Twenty-five years later, the United States commemorates the victims of September 11

Twenty-five years after the trauma of September 11, New York paid tribute, Friday, September 11, to the victims of the deadliest terrorist attacks the United States has known, without Donald Trump, but in the presence of the first Muslim mayor in its history, target of certain conservative voices.

At “Ground Zero”, the site of the former twin towers of the World Trade Center, relatives of the missing began the solemn reading of the victims’ names, in a southern district of Manhattan sealed off for the occasion.

“Every year, it is a very difficult period for us, this year even more so because we are reaching the 25-year mark,” John Fila, a firefighter, present a few hundred meters away during another ceremony in Manhattan, told AFP.

Flowers and small American flags were placed on the edges of the two huge ponds created in place of the destroyed buildings, forming the imposing memorial where the names of the dead were engraved.

‘We will never forget,’ Trump says

Vice President JD Vance is on site as well as the four former heads of state still alive: Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as Republican George W. Bush, who presided over the country the day these attacks killed nearly 3,000 people.

Donald Trump chose to attend another ceremony at the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, also targeted that day by a plane hijacked by hijackers from the jihadist organization Al-Qaeda.

“Today we renew the sacred oath that we first took in their name a quarter of a century ago. We will never forget. This is what we are fighting for today. We have no choice. There can only be victory,” declared the American president.

Also readThe Al-Qaeda threat continues, 25 years after the September 11 attacks

Prominent among the officials is Zohran Mamdani, 34, from the left of the Democratic Party and the first mayor of the city to have taken the oath on a Koran.

After the attacks, anti-Muslim acts surged in New York as in the rest of the United States. The police had also increased surveillance of communities in the name of the fight against Islamism, through a program that has now been abandoned.

In 2001, “there was of course already a Muslim population in New York, but it was smaller and had practically no political weight. Since then, the situation has changed considerably, in the city and at the national level”, observes political scientist Lincoln Mitchell to AFP.

A development which did not prevent certain conservative voices from demanding that Zohran Mamdani not attend the commemorations. Like that of Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York at the time of the attacks – who subsequently became Donald Trump’s lawyer – who said he was “offended” by the young elected official’s presence at “Ground Zero”. Also present at the ceremony, the former city councilor also accused Muslims of wanting to “dominate” America.

See alsoThe lessons of September 11, 25 years later

Transmission and pedagogy

A petition, which has collected more than 100,000 signatures, also accuses Zohran Mamdani of being associated with people “disdainful of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies”, without specifying which ones. Member of the small Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Zohran Mamdani is a committed activist for the Palestinian cause, very critical of Israel.

This week, he also announced the publication of tens of thousands of documents revealing, according to him, the city’s cover-ups on the toxicity of the air after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

In addition to the 2,977 people who died in the United States on the day of the attacks, mainly in New York, more than 9,400 others died from illnesses linked to their exposure, according to the federal medical monitoring program.

See alsoPollution: 25 years later, September 11 still kills

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied to them that it was safe to breathe toxic air,” insisted Zohran Mamdani.

Among those who could be implicated are Rudy Giuliani, but also Michael Bloomberg, elected mayor in November 2001.

A quarter of a century after the events, there are now around “100 million Americans who were not yet born or too young to have any memory” of the events, underlines Beth Hillman, president of the September 11 Memorial Museum.

See alsoSeptember 11: 25 years later, how do young Americans perceive this event?

After having placed great emphasis on “the duty to remember”, the institution she directs is now focusing its efforts on transmission and pedagogy, with witnesses trained to intervene with audiences who have learned of the facts only through their parents or school.

With AFP