In Montluc, Emmanuel Macron honors the Resistance by avoiding “pans”

2023-05-09 04:45:09

Emmanuel Macron in the corridors of Montluc prison, in Lyon, on May 8, 2023. LAURENT CIPRIANI / POOL / AFP

The armistice was imposed. And it is in silence that Emmanuel Macron arrives in Lyon, this May 8, to commemorate the resistance against the Occupation. A few hours earlier, the President of the Republic went up the Champs-Elysées in a sedan with closed windows, without the usual cheers from the crowd, for the traditional ceremony in memory of the capitulation of Nazi Germany.

On the outskirts of the Montluc prison, where Jean Moulin, hero of the army of shadows, was imprisoned, a small handful of guests welcome the Head of State. “There are not many people but… complicated”sympathizes with irony, in greeting, the senator of the Rhone, Thomas Dossus (Europe Ecology-The Greens), in front of the Lyon jail converted into a place of memory. “Mistakes in tone are never good in general and therefore, these are moments of reunion where it is rather necessary to rise and celebrate those who allow us to be here today”replies the president.

The opponents of the pension reform who now punctuate each presidential trip with concerts of saucepans have signed no truce. But the district, cordoned off by an imposing police force, kept away these citizens deemed too restless. And it is 500 meters from the tenant of the Elysée that the protesters celebrate in their own way the Resistance and the insubordination by screaming “Macron resignation! ».

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Apart from a few loud horns from train drivers who pass a stone’s throw from the prison, Emmanuel Macron can savor the apparent calm. “It is important that we can get together. There is a time for everything. In football, we watch football, here, we are there to collect ourselves”comments the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, who accompanies the Head of State, referring to the PSG match that the demonstrators had tried to disrupt, in vain, on April 29.

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Concorde

This May 8, the time is therefore for harmony. The one called for by the Head of State, so far without success. After having collected a few moments in the tiny cell of Jean Moulin and that of the historian Marc Bloch, accompanied by the indefatigable Claude Bloch, one of the last survivors of the 10,000 prisoners of Montluc under the Occupation, the Head of State launches into a eulogy of the Resistance. “Not just a casual adventure” more “the restarting of a country”had underlined before him François Mitterrand, in 1984.

To embody this resistance, the Head of State relies on the figures of Marc Bloch, shot while shouting ” Long live France ” and of Jean Moulin, who died after having been tortured without betraying. “History brought together, in the same prison, these two men who were fighting for the same cause. For the same Republic. For the same France »declaims the president in a speech delivered from the former refectory of the Lyon prison.

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