Several hundred people gathered on Sunday October 15 in Arras (Pas-de-Calais) in memory of Dominique Bernard, the French teacher stabbed to death on Friday by a radicalized former student.
The meeting took place in the central square of the city, not far from the Gambetta school complex, scene of the attack, which occurred in a context marked by fears of the conflict in the Middle East being imported into France. The city siren sounded several times in the square, packed with people, in a pitch-black silence.
Students, parents and residents paid tribute to Dominique Bernard on Saturday by gathering in front of the school, sometimes to lay a bouquet of flowers. Others came to the town hall of his commune of Berneville (Pas-de-Calais) to sign a guest book in memory of this 57-year-old associate professor of modern literature, father of three daughters and married to a teacher. “So that barbarity does not pass. Because school is the last bastion against fundamentalism,” we could read in this book.
The attack, committed by Mohammed Mogouchkov, a 20-year-old former student with S registration and Russian nationality, and which also left three people injured, was described by Emmanuel Macron as “Islamist terrorism”. This new attack caused a shock wave, particularly in the teaching community, still marked by the death of Samuel Paty, a history-geography professor murdered on October 16, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
A minute of silence planned for Monday
“I want to say it to all teachers: we will be there to ensure your safety,” declared Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Saturday, during a speech given on the occasion of the Samuel-Prix award ceremony. Paty at the Sorbonne in Paris.
“The school is a sanctuary (…). When a teacher is attacked, it is not only the Republic that is targeted: it is its future that is threatened,” she continued, assuring: “We will not give in to violence. We will face it and we will fight it. »
A minute of silence will be observed on Monday at 2 p.m. in schools in France in tribute to the victims of attacks against schools, the Minister of National Education, Gabriel Attal, announced on Saturday.
“An atmosphere of jihadism, of taking action, has been evident since last Saturday”, the date of the attack on Israel by Hamas, said Saturday the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, presenting his “line of firmness »: the “systematic expulsion of any foreigner (…) considered dangerous by the intelligence services”.