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The issue featured a dozen cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam, including images that sparked huge protests when first published, to mark the start of the trial this week of suspected accomplices in the 2015 massacre.
A woman walks past a painting by French street artist and painter Christian Guemy, known as C215, paying tribute to members of the newspaper ‘Charlie Hebdo’ who were killed by jihadist gunmen in January 2015, in Paris, on August 31, 2020. Image: AFP
PARIS – French satirical weekly Charlie hebdo, the target of a jihadist attack in 2015, said on Friday that its latest edition, which reprinted controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, sold out in just one day.
Wednesday’s edition featured a dozen cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam, including images that sparked huge protests when first published, to mark the start of this week’s trial of suspected accomplices in the massacre.
Charlie hebdo It distributed three times its normal print run on Wednesday, but eager readers pounced on the paper and many who intended to grab their copy later in the day were frustrated.
A new batch of 200,000 copies is currently being printed and will hit French newsstands from Saturday.
“It shows that we are backed, that freedom of expression, secularism and the right to blasphemy are not outdated values and that they have the support of the French public who decided to buy the issue,” said a Charlie cartoonist who calls himself ” Juin, “he told AFP.
Twelve people, including some of France’s most famous cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi made a gun rampage at the newspaper’s Paris offices.
“We will never lie down. We will never give up,” wrote director Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau in an editorial accompanying Wednesday’s issue, which was titled “All this, just for that.”
The decision to reprint the cartoons drew angry condemnations from Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, as well as Egypt’s top Muslim authority, Al-Azhar.
On Friday, thousands of people demonstrated against France across Pakistan, with protesters calling for boycotts and the expulsion of the French ambassador.
But Charlie hebdo He defended his decision in the editorial, arguing that the reissue of the cartoons was “essential”.
“We work on the principle that some people don’t know about cartoons, some were not even born when they were published byCharlie in 2006, and they need to understand why the attacks happened, “Juin said.
“The right to blasphemy and freedom of expression exist if we use it. For us, it was justifiable to reprint the cartoons because it shows that these rights still exist and allows us to defend them,” he added.
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