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[via ZAPIRO.COM]
Masked men armed with rifles stormed the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris and killed 12 people. The dead included four political cartoonists, editor in chief Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier and two police officers. Charbonnier received numerous death threats from Islamic extremists. The attack appears to have been in response to the magazine’s frequent publication of cartoons mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad. One gunman reportedly shouted, “We have avenged the prophet Muhammad, we have killed Charlie Hebdo” as he jumped into a getaway car. Supporters of free speech used the slogan "Je suis Charlie" (French for "I am Charlie") against the shooting. The slogan identifies the speaker with those who died at the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and by extension for freedom of speech and resistance to armed threats. It was used as the hashtag #jesuischarlie on Twitter, as printed or hand-made placards, and displayed on mobile phones at vigils, and on many websites, particularly media sites such as Le Monde. Je suis Charlie quickly trended at the top of Twitter hashtags worldwide following the attack. Cartoonists across the world have flooded the streets and the internet with powerful drawings in defiance of the armed gunmen who attempted to silence Charlie Hebdo.
Zapiro
Born in Cape Town in 1958, Zapiro couldn’t imagine a career in cartooning, so he studied architecture at University of Cape Town.
Couldn’t imagine a career in architecture, so…>
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Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro), via The Daily Vox
I’m completely devastated. The more the hours pass, I don’t feel the impact lessening at all – in fact it’s worsening when I think of the implications for cartoonists, satirists, media in general, and anyone who holds freedom of expression dear.
I feel it’s very childish when people turn the blame on the cartoonists and the publication. That really is a response I frown on, and that’s putting it mildly. This was a devastating, murderous, cowardly attack on people who are expressing points of view.
Charlie Hebdo has a long history of satirising political subjects and religious subjects, and obviously a lot has been made of their works around Islam. But they are not the reactionary, Islamophobic, right-wing people who are causing trouble for Islam, that is the French right-wing party [the National Front] and I hope very much that they won’t get some impetus from this terrible attack.
Charlie Hebdo is extremely irreverent and necessary in a secular society. We need to have people who will push the boundaries. That’s not to say that I liked everything that was done by their cartoonists – that’s not the issue. It’s not about whether one likes everything, it’s about the fact that they felt the freedom in that secular society to do things that were irreverent.
ALSO READ:
Mail & Guardian: CHARLIE HEBDO ATTACK 'WORST IN RECENT TIMES'
Media Club SA: CHARLIE HEBDO: RESPONSES FROM SA CARTOONISTS
