Forbidden demonstration for opening of COP21 in Lyon. Demoted/ Benjamin Larderet. All rights reserved.On this chilly evening of November 27, a few hundred people are in the Place de la République. Many are meditating, praying, or just silent around the big statue of the Republic in the middle of the square, surrounded with candles, messages of peace, children’s drawing, flags of different countries, and banners. An Arab is selling French flags. International TV channels have parked their vans nearby.Even an organic farm was raided by the gendarmes, perhaps looking for bombs in the cabbages, and placards denouncing environment policies were seized as “terrorist” materials.
After the massacre, people look for ways to express sympathy for the victims, who were mostly young, under 35 years old, as well as ethnically and nationally diverse: twenty-three nationalities were represented, all kinds of people from middle class hedonists to practising believers of Islam: the typical gathering on Friday night in the XIth district of Paris.
Parisians made a point of returning to the terraces of the cafés where the shootings took place, to concerts, theatres, cinemas, and football matches. A strong feeling of the need to stand together, to avoid division, was expressed all over the nation. Gatherings took place in several big cities, with significant participation by all kinds of people, including Muslim minorities. In Bordeaux, the mayor of the town and potential conservative candidate, Alain Juppé, marched with the local imam, rabbi, and bishop, as well as representatives of political parties and human rights NGOs. The media didn’t bruit such events abroad, since in the name of the state of emergency most demonstrations were forbidden by the authorities, and none were allowed in Paris. After the attack the authorities have proclaimed a state of emergency. The parliament has tightened the emergency law of 1955 (a law promulgated during the bloody Algerian war at the time of French colonialism). Only a handful of MPs (some of the Greens and leftists) did not vote for a decree that permits people whose “behaviour” could threaten public order to be placed under arrest.
