Charlie Hebdo has published a special 32-page issue to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the attack on its editorial office.
On 7 January 2015, two brothers, Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, entered the headquarters of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered twelve people. Eight of them were editorial staff: five cartoonists (Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Charb, the editor-in-chief), a proofreader (Mustapha Ourrad), a psychoanalyst (Elsa Cayat) and an anti-neoliberal economist (Bernard Maris, known as "Oncle Bernard").
Caricature, a fundamental right
This special feature, among other things, publishes the results of a survey conducted by Ifop for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. More and more people are defending the right to laugh. And even to laugh at God.
The results of the survey show that 62% of respondents are in favour of"theright to provocatively criticise a religious belief, symbol or dogma".
76% of respondents believe that"freedom of expression is a fundamental right and that freedom of caricature is one of them". In 2012, only 58% thought so. An increase of almost 20% in twelve years is no mean feat.
The results are also published in response to a question about The New York Times ' decision to stop publishing political cartoons. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they did not approve of the decision.
2019 cartoon. See related article.
They have also published on their website the selected vignettes from their #RiredeDieu / #MockingGod competition, which you can see in this gallery.
At present, the weekly's editorial offices are in a secret location for security reasons and its workers have to walk around with bodyguards.
In his editorial, entitled"Incredible and universal", Riss recalls that"Ten years later, Charlie Hebdo is still there" and reviews how the attack influenced the evolution of the weekly.
The day after the attack, our backs were against the wall: from being a commentator on current affairs, Charlie Hebdo suddenly became a political actor. If Charlie collapsed and disappeared, the terrorists won. If Charlie managed to resurrect, the terrorists failed. Keeping the paper meant demonstrating that the ideas we had fought for over the years, through texts and drawings, were not just talk, but the expression of our deepest convictions. The attack was a moment of truth that tested the solidity of our ideas, despite the suffering and difficulty of having to rebuild a newsroom that was always threatened and denigrated by critics. Because ideas are real, lived experiences, not just beautiful words to be declaimed or scribbled in an editorial.
Satire has a virtue that has helped us in these tragic years: optimism. If you feel like laughing, you feel like living. Laughter, irony and caricature are expressions of optimism. Whatever happens, dramatic or happy, the urge to laugh will never disappear.
Laurent Sourisseau, better known as"Riss", was born in 1966 and joined La Grosse Bertha in 1991, where he met Charb, Luz, Cabu, Philippe Val and the whole team of the future Charlie Hebdo. In July 1992, he took part in the re-edition of Charlie Hebdo. In 2009, after Philippe Val's departure, he shared the newspaper's management with Charb. On 7 January 2015, he was shot in the back in the attack and has been the paper's editor ever since.
