This Thursday, France sent an emotional tribute to… 132 people were killed and more than 400 others were injured A decade ago during Attacks It is committed by three people Jihadist commandos attack cafes, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall In Paris.
Throughout the day, survivors and families of the victims paid tribute to the dead and wounded at each site of the worst attack on French soil since World War II, as they laid corpses of victims. Wreaths of flowers and a minute of silence. Everywhere the names of all the deceased were read.
he The main tribute Sponsored by the Paris City Council for the 132 victims — two adding to the 130 on that fateful day in 2015 because two Bataclan survivors later committed suicide — it opened Thursday afternoon with a musical version of Hell’s bellsby AC/DC, on an electronic organ, which was interwoven with the ringing of bells from Notre Dame Cathedral And other churches in the capital.
The ceremony was followed in a box specially installed by some 1500 guestsAmong them is the French president Emmanuel Macron, members of the government; mayor of paris, Anne HidalgoAs well as to the survivors of the attacks, the families of the victims, and the professionals who were on the front lines on that fateful night.
It was designed in close cooperation with the two victims’ associations, 13 ounces 15 and Life in Paris (which was dissolved at the end of the ceremony), the tributes moved between spectacle and sobriety, dedicated to the dead, the living, and the “heroes” of that night (policemen, firefighters, and doctors).
He was the artistic director of the honour Thierry Ripoll, Who was the executive director of the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The French-Cameroonian singer Anne Shelley performed the legendary rock title of the Australian band on her electronic organ, at the foot of the so-called Tree of Justice, a centenary elm located in the middle of the park of November 13, 2015, located in the square of the Saint-Gervais church, next to the Consistory of Paris and two steps from the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Minutes before the ceremony began, A great bells of notre dame, The churches known as Emmanuel and Marie were ringing in unison with Saint-Sulpice, Sacre-Coeur, Saint-Germain, Saint-Eustache and other churches in Paris, as a symbol of “union” in memory of the 132 people killed by three jihadist commandos and the “shock” at the “scale of evil” in that “long night of pain,” the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, said today.
The pain of the 132 dead was also reflected in the image of light emanating from Tree of Justice Mariana -One of the symbols of the French Republic- cries.
Macron’s speech
And in his speech, Macron Confirm it France “will do everything in its power to prevent” new terrorist attacks. In fact, the President has pointed this out in the past 10 years 85 attacks were thwarted, six of them in 2025.
“They were not victims of a vague abstract idea, They were killed by terrorists with a specific Islamic ideology, Active, with spheres of influence (…) We have tried to suppress this jihad, but it has been reborn in a more mysterious, more insidious and more difficult to detect form.”
The French President pointed to the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa as regions where this new form of jihad is being born. “Surveillance is constant in each of these places“He confirmed.
For Macron France “fortified itself” 10 years ago with “unprecedented measures” adopted since 2015, such as tightening border controls, the closure of some places of worship and “elimination programs” of extremist rhetoric that prevent some people from resorting to terrorist acts.
The president noted that those killed in the attacks belonged to 17 different nationalities. “In the eyes of the killers, they were all sons of France.”
Before Macron took the floor philippe Duperron, President of 13onze15, who launched a message on Thursday to combat attempts to break society and “for Building security without sacrificing freedom.
Duperron, the father of one of the 132 people who died as a result of these attacks, denounced that “many politicians here, in Europe and elsewhere, along with irresponsible presidents, are dedicated to sowing seeds of discord and division.” He also criticized social media networks for “flooding” young people with “hate content.”
Later it was arthur Denovo, President of the Life for Paris Association, the second largest victims’ association, a Bataclan survivor, who confirmed… The impossibility of their return to normal life.
“I would have liked to tell you that hope leads us, but it is false. It does not specify any path,” Denovo announced to the audience, before adding that in these circumstances, “we, the victims, have nothing to propose to you except the demand to live in society according to the values and laws that have made France and its democracy a model.”
He recalled the stages they went through during these ten years, and stopped in particular at the trial in which the victims were able to “show our pain, but they also, and above all, remembered before our executioners that we will never surrender.”
This was acknowledged by the head of the Life for Paris organization They don’t have a cure for claustrophobia in this present time “The past is not bright and the future seems out of reach,” but he noted that if there is one thing they have learned it is that “you only defend well what you want.”
“I believe we should not leave a better world to our children. We should fight every day to live in a better world with them now,” he concluded, because “life is very fragile and we have to love it.”
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