Monday's press came back to the attacks that left nearly 300 people dead on Sunday morning in Sri Lanka and punctuated with blood and in "the dread" Holy Week of Catholics.
"The carnage"
Most dailies published this Easter Monday were chorus with the title "Easter loopholes" ( Le Figaro , West France ), "bloody" (Courrier Picard , La Provence , La Voix du Nord ) or "bloody" ( Latest News). 'Alsace' , or 'dramatic' ( The Union ). "Terrorism hits Sri Lanka hard", describes Alsace in one.
Discover your Figaro of Monday, April 22 in digital edition # Societyhttps: //t.co/WAAc1G4p6e
- The Figaro (@Le_Figaro) 21 April 2019On the front page of your newspaper tomorrow: the horror in Sri Lanka # vdnunepic.twitter.com / pg6jSgksbx
- The VDN by La Voix du Nord (@lavoixdunord) 21 April 2019"The carnage", writes for its part Midi-Libre in one, with however "bloody Easter in Sri Lanka" in the legend of the photo where we see disordered benches, military and first aid in a church, image evoking the chaos that shook the island and saddened the world.
© Midi Libre screenshot
A new blow for Catholics
"Catholics targeted", title of his side Le Parisien . "After the catastrophe of Notre-Dame, Easter Sunday opened with a hope," says Stéphane Albouy. "That of seeing the Parisian cathedral reopen in a few years, but this April 21 will remain a tragic date for the Christian community."
The fire of Notre-Dame at the opening of Holy Week is thus mentioned, but never related to these attacks: editorialists are careful not to amalgamate two events that are far out of proportion in terms of human lives. having made no death.
Sunday, the Christian community has lost nearly three hundred faithful, and the editorialist of Figaro , Étienne de Montety, insists on the recurrence of anti-Christian acts: "The tragedy in Sri Lanka, and more widely the persecutions in the world, force us to widen our horizon: men and women suffer, die because they live their faith, go to church to celebrate Easter, the summit of the Christian life, we must face the facts: we live the time of the martyrs ".
A message sent to the West?
These attacks were not claimed on Sunday, even if an Islamist movement is cited by the local authorities as a possible responsible because of "information" about the risks of attacks emanating from ten days ago "a foreign intelligence agency ".
Laurent Bodin, in Alsace , believes that, "while this festival is the most important of Christendom, the message addressed to the West is unequivocal: the war against radical Islamism is not won, despite the military defeat on the ground, in Syria and Iraq, of Daesh ".
© screenshot "Alsace"
A tense local context
Unless these attacks are related to the local context, as suggested Didier Rose ( Latest News of Alsace ), which recalls previous incidents that "have continued to weaken the hopes of cordial understanding between the communities of the country" victim of a long civil war (1983-2009). "Directed already against the Christians, or opponents of Muslims and Buddhists, these incidents have given Sri Lanka the image of an ill-extinguished volcano, an island that can suddenly capsize under the spell of never-sleeping rancors or fundamentalist impulses", regrets there. "In these times of rapid change, the harm of peoples leads to radicalization," observes Jean Levallois ( La Presse de la Manche ).
A sense of solidarity in the face of attacks
However, these attacks resonate in the national collective memory, because "faced with the distress of Sri Lankans, we feel up in us this desperation that had seized France after the attacks of November 2015 and the macabre litany of terrorist attacks that our country has endured for several years, "writes François Wojtalik in Le Courrier Picard . In any case, underlines Géraldine Baerh in L'Union , "there is no longer a truce, and the world must live with it, but there is no question of resigning oneself".