Demonstration against racism and for secularism

More than 1 500 people gathered on November 11th on Leclerc square to express their condemnation of the racist insults pronounced last month against the justice minister, Christiane Taubira, when she visited Angers. If those people, coming from all political horizons, were legitimately affected by the seriousness of that misconduct and the deplorable fame that event gave to Angers, the nightly destruction of a tree of secularism, planted in Lorraine sqaure in 2012, has added to their worries. 

After that symbolic tree, set up there last year, was beheaded, Mr. Béatse, "given the circumstances", had not ruled out that such destruction be the fact of people having "ulterior motives" : i.e. people being hostile to the concept of separation between the state and the religions. Even if respect of races and respect of religious ideas are not the same concepts, two serious offenses have taken place in the city. 

If the refusal of a person, because of what that person is, constitutes an offense, the denial of the right to criticize religious ideas is also a insult. If a new tree is something necessary, seeds of tolerance in minds of people are also essential.