It was Wednesday afternoon on the esplanade, in front of the Condorcet University Center.
Samuel Paty in 2020, Dominique Bernard in 2023. At the initiative of the local section of the Human Rights League, a public tribute to the memory of these two professors murdered by radicalized Islamists took place this Wednesday, October 16 in front of the stele dedicated to Samuel Paty, avenue de l’Europe, opposite the Condorcet university center.
The Republican school was very hard hit by terrorism on October 16, 2020 and October 13, 2023. As activists of the LDH, we need to say publicly that the defense of the principles of the Public School such as set by law, a free, compulsory and secular school must be supported by all citizens, that is to say by our collective will, so that it is not the sole responsibility of education personnel national responsibility for implementing an educational ideal defined by law, declared Françoise Bouchet, president of the local LDH section. The assassinations of Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard constitute crimes against public education. Despite its flaws, our system must be defended and supported.
The school world is hard hit by the multiple tensions of our contemporary world, continues Françoise Bouchet. By the questions about the relationship between religion and school, by the violence carried out against it as shown by these assassinations, by the attacks of various reactionary movements but also by the decisions of our leaders for many years.
At the end of 2024, school is presented as an absolute priority but the reality is quite different. Against a backdrop of budget cuts, 4,000 job cuts are on the agenda! Let us not forget that the defense of the fundamental principles of the education system and beyond our democratic society rests on all citizens, on all of us, concludes Françoise Bouchet, before inviting Daniel Meunier, professor retired schools, to say the poem he had written in homage to Samuel Paty. He could not fail to pay tribute to a colleague, a history professor, murdered because he was only doing his job, that of teaching.
Alongside the members of the LDH, municipal elected officials and Mayor David Marti, management teams and teachers from schools and universities and all the people who wished to join in this tribute gathered.
J.S.
