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France commemorates on Tuesday the deadly jihadist attack carried out ten years ago against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The publication that always loudly defends freedom of expression.
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January 7, 2025 – 09:37
(Keystone-ATS) Germany shares “the pain of our French friends”, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed on Tuesday on the social network our common values of freedom and democracy – we will never accept it,” he added.
After two days of tracking, the Kouachi brothers, French people of Algerian origin who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, were shot dead by an elite team of the gendarmerie, in a printing house in the Paris region where they had gone. cut off.
A cheerfully anarchist and anticlerical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo has been the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.
France was hit in 2015 by a series of attacks, from the attack on the famous satirical weekly to those against the Bataclan performance hall, the Parisian terraces and the Stade de France on November 13 of this dark year.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Monday to continue the fight against terrorism without “respite”. He stressed that the risk “remains significant in our societies”, which “implies that there be no relaxation and collective vigilance”.
Emotion mondiale
This attack caused worldwide emotion and gave birth to a support slogan that remains famous: “Je suis Charlie”.
On January 11, 2015, demonstrations brought together nearly 4 million people across France, with many heads of state and government in the Parisian procession.
Tuesday’s commemorations will be “like every year” marked “by sobriety, in accordance with the wishes of the families”, indicated the Paris town hall. Mayor Anne Hidalgo “will pay tribute to the victims” in the presence of President Macron and several ministers.
The commemorations will begin at 11:30 a.m. rue Nicolas-Appert in the 11th arrondissement, where Charlie Hebdo had its premises in 2015. They will continue on boulevard Richard Lenoir, where police officer Ahmed Merabet was shot dead by the Kouachis as they fled.
And they will end at 1:10 p.m. with a tribute to the victims of the Hypercasher Porte de Vincennes store: four people of Jewish faith, taken hostage, were killed there on January 9, 2015 by Amedy Coulibaly, who claimed to be from the Islamic State ( EI).
Ten years to the day after the massacre that targeted its editorial staff, Charlie Hebdo released a special 32-page issue. On the front page, he says he is “indestructible!” ”, with the drawing of a jovial reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading this “historic” newspaper.
This issue includes a series of caricatures on the theme #LaughingatGod. The weekly launched an international competition at the end of 2024 inviting people to draw “anger against the influence of all religions”. Among 350 drawings received, nearly 40 were selected.
One shows a mother and her child in a landscape of ruins saying that “one god is fine, three hello the damage”, another presents a cartoonist who wonders whether to draw “a guy who draws a guy who draws Mohammed , How’s it going ? “.
“Obscurantist forces”
Alongside Charlie Hebdo on newsstands, several French dailies devote their front pages to the tenth anniversary of the attack: “Liberty, Liberty Charlie! » headlines Libération, while Le Figaro is worried to see France “still under the Islamist threat”.
“The terrorist threat has never been so present,” also asserts the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau on the front page of the newspaper Le Parisien, while the shadow of a pencil and an eraser pierced by a bullet draws a “10” on the front page of La Croix.
Charlie Hebdo publishes on Tuesday the results of a study by the Ifop polling institute carried out in June 2024 indicating that 76% of French people believe that “freedom of expression is a fundamental right” and that “freedom of caricature is one of them “.
Riss, the successor at the helm of Charlie Hebdo to the iconic cartoonist Charb, killed in the attack, emphasizes that “satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism.”
“Today, the values of Charlie Hebdo, such as humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been so challenged. cause (…) Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces,” he asserts.
