UN General Assembly
2014

Myriam Riva, Emmanuel Riva, Dominique Sabrier, Alexandre Strens — these are the names of the four people brutally murdered on 24 May in Brussels. Four people were killed just because they were in a Jewish museum, an institution dedicated to culture, knowledge and intelligence. I named these four victims, but I do not forget the thousands of anonymous victims of barbarism around the world. For the abject act that took place at the Jewish Museum in Brussels is connected to the events sweeping the world right now. In Syria and Iraq, as well as in countries like Algeria, terrorists kill innocent people every day. Syria and Iraq are of special concern to us. There, defenceless people, women and children are victims of massacres, persecution, destruction and the theft of all their possessions — all because they belong to cultures, including the Muslim culture, that the terrorists do not agree with. Yet, no religion, and certainly not Islam, asserts that we must kill those who think differently. We have to say this over and over again in order to