the main political leaders of the country, all the leaders of the religions had been invited.
As are the rectors of three Ile-de-France academies (Paris, Versailles, Créteil), students and teachers from several establishments in Île-de-France (including that of Samuel Paty), secondary students, teachers' unions and representatives of several victim support associations.
Dull anger
Outside the Sorbonne, many Parisians had also come to pay homage to Samuel Paty.
His savage assassination shook the country and placed its leaders under rare pressure.
Astonishment has now given way to muffled anger.
On Wednesday evening, the head of state did not dwell on Islamist terrorism.
"Tonight, I will not talk about the procession of terrorists, their accomplices, and all the cowards who committed and made this attack possible,"
he warned.
I will not speak of those who gave his name to the barbarians.
They don't deserve it.
In name, they don't even have any more. "
It was above all a question of paying homage to a man, a teacher martyred for having done his duty, to pass on knowledge.
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But since the terrible attack last week, the fight against political Islam and against radical Islamism has been invited to all levels of the executive.
Emmanuel Macron gave his ministers fifteen days to improve the bill against separatism.
To defend republican values, the President of the Republic has also asked the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, to study the legal feasibility of a possible
"offense of separatism",
with an aggravating circumstance in the event of infringement of the freedom to teach.
"It is one of the tracks that are currently being looked at,"
acknowledged the government spokesman, Gabriel Attal, after the Council of Ministers.
"This work is in progress, it will be completed very quickly,"
added the Secretary of State, promising that
"announcements"
would be made
"in the coming days".
Likewise, he said that the State would indeed be present alongside the teaching community, for whom the attack on Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was experienced as a
“shock”
and an
“upheaval”.
“The question (…) of self-censorship (in the classroom) is obviously an important question, on which Jean-Michel Blanquer is working,”
added Gabriel Attal.
Wednesday evening, at the Sorbonne, Emmanuel Macron promised:
“In each school, each college, each high school, we will give back to teachers the power to make republicans (…).
We will support them as much as necessary. "