(Euronews) In the years following the tragic killings of French teachers Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, there has been a sharp increase in the number of educators requesting protection from the state.
According to recent data from the French Ministry of Education, the number of requests for functional protection — covering legal fees, medical support, and legal assistance — has more than doubled, rising from 2,218 in 2020 to 4,948 in 2023.
Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was beheaded in October 2020 after showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad made by the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo during a lesson on free speech.
