Version imprimableToday is a time for mourning.
The murderous terrorist attacks which took place on Friday 13 November have caused numerous victims. They are a terrible tragedy. Our compassion and solidarity go to all who have been affected, to the victims’ families and everyone close to them.
These terrorist attacks follow those of last January in Paris against Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercasher supermarket, and those against the Bardo Museum and in Sousse in Tunisia. They are an echo of the tragedies which have struck the Middle East, in the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Palestine and elsewhere. The terrorist groups behind them are inspired and organised by the Islamic State, an organisation driven by a totalitarian ideology which cloaks itself in religion in order to trigger a war between different peoples.
These fanatical political groups have found a fertile terrain in Iraq and Syria, with the bloody war waged against his own people by Bachar El Assad, and the terrible consequences of the US intervention in Iraq. They find an audience amongst desperate people who are then pressed into service and caught in a deadly sectarian logic.
We face a challenge.
The answers will not be found in any so-called ‘national unity’, nor in a race to remove civil liberties. Measures are needed to guarantee the safety of the population, but we oppose a state of emergency which prevents meetings, rallies and demonstrations, and allows individual freedoms to be eroded.
More than ever, we must resist blaming any section of the population for actions over which they have no control, and oppose all racist and islamophobic reactions, as well as conspiracy theories and antisemitic ideas which these attacks are intended to encourage.
We call for support for the peoples of Syria, Iraq, the Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, and Kurdistan in their struggle for their freedoms and democratic rights.
Fear must not prevail over the movement of citizens. We call for a united and popular movement for solidarity, a welcome for migrants and refugees, social justice and democracy.
14 November 2015
Bagnolet
