Published 16:41 IST, October 22nd 2020
French President says beheaded Paris teacher victim of 'stupidity, lies and hate'
French President called out on the domestic militant Islamist group as one that “directly implicated” the last week’s brutal decapitation of history teacher.
On October 21, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said that the beheaded history lecturer was a "victim of stupidity, lies, and hate" as he called out on the domestic militant Islamist group as one that “directly implicated” the last week’s brutal decapitation that rocked Paris. Macron said that his administration wouldn’t renounce freedom of expression, as he called the late victim Samuel Paty as the “face of the Republic” who “believed in knowledge” at the national vigil to pay solidarity to the slain teacher at the Sorbonne University in central Paris.
The French history lecturer who had displayed controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons was beheaded in a gruesome murder by an 18-year-old Chechen Islamic extremist refugee, who was later shot dead by police. While the ceremonial military guards carried the coffin of the teacher attacked at northern Paris suburb of Éragny into the cobblestone courtyard of Sorbonne, Macron called him a "revolutionary" for France. Meanwhile, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said in a presser that the beheading had simmered a new wave of secular tensions across France.
Albert Camus poem read aloud
The 47-year-old is the face of our will to shatter terrorists [Islamic radicals], Macron said, adding that France will do away with Islamists to thrive in midst of a terror-free community of free citizens. “We will continue,” he said, addressing the French press. Further, a poem by acclaimed French literary author Albert Camus was read aloud that was telecasted LIVE on the screens installed at the ceremony. Further, administrative group Régions de France distributed booklets of black humour caricatures that ever appeared in the press to defend the French Revolution’s affirmed freedom of speech and expression as an inalienable right.
Regions of France would take the initiative to prepare for publication a work bringing together the most notable religious and political caricatures that have appeared in the regional press, as well as those in the national press, group president Renaud Muselier said according to France’s local broadcaster Connexion France’s sources. Further, with the assistance of the Minister for National Education of France, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the group arranged for the historians to explain caricature’s literary context and the right [to create] art as part of the political history of France.
[French President Emmanuel Macron, right, delivers a speech while Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin listens, after a visit on the fight against separatism at the Seine Saint Denis prefecture headquarters in Bobigny, a northeastern suburbs of Paris. Credit: AP]
[French anti-terrorist state prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard holds a press conference in Paris. The French government issued an order to dissolve a domestic militant Islamic group after the beheading last week near Paris of Samuel Paty, a teacher who had shown students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Credit: AP]
[People attend a memorial march in homage to the history teacher who was beheaded last week, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris. Samuel Paty was beheaded on Friday by an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee. Credit: AP]
[People attend a memorial march in homage to the history teacher who was beheaded last week. Credit: AP]
(Image Credit: AP)
Updated 16:40 IST, October 22nd 2020