The brutal attack took place in the streets of Paris – commonly known as City of Lights in front of the middle school where the victim worked. French anti-terror prosecutors said they were treating the assault as “a murder linked to a terrorist organization,” and related to a “criminal association with terrorists.”
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de France region in the north – central France. It is located in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, 24.2 km (15.0 miles) from the center of Paris. The city of Paris itself is officially divided into 20 districts called arrondissements, numbered from 1 to 20 in a clockwise spiral from the center of the city (which is known as Kilometer Zero and is located at the front of Notre Dame).
The commune was originally named for its geographic position at the confluence of the Seine and the Oise rivers. The village was given the addition “Sainte Honorine” in the 13th century after the female Saint Honorina, whose relics had been stored there since 876 AD. Partly on account of its strategic position, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is considered the capital of the French inland waterways and the right bank of the River Seine is still lined with barges (although these are now used mainly as houseboats). Every year in June, the town celebrates the Pardon national de la batellerie in remembrance of its former importance to inland shipping.
Michel Rocard was a French politician and a member of the Socialist Party (PS). He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from the year 1988 to 1991, during which he created the Revenu minimum d’insertion (RMI), a social minimum welfare program for the indigents and achieved the Matignon Accords regarding the status of New Caledonia.
He was a member of the European Parliament, and was strongly involved in European policies until 2009. In 2007, he joined a Commission under the authority of Nicolas Sarkozy’s Minister of Education, Xavier Darcos. He was the mayor of this town and rose to become the PM of France. Suddenly the commune came into global focus but for wrong reasons.
So when Monsieur Samual Paty was taking a moral and civic instruction class on 5th October, 2020 at his school at Conflans – Sainte – Honorine, he never thought, he would be decapitated by his own student and his associates just 12 days after his teaching. The teacher, who had shown students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, was brutally beheaded outside his school on Friday.
These classes are obligatory and cover subjects including secularity, the death penalty and the abortion. He had shown pupils in his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which are considered by Muslims to be blasphemous. The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures.
The brutal attack took place in the street in front of the middle school where the victim worked. French anti-terror prosecutors said they were treating the assault as “a murder linked to a terrorist organization,” and related to a “criminal association with terrorists.”
President Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex visited Conflans Saint-Honorine hours after the attack took place, as government officials convened a crisis meeting to discuss the case. Macron said. He said the attack shouldn’t divide France because that’s what the extremists want. “We must stand all together as citizens,” he said.
The killing is being investigated by anti-terrorism police. “One of our fellow citizens was assassinated because he taught his students freedom of expression,” Macron said after he arrived to the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, where the attack took place. “Our compatriot was the victim of a characteristic Islamist terrorist attack.”
As part of a discussion on freedom of speech, Paty showed the class some of the controversial Charlie Hebdocaricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Extremely conscious that this might cause offence to some of his Muslim pupils, Paty suggested they could look away or leave the classroom.
Anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard said that the suspect, who lived in the Normandy town of Évreux, about 100 km (60 miles) from the murder scene, went to Paty’s school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Friday afternoon and asked students to point out the teacher. Abdoulakh A, had no apparent connection with the teacher or the school. He followed Paty as he walked home from work. The suspect used a knife to attack the teacher in the head, and then beheaded him.
The 18-year-old killer was born in Moscow but has Chechen roots. His family arrived in France when he was a child. Police were questioning his parents, grandfather and 17-year-old brother and recently detained another five including the father of a pupil at the school and an acquaintance of his, known to the intelligence services. A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun, which fires plastic pellets was shot dead about 600 meters (yards) from where the male teacher was killed after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening manner.
France has over the past several years seen a series of violent attacks. Bombings and shootings in November 2015 at the Bataclan theatre and sites around Paris killed 130 people. Late last month, a man who immigrated to France from Pakistan used a meat cleaver to attack and wound two people outside the former offices of satirical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’. That was the spot where armed men gunned down employees of the magazine five years ago in retaliation for the magazine’s publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The issue of the cartoons was revived last month when Charlie Hebdo decided to re-publish them to coincide with the start of the trial of accomplices in the 2015 attack. France is a great supporter of ‘égalité’ and freedom of speech and human values. As part of a discussion on freedom of speech, Paty showed the class some of the controversial Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Afterwards, the school received complaints about the use of the cartoon in the lesson and parents demanded that Paty resign from the school. After a meeting between the school’s Head, teachers, parents and education officials, the parents lodged an official legal complaint.
