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France marks first anniversary since teacher killed over Mohammed cartoon
- Nation remembers Samuel Paty 12 months after his beheading by 18-year-old extremist
- “A victim of Islamist terrorism and cowardice”, says prime minister
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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.
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“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.
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“Nothing could be worse than forgetting,” Castex said. “Samuel Paty was a victim of Islamist terrorism and human cowardice.”
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