Cérémonie d'hommage national à Samuel Paty à la Sorbonne.
SPEECH BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC AT THE NATIONAL TRIBUTE IN MEMORY OF SAMUEL PATY
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Tonight, I will have no words to evoke the fight against political, radical Islamism, which leads to terrorism. Those words, I have spoken them. Evil, I have named it. The actions, we have decided on them, we have intensified them, we will carry them through to the end.
Tonight, I will not talk about the procession of terrorists, their accomplices and all the cowards who perpetrated and made this attack possible. I will not talk about those who gave their name to the barbarians, they do not deserve it. They don't even have names anymore. This evening, I will not speak any more about the indispensable unity that all French men and women feel. It is precious and obliges all those in charge to express themselves accurately and to act with rigour. No.
Tonight, I want to talk about your son, I want to talk about your brother, your uncle, the one you loved, your father. Tonight, I want to talk about your colleague, your teacher who died because he had made the choice to teach, assassinated because he had decided to teach his pupils how to become citizens. To learn the duties to fulfil them. To learn the freedoms in order to exercise them. Tonight, I want to talk to you about Samuel PATY.
Samuel PATY loved books, knowledge, more than anything else. His flat was a library. His most beautiful gifts were books to learn from. He loved books to convey to his students and to his family the passion for knowledge, the taste for freedom. After having studied History in Lyon and having considered becoming a researcher, he had chosen the path marked out by you, his parents, a teacher and headmaster in Moulins, by becoming a "researcher in pedagogy" as he liked to define himself, by becoming a teacher. Therefore, there could be no better place than the Sorbonne, our place of universal knowledge for more than eight centuries, the place of humanism, for the nation to be able to pay him this homage.
Samuel PATY loved passionately to teach and he did this so well in several colleges and high schools up to the one of Conflans-Saint-Honorine. We have all anchored in our hearts, in our memories the memory of a teacher who changed the course of our lives. You know, this teacher who taught us to read, to count, to trust ourselves. This teacher who not only taught us knowledge, but who opened a path for us through a book, a look, through his consideration.
Samuel PATY was one of those, one of those teachers that we don't forget, one of those passionate people capable of spending nights learning the history of religions to better understand his pupils and their beliefs. These humble people who questioned themselves a thousand times, as for this course on freedom of expression and freedom of conscience that he had been preparing since last July in Moulins next to you, and the doubts that he shared out of necessity, out of delicacy.
Samuel PATY embodied the teacher that JAURÈS dreamed of in this letter to the teachers which has just been read: "firmness united with tenderness." He who shows the greatness of thought, teaches respect, shows what civilisation is all about.
He who had set himself the task of "making republicans."
Thus, the words of Ferdinand BUISSON come to mind: "To make a republican," he wrote, "you have to take a human being, however small and humble he may be [...] and give him the idea that he must think for himself, that he must not have faith, nor obedience to anyone, that it is up to him to seek the truth and not to receive it ready-made from a master, a director, a leader, whoever he may be."
"Making republicans" was Samuel PATY's goal.
And if this task today may seem titanic, especially where violence, intimidation and sometimes resignation take over, it is more essential, more urgent than ever. Here, in France, we love our Nation, its geography, its landscapes and its history, its culture and its metamorphoses, its spirit and its heart. And we want to teach it to all our children.
Here in France, we love the earthly and universal project of the Republic, its order and its promises. Each day to start anew. So, yes, in every school, in every middle school, in every high school, we will give back to the teachers the power to "make republicans," the place and the authority that belong to them. We will train them, we will give them proper consideration, we will support them, we will protect them as much as necessary. In school as well as outside school, the pressures, the abuse of ignorance and obedience that some would like to introduce have no place in our society. "I would like my life and my death to be of some use," he once said. As if out of a sense of foreknowledge.
So why was Samuel murdered? Why? At first, I believed in random madness, in absurd arbitrariness: one more victim of gratuitous terrorism. After all, he wasn't the Islamists' main target, he was only teaching. He was not the enemy of the religion they used, he had read the Koran, he respected his pupils, whatever their beliefs, he was interested in Muslim civilisation.
No, on the contrary, Samuel PATY was killed precisely for all that. Because he embodied the Republic that is reborn every day in the classrooms, the freedom that is transmitted and perpetuated at school.
Samuel PATY was killed because the Islamists want our future and they know that with quiet heroes like him, they will never have it. They separate the faithful from the unbelievers.
Samuel PATY only knew citizens. They feed on ignorance. He believed in knowledge. They cultivate hatred of others. He always wanted to see the face of others, to discover the riches of otherness.
Samuel PATY was the victim of the disastrous conspiracy of stupidity, of lies, of falsehood, of amalgame, of hatred of the other, of hatred of what we deeply, essentially, existentially are.
Samuel PATY became on Friday the face of the Republic, of our will to break the terrorists, to curb the Islamists, to live as a community of free citizens in our country, the face of our determination to understand, to learn, to continue to teach, to be free, because we will continue, professor.
We will defend the freedom that you taught so well and we will hold secularism high. We will not give up caricatures, drawings, even if others back down. We will offer all the opportunities that the Republic owes to all its youth without any discrimination.
We will continue, professor. With all the teachers and professors of France, we will teach History, its glories as well as its vicissitudes. We will make people discover literature, music, all the works of the soul and the spirit. We will love debate, reasonable arguments, friendly persuasion. We will love science and its controversies. Like you, we will cultivate tolerance. Like you, we will seek to understand, relentlessly, and to understand even more that which some would like to take away from us. We will learn humour, distance. We will remind ourselves that our freedoms can only be achieved by putting an end to hatred and violence, by respecting others.
We will continue, professor. And throughout their lives, the hundreds of young people you have trained will exercise the critical spirit you have taught them. Perhaps some of them will become teachers in their turn. Then they will train young citizens. In their turn, they will make young people love the Republic. They will make people understand our nation, our values, our Europe in a chain of times that will not stop.
We will continue, yes, this fight for freedom and for the reason you are now the face of it, because we owe it to you, because we owe it to ourselves, because in France, Professor, the Enlightenment never dies. Long live the Republic. Long live France.
BBM
