The Place de la République in northeastern Paris is near the scenes of almost all the jihadist attacks that blighted France last year. Since the January 7th, 2015, massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine, it has become a symbol of mourning and resistance.
So it was on the Place de la République that France yesterday concluded a week of commemorations of last year’s slaughter.
“Here the French people pay them homage,” says a plaque inaugurated by president François Hollande, on which all 149 names are engraved.
Fear of discord
The fact that the main official ceremony commemorated the unity of nearly four million people who marched in cities across France on January 11th, 2015, spoke volumes about the government’s fear of discord.
Although unity was the leitmotif of the half-hour ceremony, it was strangely lacking. A few hundred relatives of victims and survivors of the attacks huddled around the statue of the Republic, along with Mr Hollande and his ministers.
Security concerns justified excluding the masses. But the small gathering gave the impression of a government turned in upon itself, under siege.
Beyond the centre of the flag-stoned square was a vast expanse of empty space. When Johnny Hallyday sang "What is left of that Sunday in January?" the ragged voice of the ageing rocker resounded in the void. Not a lot, it seems.
Hallyday's participation in the ceremony angered friends of the slain journalists and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo. Hallyday, who lived abroad for years to avoid French tax, was a favourite butt of their jokes. "Thieving like a Frenchman, stupid as a Belgian, boring as a Swiss," was the title of a Charlie Hebdo cover devoted to "Johnny" by Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, the director of the magazine who was the gunmen's first victim.
‘Centre of humanity’
Mercifully, there were no speeches yesterday, as if the French authorities had nothing left to say. In the event,
Victor Hugo
said it for them. Two students of dramatic arts read the speech made by the great writer in September 1870, when Léon Gambetta proclaimed France a republic as the Prussian army advanced on Paris. “To save Paris means more than saving France,” Victor Hugo said.
“It means saving the world. Paris is the very centre of humanity. Paris is the sacred city. Who attacks Paris attacks the human race in its entirety . . . I ask but one thing of you, unity! Through unity, you will triumph.”
