(AFP) 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 the French. Educators 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.
“To pay tribute to Samuel Paty is to pay tribute to the Republic,” said Prime Minister Jean Castex, speaking at a ceremony where he was flanked by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and in the presence of the victim’s family.
