Ten years after the attack in Paris –
“Charlie Hebdo” always “wants to laugh”
The satirical newspaper targeted by a bloody terrorist attack calls itself “indestructible” in a special issue to be published on Tuesday.
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.
AFP/Martin BUREAU
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“The desire to laugh will never disappear!” assures “Charlie Hebdo», ten years after the jihadist attack which decimated part of its editorial staff, in a special issue to be published on Tuesday focusing in particular on “laughing at God” through some 40 caricatures chosen from hundreds.
In this special issue that AFP was able to consult on Monday, the satirical newspaper calls itself “indestructible”, with, in a front page drawing, a reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading, delighted, this “historic” “Charlie” 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 ten years marked, according to him, by a “geopolitical situation” which has “worsened”.
“Obscurantist forces”
“Today, the values of “Charlie Hebdo”, such as humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been as strong called into question. Perhaps because it is democracy itself which finds itself threatened by renewed obscurantist forces,” he explains.
On January 7, 2015, twelve 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.
“Charlie” had been the target of jihadist threats since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.
«#RireDeDieu»
The newspaper, whose anticlerical line has never varied, launched an international competition at the end of 2024 among press cartoonists on the theme #RireDeDieu, 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.
Among them, one represents a Christ on the cross filming himself with a telephone with a subtitle warning that “the little bird is going to come out”, another shows a mother and her child in a landscape of ruins telling themselves that “a God it’s okay, three hello the damage”, a designer wonders if drawing “a guy who draws a guy who draws Mohammed, is that okay?”
-Another sketch depicts a man wondering “how to caricature what does not exist? This competition is completely stupid.”
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”.
“I am Charlie”
This survey was carried out by self-administered online questionnaire from May 31 to 1is June with a sample of 1000 people, representative of the population aged 18 and over.
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 4 million people across France, with many heads of state and government in the Parisian procession.
Two people attacked with a chopper
Ten years later, the commemorations organized on Tuesday will take place in the presence of the President of the Republic, several ministers and the mayor of Paris.
They will start at 11:30 a.m. in the XIe 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 Hypercacher Porte de Vincennes store in Paris: four people of Jewish faith were killed there on January 9.
On Monday, the Juvenile Assize Court tried the man who attacked two people with a chopper in September 2020 in front of the former premises of “Charlie Hebdo”, unaware that the newspaper had left the premises after the 2015 attack.
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