Paris terrorist attack: Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier's mission was to mock religious extremistsParis terrorist attack: Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier's mission was to mock religious extremists
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Paris terrorist attack: Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier's mission was to mock religious extremists



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                January 8, 2015




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Nick O'Malley
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Hebdo editor killed by gunmen
Masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a satirical newspaper, killing 12 people, including the paper's editor, Stephane Charbonnier, before escaping in a getaway car.
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"It just so happens I'm more likely to get run over by a bicycle in Paris than get assassinated," the cartoonist and editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier, told the Los Angeles Times in 2013.He now lies dead, along with 11 others, victims of an attack on the satirical magazine he headed in Paris, shot dead by gunmen, one of whom yelled as he went about his murder, "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed."

                                Killed by gunmen ... Charlie Hebdo's publisher and editor Stephane Charbonnier in 2012. A 24-year-old man faced trial for allegedly threatening to behead Charbonnier in September, 2012. Photo: Francois Guillot


Charbonnier, or Charb, as he was known, was used to death threats.
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He was under police protection, but he told Le Monde, the French newspaper, that as a single man he did not fear retaliation, and that he would rather "die standing than live on my knees".Charlie Hebdo's mission was to mock those institutions and individuals that had declared themselves to be above mockery. Among its favoured targets was religion. Charlie Hebdo has savaged the Catholic Church, been accused of anti-Semitism and relentlessly satirised Islamic extremism.

                                A person reads the latest issue of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris after gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs opened fire in the offices of the weekly magazine in Paris. Photo: AFP


 "We want to laugh at the extremists — every extremist. They can be Muslim, Jewish, Catholic. Everyone can be religious, but extremist thoughts and acts we cannot accept," Laurent Léger, a journalist at Charlie Hebdo, told CNN in 2012.Charlie Hebdo evolved from a satirical magazine of the 1970s and emerged in its current form in 1992. It has never had a huge circulation but has been well known for its provocative cartoons.In 2006 it reprinted the controversial cartoons depicting Islam and Mohammed first published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. While many publications around the world reported on the issue without touching the cartoons, Charlie Hebdo not only reprinted all 12, but added some new ones of its own.

                                Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper cartoonists Cabu, Charb, Luz and Riss give an editorial conference at the Theatre du Rond-point in Paris, one day after the publication's offices were destroyed in a petrol bomb attack on November 3, 2011. Photo: AFP


Charb rejected a statement from the then-French president Jacques Chirac that "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided. Freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility" and in 2011 announced an issue to be guest edited by the Prophet Mohammed. Readers were warned: "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!"Charlie Hebdo's offices were then firebombed and destroyed.The following year the online release of an amateur film called The Innocence of Muslims prompted riots by Islamic extremists around the world. Over 50 deaths have been attributed to the protests, and fury over the film is thought to have been partly responsible for the attack on a US diplomatic outpost in Libya that cost the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.Charlie Hebdo responded by publishing two more cartoons including depictions of Mohammed.Police asked Charb to reconsider, the editor refused and France closed 20 foreign outposts around the world.Many French publications, and the Catholic Church, condemned Charb's decision to publish as irresponsible.Laurent Fabius, France's Foreign Minister, said on public radio, "In the present context, given this absurd video that has been aired, strong emotions have been awakened in many Muslim countries… Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour oil on the fire?"Charb was typically unbowed. "I don't feel as though I'm killing someone with a pen," he told Le Monde. I'm not putting lives at risk. When activists need a pretext to justify their violence, they always find it."In fact Charb believed it was not his publication's content that provoked savagery, but its determination. "It's not exactly our drawings that have power, it's our stubbornness — a stubbornness to continue doing what we feel like doing, through drawing ... It comes from the fact that I have nothing else," he told the LA Times."The only thing we have is our freedom of speech. If we give up on that, we'd need to change fields. Do other things."

















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