Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Mrs. Anna Hakobyan, along with French President Emmanuel Macron and Mrs. Brigitte Macron, attended the ceremony of enshrining the remains of Armenian hero of the Resistance Movement Missak Manouchian and his wife Mélinée Manouchian in the Pantheon of the greatest figures of France.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, former French President François Hollande, members of Armenian and French governments, legislative bodies, public and political figures were also present at the event.
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Emmanuel Macron made a speech during the ceremony. In his speech, the French president noted that Missak Manouchian was free when he was walking on the street and passing by this Pantheon. “He imagined what his beloved Armenia would be like. Manouchian called himself “a tiger full of rage” when he was arrested, but Mélinée was with him in all the odysseys and supported him. The final, permanent choice was freedom. He chose the underground life so that the Frenchman would not lose anything from their freedom, he was intoxicated by the great dream of freedom, he was a soldier of freedom,” Macron said, adding that today there is France that is grateful to them.
“Missak and his 23 companions, as well as everyone else who was involved in this freedom, were finally honored. Love and freedom for eternity,” said the French President.
He, who loved to love, decides to kill in March 1943. Is it so that people dream, yes it is so, and yes it is here, because they were estranged from the world and they decided to fight”, Macron said in his tribute speech.