Freedom to Act: The Charlie Hebdo Attack
On the morning of January 7, I stepped out to catch the first
rays of the sun glistening off the crested waves of a grey ocean. As I did on
the previous two days, I turned on the TV before heading for the balcony of my
hotel room and waited for the darkness of the ocean to be quickly replaced by a
bright turquoise hue in that early light. However, that moment of glory did not
arrive that morning. What I heard on the TV made me feel that the entire world
had plunged into darkness.
The pundits were pounding their fists upon the events that had
unfolded earlier in the day nearly half way around the globe from my hotel room
in Hawai’i. The office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris had been the target of a
terrorist attack that had left eleven people dead. Separately, a Muslim police
officer of Algerian descent had also become a victim of terrorist rampage. A
massive manhunt was under way to locate the assailants who had claimed to be
belonging to al-Qaeda in Yemen.
Charlie Hebdo (French for Weekly Charlie), the newspaper known
for its anti-establishment cartoons and jokes, was under attack? Why would
“terrorists” pick on these cartoonists? What message were they trying to
convey? I had seen occasional reproductions of Charlie Hebdo cartoons in US
media. The publication is irreverent and stridently non-conformist in tone, is
strongly secularist, antireligious and left-wing, and publishes articles that
mock the far right, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Israel, politics, culture, and
various other groups as local and world news unfold.
The talking heads on the TV were quoting the eye witnesses. According
to them, the gunmen had left the scene, shouting "We have avenged the
Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo!" Apparently, Charlie Hebdo
had attracted attention for its lampooning of Prophet Muhammad. But did the
terrorists really kill Charlie Hebdo?
I remembered the worldwide controversy following the Danish
newspaper Jyllands-Posten publication of ‘Muhammad’ cartoons in 2005. Charlie
Hebdo was also embroiled in that controversy when it re-published those
cartoons. In 2011, it had its own stint at caricaturing Muhammad. Subsequently,
the newspaper’s office was firebombed and its website hacked.
Two years before the Paris attack, cartoonist Stéphane
"Charb" Charbonnier, the Editor-in-Chief of Charlie Hebdo who was also
killed in the siege, had stated, "We have to carry on until Islam has been
rendered as banal as Catholicism." In 2013, al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) added him to its most wanted list, along with three Jyllands-Posten
staff members. The primary suspects, laying the siege in response to the AQAP
call, were French citizen brothers born in Paris to Algerian immigrants who
were orphaned at a young age. Both were under surveillance until the spring of
2014.
As the world was transfixed on the manhunt over the next two
days, a “close friend” of the Charlie Hebdo assailants carried out a
sympathetic attack on a kosher supermarket, holding and killing hostages. He
acted in the name of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and was released
from prison in early 2014. Subsequent investigation revealed that all
terrorists were supplied with weapons through Belgian underworld.
It was the deadliest act of terrorism in France since the
Vitry-Le-François train bombing of 1961 in which 28 people were killed at the
height of Algerian War of Independence. The events of Paris demonstrated that
in spite of technological advancements, the enforcement of safety and security
of the public comes down to having adequate human resources.
On January 11, while I was en route to home, the streets of
Paris and elsewhere in France were teeming with millions of people marching in
solidarity. By then “Je Suis Charlie” (French for I am Charlie) slogan became
an endorsement of freedom of speech and press around the world.
Interestingly, the Paris march raised controversies too.
Reporters Without Borders criticized the presence of some of the world leaders whom
it identified as “representatives of regimes that are predators of press
freedom.” Many pointed out the hypocrisy of the Western media for not covering
an attack in Northern Nigeria by the extremist group Boko Haram around the same
time. The incident had left nearly 2,000 people dead (unconfirmed) and towns in
smolder.
The Muslim world surprisingly showed less unity in its response,
compared to that in the aftermath of the Jyllands-Posten controversy. Perhaps,
the loss of life prompted some countries and organizations to condemn the
attack. Clearly, the Charlie Hebdo massacre provided the ammunitions to
special interest groups. It has become a recruiting poster for the terrorists throughout the world. The three days when Paris went into
lockdown showed that the terrorists could have a strong grip on the psyche of
the masses whenever they chose. The massacre also strengthened the anti-Muslim
bias of right-wing organizations of Europe. Even some of the Evangelical
priests in the US exploited the sentiments of people to denounce Islam.
The Paris tragedy has also sparked debates on free speech around
the globe. In France, there’s a growing debate over why some speech is
protected and some isn’t. Defending Holocaust is enshrined in French laws while
many would like be in the spirits of Voltaire and Rousseau to fight for
“freedom.” The Arab World rocked by the attacks is seeing unprecedented debate
on free speech, according to the Middle East Research Media Institute. Some
repressive Governments, like China, have seized this opportunity to espouse
putting “limits to free speech.”
Even in the US, where freedom of speech is guaranteed by the
Constitution, a recent panel hosted by the University of North Dakota in
response to the Charlie Hebdo attack concluded that free speech is a
complicated subject without easy answers.
And how would the Paris newspaper like to posture itself vis-à-vis
freedom of speech? "We do not attack religion, but we do when it gets
involved in politics," said Gerard Biard, the new editor of Charlie Hebdo.
[SUBHODEV DAS]
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