“The desire to laugh will never disappear! », assures Charlie Hebdoin a special issue to be published Tuesday. Ten years after the jihadist attack which decimated part of its editorial staff, the satirical newspaper still hears “laughter at God”, through 40 caricatures chosen from hundreds. In this special issue, the newspaper calls itself “indestructible!” “.
The newspaper, whose anticlerical line has never varied, launched an international competition at the end of 2024 for press cartoonists on the theme #Laughing at God, inviting you to “draw your anger against the influence of all religions on your freedoms”. Among 350 drawings received, nearly 40, “the most effective and accomplished”, are published in the anniversary issue.
Freedom of expression, “a fundamental right”
It also publishes the results of an Ifop study for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation 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 in is part of it.” 62% of respondents say they are in favor of “the right to outrageously criticize a belief, a symbol or a religious dogma”.
“Satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism. If we want to laugh, it’s because we want to live. Laughter, irony, caricature are manifestations of optimism. Whatever happens, whether dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never disappear,” emphasizes Riss, its director.
-“Today, the values of Charlie Hebdolike humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been so questioned, he explains. Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces.”
Our file on Charlie Hebdo
On January 7, 2015, twelve people were killed in the attack on the weekly by the Kouachi brothers who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Among them, eight members of the editorial staff: the designers Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski, the psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat, the economist Bernard Maris and the proofreader Mustapha Ourrad. Charlie had been the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.
