On January 7, 2015, 8 members of the Charlie Hebdo editorial team were killed in a terrorist attack.
Ten years later, the satirical weekly continues to be published and wants to make people laugh while denouncing.
A look back at the last decade of the newspaper, always on the front line to defend freedom of expression.
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Ten years since the Charlie Hebdo attack
Ten years later, Charlie Hebdo is still there, against all odds. The satirical magazine, forever marked by the Islamist attack of January 7, 2015, which led to the death of 12 people in total, will publish its number 1694 on the anniversary date. A special issue of 32 pages and on sale for two weeks, as a response to the terrorists who had stated, after carrying out their killing: “We killed Charlie Hebdo!”. A decade later, the proof is that this is not the case.
“A normal editorial atmosphere”
In highly protected and secret premises, a dozen cartoonists, half of whom were recruited after the attack, meet to discuss the upcoming newspaper. “A normal atmosphere” editorial team, confides to AFP the designer Pierrick Juin, one of the “new” members of Charlie Hebdo.
Far from the records of 2015 (the issue following the attack had a circulation of eight million copies and subscriptions peaked at 240,000 in February), the weekly can now count on 30,000 subscribers. While the magazine is now available online and on social networks, around 20,000 copies are sold on newsstands. Like everywhere in the press, “it’s getting more and more complicated”admitted his editor-in-chief. And despite everything, Charlie Hebdo continues to publish, every week, without exception.
You have to be up to the task
Pierrick Juin, cartoonist who joined Charlie Hebdo in April 2015
If the team of the caricature journal therefore looks to the future, the missing retain an important place. “They are always there, I always hear them talking. With the newspaper team, we are constantly going back and forth between them and us”explained the editorial director, Riss, in December during an interview with Mondeon the occasion of the release of a book tribute to the eight members of the editorial staff assassinated on January 7, 2015. “For ten years, I have tried to be an intermediary between them and young people. We cannot understand what we are doing if we no longer have these missing people in mind”he emphasized.
“I would have liked to be alongside Cabu, Wolinski and the others. You have to be up to the task”estimates Pierrick Juin in response, while recognizing that he sometimes keeps “a feeling of imposture”. Because on his shoulders, as on those of those who draw for Charlie Hebdo, rests the need to perpetuate the biting humor, so characteristic of the weekly. The famous “esprit Charlie” who considers that nothing is sacred and that everything can be criticized.
Controversies and misunderstandings
A mission that the entire team strives to fulfill, although the attack does not exempt Charlie Hebdo’s drawings from misunderstandings or even violent reactions for ten years. The latest controversy, since September, several drawings linked to the Mazan rape trial have caused an outcry. “It is frankly time to question the ‘humor’ of this newspaper which makes no one laugh except old white guys with brains soaked in rape culture”commented a user under one of the drawings posted on Instagram.
“It is not Charlie who is violent by crudely showing the rapes of which Gisèle Pelicot was the victim”defended one of the editorial journalists in a post published on the newspaper’s website, insisting on the need to be able to continue to draw everything. Before that, on another note, the publication, in August, of a caricature of the Virgin Mary affected by monkey pox, earned Charlie Hebdo complaints. “When we get a lot of reactions, I tell myself that we have to continue”estimates Juin, who was the author.
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This taste for provocation would be the best way to defend freedom of expression. A message that the Charlie Hebdo team defends during workshops with high school and college students to raise awareness of the caricature exercise. “I was surprised by the questions of the high school students I met […] How does Charlie Hebdo express itself? Some people ask what the limits are. This concerns them, they are afraid of the moment when we will cross the red line. I answer that you have to dare to go beyond your comfort zone. Freedom of expression, for it to live, sometimes you have to shake it up a little”Riss explained to AFP during an interview in 2023.
“We are trying to raise awareness among young people”he added again. The system works through the association “Generation Charlie”. Beyond the commemorations, there is indeed an issue of “transmission”explained the publishing director, who, ten years after the killing, still lives under police protection.
