Paris: The French satirical newsweekly Charlie Hebdo is set to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the deadly 2015 attack on its newsroom with a special edition of the magazine. The issue, marking a decade since the tragedy that claimed 12 lives, features a cover illustration of a man sitting atop the butt of a gun alongside the defiant caption “Indestructible!”
“Today, the values of Charlie Hebdo—such as humour, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, and feminism—have never been so under threat,” wrote the magazine’s editor, Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau, in an editorial. Riss, one of the attack’s survivors, reflected on the resilience of satire, stating: “Satire possesses a virtue that helped us make it through these tragic years: optimism. If we want to laugh, that means we want to live. Laughing, irony, caricature are manifestations of optimism.”
On January 7, 2015, two brothers stormed Charlie Hebdo‘s Paris newsroom in what prosecutors described as an attempt to avenge the Prophet Mohammad. Among the victims was editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who the gunmen deliberately targeted.
The magazine had long been controversial for its provocative cartoons, including depictions of the Prophet Mohammad published years before the attack. Such depictions are widely regarded as blasphemous in Islam.
The violence extended beyond Charlie Hebdo. Over the next two days, a third attacker killed a police officer and took hostages in a kosher supermarket in a Paris suburb, resulting in four Jewish victims’ deaths. In a video, the gunman claimed allegiance to the militant group Islamic State and stated that the attacks were coordinated. All three assailants were killed in separate police standoffs.
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The 2015 events sparked a global outpouring of solidarity, epitomized by the hashtag “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie). However, the attacks also signaled the start of a wave of Islamist violence in France that continues to influence the nation’s security policies.
French political leaders are expected to attend commemorative events on Tuesday to honor the victims and reflect on the enduring impact of the attacks.
