“I escaped death”: 20 years after the 2004 law on religious symbols in schools, the principal of the Gabriel Havez college in Oise remembers...

Louise Sallé / Photo credits: AFP 8:21 a.m., March 15, 2024

After 15 years of debate, the law banning ostentatious religious symbols in schools was promulgated on March 15, 2004. A law aimed at clarifying the notion of secularism, in particular with regard to the veil.

Indeed, the question of the headscarf appeared in France in 1989, in Creil, in Oise, at the Gabriel Havez college, when three teenage girls tried to enter wearing a veil.

They were refused access to their classroom by the principal at the time, Ernest Chénière.

Despite the threats he received, and the lack of political will to settle the debate, he held on.

For Europe 1, this 89-year-old retired head of establishment immerses himself in his memories.

Europe 1 met him at his home, near Montargis in Loiret. 

>> Find Europe 1 Matin in replay and podcast here

“All of France was really moved by this affair”

“It’s a poster that was put up to support me because I was attacked from everywhere.”

Ernest Chénière keeps, from his time in Creil, a trunk at the bottom of his cellar, filled with posters, press cuttings and letters from teachers who salute his courage.

“All of France was really moved by this affair,” he recalls.

He remembers this return to school in September 1989. "It was after a few weeks that there were three girls who arrived veiled. I called the three young girls. I was in my role, I explained to them that the establishment was a secular establishment. On returning from the following vacation, they came with their veils, determined to engage in a tough confrontation. I reported this to the hierarchy. Minister Jospin, at the "At the time, sent me a letter saying that we had to restore calm and peace, but that was in fact putting pressure on me," he admits.

“I escaped death”

One evening, while walking his dog, he was attacked.

“I escaped death. You don’t forget things like that… It took three months,” he confides.

It was then the king of Morocco who put an end to it by convincing the families in person to give up this standoff.

But then disputes over the veil increased in France until the law was clarified in 2004. According to a survey published this week in

, 78% of French people consider, like the Prime Minister, that secularism is threatened in France. .