Hollande calls on French to fly the tricolour flag to honour Paris victims

The president wants citizens to participate in the homage to those who died in the November 13 attacks by “decorating their homes with the blue, white and red flag, the colours of France”, government spokesperson Stéphane Le Foll told reporters Wednesday.

Hollande will preside over what is set to be a solemn and emotional ceremony to honour the victims on Friday at Les Invalides, a military museum and the burial place of Napoleon in central Paris.

Families of the victims have been invited to attend along with some of the 350 people injured in the attacks.

Le Foll said that displaying the tricolore would be a way for every French person to take part in the ceremony and pay tribute to the victims of a tragedy that has “touched every one of our fellow citizens very deeply”.

“Not everyone can come to Les Invalides, but we have tried to find a way to let every French person be part of Friday’s tribute,” he said.

Sales of France’s tricolour flag have soared following the Paris attacks, with retailers struggling to meet the boom in demand.

“For a normal November we would sell about 5,000 flags. This year, we are expecting around 10,000 orders by the end of the month,” Arnaud Meunier, director of marketing at leading flag-maker Doublet, told French magazine L’Obs.“We have rarely seen anything like this,” he added.

French flags have also appeared among the flowers and candles placed outside the Bataclan concert venue, the Carillon bar and the other sites of the attacks, while numerous landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, have been illuminated in the country’s national colours.

The tricolour has also adorned thousands of social media profiles in the days since November 13, with Facebook offering users the option of a red, white and blue filter to their profile pictures.

An appropriate message?

It marks a surprising resurgence in the popularity of the flag in public life.

Unlike in the United States and elsewhere, a national flag hung outside a window or on a mast in a front lawn is not something that has been often seen in France in recent decades, with many feeling it has become an emblem appropriated by far-right groups such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front party.

But Sandra Laugier, a philosophy lecturer at the Sorbonne University, told AFP that in the wake of the attacks the flag has become a banner for "the love of life", in contrast to the Islamic State group's "love of death".

Nevertheless, for many there remains a sense of uneasiness over the use of the flag as a symbol of post-attacks solidarity. “I don’t think the French flag is appropriate response or message to send out,”  28-year-old Marie-Elie Aboul-Nasr, from Paris, told FRANCE 24.

“It says nothing about the victims, displaying flags just reinforces the sentiment that our only way to respond is by going off to war.”

Sebastien Lesouef, a 35-year-old IT worker in Paris, said he understood the reason for the gesture, but feels it is not a “proper way to honour the victims”. “For me, the call should have requested that the flags be half-masted as is usually the case in all ceremonies honoring the dead.

“On the other hand, I do applaud the government in taking the time to figure out a way to make this commemoration as inclusive as possible.”