The world is reeling from the slaughter of 17 people last week, starting with 12 murders at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Three masked attackers entered the Paris newspaper’s offices armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and asked for cartoonists by name. After killing and wounding staff, they burst into the weekly editorial board meeting and gunned down some of the most popular and controversial cartoonists in the French world, allegedly in retaliation for cartoons mocking Islam and the prophet Muhammad. After the massacre, three men reportedly shouted “God is great” and “The prophet is avenged” and fled.
Killed in the initial attack were Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief, cartoonist and columnist Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, cartoonists Philippe Honoré, Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac, Georges Wolinski and Jean “Cabu” Cabut, columnists Bernard Maris and Elsa Cayat and proofreader Moustapha Ourad. Also slain were festival organizer Michel Renaud, who coincidently was at the meeting, building maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau, killed after being asked for directions, police officer and Charbonnier’s bodyguard Franck Brinsolaro, and police officer Ahmed Merabet, coincidently a Muslim, who had been patrolling outside when the attack began.
French police eventually killed the three men at two separate standoffs but not before they killed four customers at a Jewish deli and policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe.
The French equivalent of The Onion or Mad Magazine, Charlie Hebdo published cartoons that were called blasphemous, tasteless, obscene or offensive.
Nothing was sacred to Charlie Hebdo, except the right to offend and poke fun. The newspaper’s offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published a series of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. Interviewed by ABC News in 2012 about the attack and threats against himself and his paper, Charb said “I prefer to die than to live like a rat.”
In 2011, the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith stated it deplored the newspaper’s mockery of Muhammad, but “reaffirms with force its total opposition to all acts and all forms of violence,” treating the newspaper like a petulant and misbehaving but beloved child of France’s long history of political satire.
The staff of Charlie Hebdo tried their best to be equal opportunity offenders: Cartoons and commentary satirized Protestants and Catholics, Muslims and Jews, the political right and left, male and female, Western and non-Western, and foreign and French leaders with equal vigor. The paper itself is named in mockery of France’s beloved World War II general and former president, Charles de Gaulle.
After Wednesday’s attack, newspapers from France’s Libération, Le Monde and Le Figaro to USA Today and Germany’s Die Tageszeitung joined together with worldwide media outlets and journalism organizations to declare their solidarity with the phrase “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.” Over the weekend, more than 3.7 million people in France marched in memory of the dead, in support of free speech and in defiance of terrorism, the largest march ever in the history of the country.
Charlie Hebdo staff never thought of themselves as champions of free speech but rather insurrectionists and iconoclasts for whom labels, even that of “martyr” are open to satire. Even reeling in the death of their colleagues, the survivors of the Charlie Hebdo attack announced they will print another satirical issue, on schedule, this Wednesday.
Bullets can kill, but can never silence the dead. Je suis Charlie.
