Charlie Hebdo: ten years ago, the shock of the attack, France standing in the face of terrorism and hatred

Ten years ago, on January 7, 2015, France entered a terrible tunnel of terrorist attacks that wanted to destroy our democracy, our way of life, our freedom to think, to believe or not to believe, our way of living together, all of us, free and equal citizens since the Revolution of 1789. The Daesh terrorists will not have achieved their goals because they found in front of them a people who stood up, immensely resilient, supported by countries around the world, ready to resist alongside it in the face of obscurantism.

The French perhaps did not yet perceive this force in themselves, on January 7, 2015, when the notifications on their smartphones, then the special flashes of radios and continuous news channels told the unthinkable . The editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, the impertinent satirical weekly, had just been attacked in its premises on rue Nicolas Appert in 11^e district of Paris.

A decimated editorial team

Jihadists, dressed all in black and armed with Kalashnikovs, first enter number 6, but it is not the right address. Targeted by recurring threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, drawn by Charb, Charlie Hebdo feared for its security and its premises were quasi-secret with armored doors and reinforced police protection… Threatening a neighboring employee, the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi end up entering number 10. In the lobby of the building, they kill a maintenance agent, Frédéric Boisseau, then force the designer Coco to open the door to the writing.

Landing in the middle of a meeting, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, the terrorists shot dead 10 people. Michel Renaud, passing guest and the police officer Franck Brinsolaro responsible for Charb's close security, then the members of the editorial staff: Cabu, Charb, Tignous, Honoré, Wolinski, Bernard Maris, Mustapha Ourrad and Elsa Cayat. After five minutes of shooting, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi fled, thwarted the police roadblocks and shot Ahmed Merabet, one of the two police officers who tried to disarm them. At the end of this day which left 12 dead and 11 injured, François Hollande announced that the Vigipirate “Attack Alert” plan had been triggered throughout Île-de-France.

But the terrorist hatred continues the next day. While attention is focused on the tragedy that struck Charlie Hebdo, Amedy Coulibaly kills a police officer, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, in Montrouge then takes hostage staff and customers of the Hyper kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes and kills four people of Jewish faith, Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham and François-Michel Saada. Coulibaly is shot dead during the RAID and BRI assault.

North of Paris, the Kouachi brothers continue their journey and find refuge in a printing house where they take the manager hostage before freeing him. An employee of the company, who remained hidden in the premises, managed to communicate valuable information to the GIGN, which received the green light from François Hollande to attack and kill the terrorists after hours of fruitless negotiations.

National unity around “Je suis Charlie”

Thirty years after the attacks which, from rue des Rosiers to rue de Renness, had devastated the country, France is once again touched to the heart by terrorism. A terrorism that chooses its targets: journalists, Jews, police officers. The shock is all the more immense as everyone can feel the loss of the victims almost personally, as Cabu and Wolinski were known and appreciated by several generations.

The French also discovered the prosecutor François Molins, whose straightforwardness, coolness and precise explanations delivered in his warm voice reassured the French and prevented media frenzy and general panic. France, threatened on numerous occasions for its external operations in Africa and the Middle East by Al-Qaeda or Daesh, in any case measures how much the terrorist threat can materialize on its soil but also how much, behind these assassinations, is at stake. also something else, of the order of the symbol and the values ​​at the foundation of the Republic.

The time has come for national unity and the French, instinctively, carnally, spontaneously have understood this. This unity after which we often run is built this time in a natural way by gatherings of French people all over France, who, pens and pencils in hand, say no to terrorism and want to defend freedom of expression and the freedom to criticize religions. .

A slogan then appears and spreads everywhere: “Je suis Charlie” in white letters on a black background. A cry from the heart, a rallying sign that will go beyond our borders, echoed in the editorial offices of newspapers around the world and by their readers. What happened in France then becomes a major international fact, which concerns the whole world, because the whole world is threatened by terrorism.

The world with a standing people

And the whole world will meet in Paris on January 11 for a silent, solemn, poignant Republican march. In the midst of the French who came en masse to the streets of the capital and while hundreds of rallies have been organized throughout the country since the day before, François Hollande breaks through the crowd with dozens of heads of state and government at his side, from Angela Merkel to Benyamin Netanyahu, from Mahmoud Abbas to David Cameron, from Macky Sall to Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, all came to demonstrate their solidarity and their desire to fight against terrorism.

Ten years later we see how historic this march was, ten years later we also see how “Je suis Charlie” has faded in the face of the onslaught of misinformation manipulated on social networks, in the face of the hateful debates exacerbated by certain media, in the face of to the polarization of society excited by populists of all stripes.

But ten years after Charlie – then the Bataclan and Nice – remains the idea that in the face of barbarism, in the face of intolerance, in the face of religious obscurantism, in France, heir of Voltaire and the Enlightenment, of Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin, there will always be a standing people.