“Whether we knew him or not, we miss Samuel Paty. (…) Two years later, the trauma is still there,” said the Minister of National Education.
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Lhe Islamists “have not succeeded and will not succeed” in “suppressing intelligence and the very possibility of teaching”, said the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye, visibly moved, on Saturday during a tribute to the Sorbonne to Professor Samuel Paty murdered two years ago.
“Whether we knew him or not, we miss Samuel Paty, because we know that (…) the hope and consideration he had for young people are part of those forces that hold together the Republic, the make them more tolerant” and “prepare the citizens of tomorrow”, added the minister during this ceremony organized in an amphitheater of the Sorbonne, where a room now bears his name, by the association of history and geography teachers (APHG ). “Two years later, the trauma is still there,” said Pap Ndiaye at the exit.
Regarding the tributes organized in schools, Friday 14 or Monday 17, the minister was “delighted that very few incidents were recorded” Friday. “There are 18 nationwide, it’s much less than last year,” he said, stressing that his ministry intended to show “firmness” in the face of incidents, but also “transparency “: “We do not put dust under the carpet”.
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Fight against “infox”
“To teach is to explain and not to be silent”, declared for her part Mickaëlle Paty, sister of the teacher, who dedicated her speech “to all the people who died, were injured, tortured or imprisoned for having dared to express themselves. “. Three classes of middle school students, who worked during the 2021-2022 school year on the theme of freedom of expression, were awarded the first Samuel Paty Prize, awarded by the APHG. The winning class, from the Marie-Mauron college in Pertuis (Vaucluse), investigated past religious intolerance in their region, in the form of podcasts devoted to the massacre of the “Vaudois du Lubéron” which claimed some 3,000 Protestant victims in the 16th century.e century. For the 2e edition of the prize, middle and high school students are invited to work this year on the theme of “infox” and the danger they represent for democracy.
Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old history and geography professor, was beheaded on October 16, 2020 near his college in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris, by a radicalized young man who accused him of having shown caricatures of Muhammad to his students. Earlier in the morning, Eric Zemmour, president of the far-right Reconquête! movement, had gathered a few hundred supporters in Samuel Paty Square, near the Sorbonne, and described the assassination as “avoidable Francocide”, the culmination of a “continuum of violence”.