The teacher lodged a counter complaint for “defamation”. The father of one school pupil published a video on YouTube calling the teacher a “thug” who needed to “go back to school himself” and calling on parents to join him in demanding that the teacher face disciplinary action. The teacher had gone to the local police station, with the school head, earlier this month after a legal complaint about his lesson.
He reportedly told investigators he could not understand what had happened because the daughter of the father who had complained was not in class the day he showed the cartoon. The teacher lived near the school and was used to walking through a wood to get home, but had recently decided to change his route to walk through a residential area because he felt threatened.
The incident came as Macron’s government works on a bill to address Islamist radicals who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside the values of the French Republic. France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country’s number 2 religion.
The middle school teacher was attacked earlier on Friday in the street of the commune, some 28 kilometers northwest of Paris. The attacker allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is Great,” as he assaulted the teacher with a knife. Media reports said the teacher was either “decapitated” or stabbed in the throat, succumbing to his injuries.
Europe is paying the price of its liberal views and Muslims from Algeria and other nations were given citizenship to work in farms, departmental stores, houses and menial jobs on the streets and clean you know what. They used work in hotels and 5 star hotels as janitors as white population found it below dignity to work in many areas. They also worked as sturdy construction labourers and brick layers and played second fiddle to their colonial masters.
Times have now changed, the migrants never assimilated with the free society norms and used hijab and niqab in public places and wanted separate swimming timings for their young girls studying in schools and housewives, which was not accepted by the local administration.
So these radicals lived in their own cocoons of hatred and social isolation and dingy madrasas and under the garb of Shariah laws. Shocked French teachers vowed to continue encouraging their pupils’ “critical spirit” by raising contested subjects after an Islamic terrorist beheaded a secondary school teacher who showed his students caricatures of the Prophet as part of a freedom of speech discussion.
Representatives of teaching unions met the education minister Monsieur Jean-Michel Blanquer and the Prime Minister Monsieur Jean Castex on Saturday, hours after the death of 47-year-old history and geography teacher Samuel Paty. Before the meeting Jean-Remi Girard, president of the secondary school teaching union, said teachers were “devastated” but would not be cowed. “It is terrifying to see that in France in the 21st century, a teacher can be decapitated in the street for doing his job,” Girard said. “We will continue to speak about freedom of speech. If there are difficult subjects, we will continue to teach them. We will try to encourage our students’ critical spirit and explain that everyone has the right to disagree.”
Rallies were expected in cities across France on Sunday in a show of solidarity and defiance, with Blanquer telling a TV channel France 2: “It is absolutely important to show our mobilisation and our solidarity, our national cohesion.” He called on everyone to support the teachers.
Emmanuel Macron has announced a law against religious “separatism” aimed at freeing Islam in France from “foreign influences”. In a long-awaited declaration, the French president outlined new measures to “defend the republic and its values and ensure it respects its promises of equality and emancipation”.
The measures to combat “radical Islamism” and terrorism suggested a carrot-and-stick approach: local officials will be given extra-legal powers to combat extremism while money will be invested in education; particularly of Islamic culture and civilization; and to deal with other social problems including housing and poverty.
“Our challenge is to fight against those who go off the rails in the name of religion, while protecting those who believe in Islam and are full citizens of the republic,” Macron said. His speech on Friday was a broad outline of the measures to come, which he said would be drawn up in the next two weeks for a law to be presented in December. Macron has vowed to totally remove such radicals from the scene to start a new inclusive society as he has seen the decline of nearby Belgian society.
Thousands have attended rallies across France in support of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his pupils. People in the Place de la République in Paris carried the slogan “Je suis enseignant” (I am a teacher), with PM Jean Castex saying: “We are France!”
Totally totally disgusting and obnoxious. In my view the new law will be hastened for sure. France will show the way, how European Union will deal with Islamists forces after Sweden and Denmark, where the menace of Islamists forces have been controlled in recent times.
Good insights by author on the recent happenings in France. Time for all countries to ponder, make appropriate laws to safeguard their citizens, maintain peaceful neighborhoods.
thank you