From now on, the death certificate will bear the words “victim of terrorism”.
A purely political measure and contrary to the spirit of the Civil Code since 1804, which introduced the death certificate with the sole aim of establishing a death so that consequences can be drawn from it, mainly the granting of succession.
The birth certificate does not mention whether the child was wanted or not, whether the mother suffered at birth, whether the child was conceived by MAP, whether the mother had a lover, whether the child was premature… so why mention that the deceased died while the murderer was shouting “Allah abkar”, if not to offer some kind of triumph to his murderer, who will have dragged his victim through the mud on the civil register?
One does not choose to be a victim of terrorism, and it is terribly unfair to see one’s life ended in this way.
Since 1804, the Civil Code has required only such information as will make it possible to identify the deceased with certainty and to know where and when he died (this information is useful in determining who the heirs are at that time, since succession is established) and what law governs that succession by operation of law, Certainly, one goes so far as to take into account the profession of the deceased, but only because at the time the rulebook was written, we did not yet have computer technology and this could make it possible to eliminate certain ambiguities when a Pierre Martin or a Paul Durand died and several could have been born on the same day and in the same place (Paris in particular)…
Thus, since Napoleon, Article 35 of the Code stipulates that “the registrars may not insert in the records submitted to them, either by notation or by any other declaration, anything other than what must be declared by the persons who appeared”.
Similarly and more specifically, under Article 85, “in all cases of violent death, or in prisons and detention centres, or in executions, these circumstances shall not be mentioned in the registers, and death certificates shall simply be issued in the forms prescribed by Article 79”.
The death certificate should be neutral for moral and philosophical reasons.
One cannot consider a Sarah Halimi first and foremost as a victim of terrorism; to do so would be to insult the memory of the victim who made the effort to build a life, to sustain an existence that someone else ended unjustly and violently. It is certainly necessary to defend the memory of the deceased by fighting for the murderer to be punished and for the circumstances of his death to be recognised by the courts, but it is neither useful nor legally necessary to add to the death certificate that ends a person’s civil existence a circumstance that is of no interest from the point of view of maintaining personal status.
The registry office is an institution that regulates personal status, i.e. it lists the living population and establishes the link between ancestors, descendants and spouses. It is intended to remain a summary so that the information is clear and concise given the volume of records involved. It is both an official maternity hospital and an official cemetery, on paper, and humanity provides a voluminous as well as uninterrupted stream of new arrivals and departures to feed the registers….
For this reason, Napoleon and the authors of the Civil Code did not want violent death to be mentioned on the death certificate. That was a matter for the newspapers and the courts, but not for the registry office.
Article 79 of the Civil Code thus reduces the death certificate to the function of identifying the deceased and stating the day, hour and place of death in order to safeguard it.
The decree issued by Mr Dupont-Moretti is useless and distorts the law of civil status!
The addition of the words “victim of terrorism” will in no way contribute to the fight against terrorism, nor will the corresponding seal.
If one suspects that this political measure is meant to be a tribute to the victim, it is on the contrary an insult to the victim: his existence is reduced to having been a victim of terrorism. And it is perhaps a special trophy offered to his murderer, who will have sullied his victim even on his civil documents.