Ten years after the attacks, Charlie Hebdo still “wants to laugh”

(Paris) “The desire to laugh will never disappear! », assures Charlie Hebdo10 years after the jihadist attack which decimated part of its editorial staff, in a special issue focusing in particular on “laughing at God” through some 40 caricatures chosen from hundreds.

In this special issue that AFP was able to find on newsstands on Monday, the satirical newspaper says it is “indestructible!” », with, in a front page drawing, a reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading, delighted, this Charlie “history” of 32 pages.

“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,” underlines Riss, its director, in the editorial which looks back on the last 10 years marked, according to him, by a “geopolitical situation” which has “worsened”.

“Today, the values ​​of Charlie Hebdolike humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been so questioned. “Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces,” he explains.

On January 7, 2015, 12 people were killed in the attack on the weekly by the Kouachi brothers, French people 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.

Drawing your “anger”

Charlie was the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.

The newspaper, whose anticlerical line has never varied, launched an international competition at the end of 2024 for press cartoonists on the theme #LaughdeGod, inviting them to “draw[r] 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.

Among them, one represents a Christ on the cross filming himself with a telephone, another shows a mother and her child in a landscape of ruins saying to themselves that “one god is okay, three hello the damage”, a designer wonders if drawing “a guy who draws a guy who draws 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 one of them.” 62% of respondents say they are in favor of “the right to outrageously criticize a belief, a symbol or a religious dogma”.

This survey was carried out by self-administered online questionnaire from May 31 to 1^is June with a sample of 1000 people, representative of the population aged 18 and over.

“I am Charlie”

The attacks of January 7, 2015 caused worldwide emotion and gave rise to a slogan of support: “Je suis Charlie”.

On January 11, demonstrations brought together nearly four million people across France, with many heads of state and government in the Parisian procession.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the attack, 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”.

The commemorations will take place on Tuesday in the presence of Mr. Macron, several ministers and the mayor of Paris.

They will start at 11:30 a.m. in the XI^e district, where Charlie Hebdo had its premises in 2015, they will continue on Boulevard Richard Lenoir, where police officer Ahmed Merabet was shot dead. They will end at 1:10 p.m. with a tribute to the victims of the Hypercasher Porte de Vincennes store in Paris: four people of Jewish faith were killed there on January 9.

Monday, the trial of the man who attacked two people with a chopper in September 2020 in front of the former premises of Charlie Hebdo as well as five of his relatives, suspected of having motivated and supported him, opened before the special assize court for minors in Paris.

Zaheer Mahmood thought he was attacking Charlie Hebdo employees, unaware that the newspaper had left its premises after the 2015 attack. The six accused all come from the same rural region of Pakistan.