Marking ten years since the terror attack that killed 12 people, including eight editorial staff members in Paris, the publication director of Charlie Hebdo has published a special issue to be released on Tuesday.
On 7 January 2015, 12 people, including eight staff members, lost their lives in an attack on the weekly’s Paris office by the Kouachi brothers, French nationals of Algerian descent who had pledged allegiance to militant Islamic fundamentalist group Al-Qaeda. The victims included cartoonists Charb, and two legends of French caricature, Cabu and Wolinski.
Charlie Hebdo had been the target of jihadist threats since publishing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in 2006. The newspaper revived an international contest in late 2024 with the theme #LaughingatGod and received around 350 submissions, publishing "the most effective and accomplished" ones.
To mark ten years since the attack, the satirical newspaper has released a special issue on Tuesday. "The desire to laugh will never disappear. We are un-killable!"
The cover features a delighted reader sitting on an assault rifle, reading this historic 32-page edition of Charlie, which also includes four pages of caricatures of different Gods submitted by cartoonists from around the world.
"Satire has a virtue that helped us endure these tragic years: optimism. If you want to laugh, it means you want to live. Laughter, irony, and caricature are expressions of optimism. No matter what happens, dramatic or joyful, the desire to laugh will never disappear," Riss emphasises in the editorial, reflecting on the past decade marked by an "aggravated geopolitical situation."
"Today, Charlie Hebdo’s values such as humour, satire, freedom of expression, ecology, secularism, and feminism, to name a few, have never been more challenged," he explains. "Perhaps because democracy itself is threatened by renewed obscure forces."
