Between laughter and tears, the weekly Charlie Hebdo appears “indestructible” for the commemorations on Tuesday of the jihadist attacks ten years ago against its editorial staff, then against a Hyper Cacher store in eastern Paris.
These ceremonies open a cycle, while France was hit in 2015 by a series of attacks, including those in Paris and Saint-Denis on November 13 of this dark year.
Tuesday’s commemorations will be “like every year” marked “through sobriety, in accordance with the wishes of the families”indicated the Paris town hall. Anne Hidalgo “will pay tribute to the victims” in the presence of Emmanuel Macron and several ministers.
Ten years to the day after this killing of January 7, 2015, Charlie Hebdo released a special 32-page issue in parallel. On the front page, he says “indestructible! »with the drawing of a jovial reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading this newspaper “historical”.
Alongside it on newsstands, several dailies devote their front pages to the tenth anniversary of the attack: “Freedom, Freedom Charlie!” » thus titled Libération, while Le Figaro is worried to see France “still under Islamist threat” ten years later.
“The terrorist threat has never been so present”states the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau on the front page of 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.
Twelve people, including eight members of the editorial staff, lost their lives in the attack on the weekly by the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, Frenchmen of Algerian origin who had pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. After two days of tracking, the latter were shot dead by an intervention team from the GIGN, the elite group of the French gendarmerie, in a printing works in Dammartin-en-Goële (Seine-et-Marne), where they were cut off.
A cheerfully anarchist and anticlerical newspaper created in 1970 from the ashes of Hara-Kiri magazine, Charlie Hebdo had been the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.
Among the dead are its emblematic director, the cartoonist Charb, as well as two legends of caricature in France, Cabu and Wolinski.
From January 7 to 9, 2015, brothers Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly targeted freedom of expression, law enforcement and the Jewish community in attacks ” contact details “ although claimed by two distinct entities, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State organization (IS).
Two police officers in Paris and Montrouge, as well as four people of Jewish faith in a kosher store at Porte de Vincennes, were also killed during these three days of terror.
To these victims was added the former webmaster of Charlie Hebdo, Simon Fieschi, seriously injured in the attack and died last October, at the age of 40.
« Vertu » satire
The ceremonies will begin Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. GMT) 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 Kouachi as they fled. They will end at 1:10 p.m. (12:10 p.m. GMT) with a tribute to the victims of the Hyper Cacher store.
On Wednesday, the city of Montrouge will organize a tribute ceremony to municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe, killed by Amedy Coulibaly, also author of the Hyper Cacher attack.
These attacks caused worldwide emotion and gave birth to a slogan of support that remains famous: “I am 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.
Ten years later, Charlie Hebdo published in its special issue a series of caricatures on the theme #LaughingatGod. The weekly, whose anticlerical line has never varied, launched an international competition at the end of 2024 inviting people to draw the “anger against the influence of all religions”.
Tribute to the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists murdered during a rally in Marseille, January 8, 2015 / Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP/Archives
Among 350 drawings received, nearly 40 were selected. One shows a mother and her child in a landscape of ruins saying to themselves that“one god it’s okay, three hello the damage”another presents a designer who wonders whether to draw “A guy drawing a guy drawing Mohammed, is that okay? ».
The newspaper 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 is part of it”.
Riss, Charb’s successor at the head of Charlie Hebdo, emphasizes in the editorial that “satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism”.
“Whatever happens, whether dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never disappear”he says, looking back on the last few years marked, according to him, by a “geopolitical situation” who is “aggravated”.
For his part, Emmanuel Macron hoped that there would be no “no respite in the fight against terrorism”: It is “a risk which remains significant in our societies and which implies that there must be no let-up”he said Monday in front of the French ambassadors gathered at the Elysée.
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