“It is an expression of total contempt both for the victims and for all those involved in the project who have been working on it for five years.” Philippe Duperron is the president of the 13onze15 association, bringing together the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015. This Wednesday, he learned like the others of the abandonment of the Memorial project to the victims of terrorism, although promised by Emmanuel Macron. And he's angry. Very angry, he cannot digest the decision of the government, which justified its disengagement by “budget cuts”.
Without prior consultation, the decision was announced by Matignon to the president and the director of the prefiguration mission of the Memorial Museum of Terrorism, the historian Henry Rousso and the former interministerial delegate, Elisabeth Pelsez. The twelve associations of victims of terrorism were never notified by the ministries. “It's a bit like telling them: you're not really that important,” agrees Danièle Klein, member of the office of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT).
She deplores that the decision comes a few days before the verdict in the trial for the assassination of Samuel Paty, and a few weeks before the tenth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
The 95 million euro project abandoned
Announced by Emmanuel Macron on September 19, 2018 during the universal commemoration for the victims of attacks, the project, estimated at 95 million euros spread over eight years, was to open its doors in 2027 in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine) .
As an alternative, the government has suggested erecting the national memorial in the memorial garden designed by Paris City Hall for the victims of the November 13 attacks. “That we can confuse this project with the memorial garden is really to have understood absolutely nothing,” says Philippe Duperron, father of a victim at the Bataclan.
