France Honors Terrorist Victims on 10th Anniversary

PARIS (11-14) On November 13, the tenth anniversary of the 2015 multiple terrorist attacks in Paris, the city and the nation paused to memorialize and pay homage to the 132 people killed along with 416 others who were injured during the brazen attacks across the city.

The ten members of the terrorist group ISIL being directed from Belgium undertook their attack in retaliation for earlier French airstrikes on ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

In their final attack of the day at around 9:00 pm during a concert at the Bataclan Theater, another group of three terrorists burst into the building and began shooting indiscriminately into the audience using assault rifles. Thus began a long siege that included the taking of 1,500 hostages in the theater. The siege ended the following morning just after midnight when French police forced their entry into the theater killing two of the terrorists and freeing all the hostages. By then, ninety concert goers had been murdered.

Memorials took place across the city at the site of each of the attacks beginning with the Stade de France, site of the first attack. That is where French President Emanuel Macron and his wife along with Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, former Head of State François Hollande, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and other dignitaries participated in a memorial honoring those murdered by the terrorists.

Under heavy police presence in the afternoon, a ceremony at the Bataclan Theater, where 90 of the victims were murdered, took place including the reading of each victim’s name along with a moment of silence. A memorial plaque listing the victims’ names was unveiled at the building as part of the memorial.

At the Place de la Républic an impromptu memorial was created the evening before by citizens who laid flowers and placed candles along with notes and messages, some accompanied by photos of victims, at the base of the towering monument. The wax drippings from candles which accumulated on the cold granite base of the monument were evocative of tears for the victims.

As a souvenir of those present, a collaborative art project titled “November 13 resonances...” was created by artist Olivier Terral for the solemn occasion in collaboration with the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT) and “13-UNIS” to commemorate the victims of terrorism of November 13, 2015.

Participants were invited to leave an impression of their fingerprint in either black or white ink placed precisely on a large sheet of white canvas divided into grids. In all, six panels, one being created at each of the day’s memorials, when completed will be joined together to make an image of a hand grabbing an arm with a raised clenched fist as a powerful symbol of solidarity and resistance to terrorism.

The last memorial of the day was held for family members of the victims of the Bataclan massacre at the recently completed Jardin du 13 Novembre 2015 across from Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). Here, too, a moment of silence was observed, and the victims’ names were read aloud.

In furtherance of efforts to memorialize all the terrorist victims on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, for the past two nights the Eiffel Tower was awash in red, white and blue representing the French flag, making for a spectacularly impactful scene of national resistance, solidarity and unity against terrorism.

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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