Romain Rouillard (comments collected by Maël Hassani) / Photo credit: SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS / AFP 9:37 p.m., April 4, 2024

On Wednesday, Samara, 14, suffered a violent attack as she left her high school in Montpellier. And while the thesis of a beating against a backdrop of religious disagreement is accredited by several witnesses, Sarah El Haïry, Minister Delegate in charge of Children, Youth and Families, confided her "anger" to Europe 1. 

An outburst of hatred and violence fell on young Samara on Wednesday. The teenager, attacked as she left her college in Montpellier by three other young people, was seriously injured, to the point of being hospitalized. On Europe 1, Sarah El Haïry, Minister Delegate in charge of Children, Youth and Families, does not lose anger. 

“What I feel is a lot of anger,” she expresses. If gray areas remain to be clarified regarding the context of this attack, the hypothesis of a beating for religious reasons is relayed by several witnesses within the establishment. Some Muslim students would not accept the “Europeanized” way of life in Samara and would have ordered the young girl to wear a veil. “They called her a disbeliever,” assured the teenager’s mother. 

“In our country, there are no unbelievers, there are only French”

Enough to make Sarah El Haïry jump. “In our country, there are no unbelievers, there are only French people. In the Republic, there is no hunt for clothes or outfits,” insists the minister, according to whom Samara has been the victim of an “identity assignment”. “The blows that Samara took, it is the Republic which takes them,” she adds. 

>>

READ ALSO

- “A call for rape for Samara”: the teenager attacked in Montpellier was threatened according to her grandmother

For Sarah El Haïry, “the simple defense of secularism is not enough”. The minister advocates an offensive posture for the country in this area. "Which means taking on debates, not looking away, not being tempted by 'no wave'." And to conclude by sending his support to educational establishments. “More than ever today, we need to be alongside the school so as not to let this pressure, not to let this entryism take away our youth and send a certain number of our young people to the hospital.” 

For the moment, three minors, aged 14 and 15, are still in police custody. Nicole Belloubet, the Minister of National Education, announced the opening of an administrative investigation into the establishment. Inspectors general from the ministry will try on Friday to understand how such brutality could have fallen on Samara.