Ten years on from the Islamist terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, France will ask: “Are we all still Charlie?”
The #JeSuisCharlie hashtag spread around the world in January 2015 after brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi stormed the paper’s offices killing 11 people in retaliation for it printing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
After gunning down several of France’s most celebrated journalists and cartoonists, the pair shot dead an injured police officer lying on the pavement outside. The murders would mark the first of three days of terrorist attacks in the French capital: the following day, Amédy Coulibaly shot a trainee police officer before taking hostages and killing four Jewish victims – three shoppers and a member of staff – at the Hyper Casher kosher supermarket on 9 January.
All three gunmen died in separate police shootouts on 9 January.
At the 2020 trial of 14 suspects linked to the Charlie Hebdo attack, Simon Fieschi, the paper’s webmaster, who was the first person shot after the Kouachi brothers entered its offices, said he still suffered physical paralysis and was in almost constant pain. Fieschi was found dead, aged 40, in a Paris hotel in October last year.
“I hear us described as those who escaped. I don’t feel like that. To my knowledge, none of those who were there that day escaped what happened,” he said at the trial.
The three days of killing were a response to Charlie Hebdo’s publication of caricatures mocking the prophet Muhammad in 2006. On Sunday, Philippe Val, the former director of Charlie Hebdo, said he had no regrets over publishing the cartoons.
“I called a meeting [before publication] of all Charlie’s staff to ask their opinion and if only one hadn’t wanted to, we wouldn’t have published … But I don’t regret it, it had to be done, the fight isn’t over, things aren’t any better today,” Val told Le Parisien, adding that he had been “living under protection since that day, for 20 years”.
This week’s commemorative Charlie Hebdo, number 1694, will be a double edition of 32 pages; 300,000 copies will be printed and on sale from Tuesday – a day earlier than usual – for two weeks for €5. The newspaper claims to usually sell about 50,000 copies a week. Edition number 1178, which appeared on 14 January 2015 and was called the “survivors’ edition”, sold 8m copies.
The edition marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks will centre on Charlie Hebdo’s trademark theme: freedom of expression. As well as caricatures by leading regular cartoonists, it will feature 40 cartoons and caricatures out of 350 sent in as part of an international competition on the theme of religion. Called #LaughingAtGod, the newspaper suggested participants “draw your anger against the hold all religions have on your freedoms”.
It will also feature an Ifop poll on “the French and the right to caricature, blasphemy and freedom of expression”; conducted in June last year, it showed 76% of French people asked believed freedom of expression – including “freedom to caricature” – was a fundamental right. Of those polled, 62% said they approved of the right “to criticise a religious belief, symbol or dogma in an outrageous manner”.
Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, said readers would also be able to discover the paper’s “admirers … in countries where they are not necessarily expected”, as well as a feature on atheists.
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The front page remains a closely guarded secret. “We already have the idea, but it will be a surprise,” Biard told Ouest-France newspaper.
On Tuesday evening, in a special broadcast on freedom of speech, France 2 television will pose the question: “Are we all still Charlie?”. The programme aims to “decipher the current state of the threat”. As well as terrorism experts and Charlie Hebdo journalists, the programme will also include teachers and students to discuss issues of secularism and actors, artists and writers.
In October 2020, Samuel Paty, 47, a secondary school teacher who taught geography and history, was decapitated by an Islamist terrorist after posing the question “to be or not to be Charlie?” during an ethics class.
The previous month, a Pakistani national, Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, had attacked and seriously injured two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Charlie Hebdo offices. Mahmoud goes on trial for attempted murder in Paris on Monday.
