France paid tribute to schoolteacher Samuel Paty on Saturday, one year after he was beheaded by an extremist after showing his class cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.
Paty, 47, was stabbed and then decapitated after leaving the middle school where he taught history and geography in the tranquil Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on the evening of October 16, 2020.
Paty’s violent death stunned France’s educators, who saw it as an attack on the core values teachers have taught generations of schoolchildren, including the separation of church and state and the right to blaspheme.
“To pay tribute to Samuel Paty is to pay tribute to the Republic,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said at a ceremony flanked by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and in the presence of the victim’s family.
“Nothing could be worse than forgetting,” Castex said.
“Samuel Paty was a victim of Islamist terrorism and human cowardice.”
Castex unveiled a plaque at the entrance to the Ministry of Education that read: “Homage to Samuel Paty… Murdered by an Islamic terrorist for teaching and defending the values of the Republic, including freedom of expression.”
Paying tribute to Paty was also a way to support the republican project, Castex said, “the most promising bulwark against all barbarities”.
The family were also to meet Macron at the Elysee Palace later in the day.
– Nationwide remembrance -Also on Saturday, a square facing the Sorbonne University in the capital’s Latin Quarter was to be named after Samuel Paty in a ceremony that the mayor’s office said would be “simple and contemplative”.
Schools in at least three towns have already been named after Paty, including in the multi-ethnic eastern Paris suburb of Valenton.
Coming in the wake of other attacks blamed on Islamist extremists, the anniversary of Paty’s death has reignited debate over integration and immigration in France’s officially secular society as the country heads to 2022 presidential polls.
Paty’s killer, 18-year-old Chechen refugee Abdullakh Anzorov, claimed the attack was revenge for Paty having shown his class the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed printed in the virulently anti-religion magazine Charlie Hebdo during a lesson on free speech.
The lesson infuriated some parents and set off a social media fury fraught with rumours and falsehoods about what had been taught.
Paty’s killing prompted an outpouring of emotion in France, with tens of thousands taking part in rallies countrywide in defence of free speech and the right to mock religion.
But French President Emmanuel Macron sparked a backlash when he vowed the country “will not give up cartoons”, with counter-protests popping up in some Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey, Libya and Tunisia.
