“Ten years later, Charlie Hebdo is still there”
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Ten years after the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, the magazine remains defiant
Tomorrow marks the 10-year anniversary of the deadly attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. The satirical magazine published a special issue today to commemorate the day two brothers began a shooting spree to avenge the oft-ridiculed Prophet Mohammad. The shooting killed 12, including four cartoonists, and wounded 11 others. There are no cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in this issue, but it does contain over three dozen cartoons mocking God and religion.
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Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau was one of the cartoonists wounded in the shooting. Now as Charlie’s publishing director he penned an editorial explaining the issue is in keeping with its mission to “fight against all forms of enslavement, political, religious or economic.“
But what’s the point of creating a newspaper for any other purpose than that? This is what those who founded it and kept it alive for years had always wanted, among whom several paid with their lives. Today, the values ??of Charlie Hebdo, such as humor, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, feminism to name but a few, have never been so much called into question. Perhaps because it is democracy itself that is threatened by renewed obscurantist forces. Satire has a virtue that has helped us get through these tragic years: optimism. If we want to laugh, it is because we want to live. Laughter, irony, caricature are manifestations of optimism. Whatever happens, dramatic or happy, the desire to laugh will never disappear.
Note: translated using Google Translate
The edition features 39 cartoons, like the Burkhard “Burke” Fritsche cartoon below, submitted in a world-wide competition to find cartoons from around the world mocking God. Charlie received around 350 cartoons which varied from mocking of god, inappropriate themes to criticizing religion.
According to Radio France Internationale, President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo will attend a commemoration event on Tuesday with French TV channels airing special coverage. A high school in northeast France collaborated on a special edition “Charlie Hebdo Grand Est” that will be distributed to schools.
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