(Radio France) French middle and high schools will be observing a minute of silence Monday to commemorate Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, two teachers murdered during jihadist attacks in 2020 and 2023.
Teachers are free to hold the moment of silence when they want on Monday, according to the Education Ministry, which also said they could spend time during the week to “analyse and reflect with students” however they see fit.
Bernard was stabbed to death in Arras, in northern France, las[t] year by a former student of Chechen origin, who was on France’s terror watch list.
Paty, a history teacher, was stabbed, then beheaded by Abdoullakh Anzorov, a Russian refugee of Chechen origin three years earlier, on 16 October 2020, near his school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a western Paris suburb.
