"We Will Never Give Up": Charlie Hebdo Republishes Mohammed Cartoons
by Giulio Meotti • September 2, 2020 at 5:00 am
France is starting to reflect on the dramatic decline in its freedom of expression.
"My unfortunate client will be freedom...." — Richard Malka, attorney for Charlie Hebdo, Le Point, August 13, 2020.
Western democracies have paid dearly for the right to freedom of expression and, if not protected and exercised, it can disappear overnight.
"If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won". — Elisabeth Badinter, French philosopher; the documentary "Je suis Charlie", September 9, 2015.
Yesterday, one day before the opening of the trial for 14 defendants accused of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks in France, which included the murders of their fellow journalists and cartoonists on January 7, 2015 at their Paris office, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished the "Mohammed Cartoons" under the title "Tout ça pour ça" ("All of that for this"). "We will never give up", they said.
The defendants in the trial, some in absentia, "face a variety of charges related to helping perpetrators carry out attacks that killed 17 people over three days in January 2015." In addition to the 12 victims in and around the office of Charlie Hebdo, a police officer was murdered in the street and four people were murdered in a kosher supermarket.
