French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo has responded to last week’s Paris terror attacks in its trademark controversial fashion.
The cover of the magazine’s latest edition, by cartoonist Coco, depicts a dancing reveller, bottle and glass in hand, with champagne pouring out of holes in his body.
“Ils ont les armes on les emmerde on a le champagne!” the caption reads.
English translation: “They have weapons. F**k them, we have champagne.”
It may be recalled that Charlie Hebdo itself was brutally attacked in January. The attack on its office — just a short walk from the Bataclan rock concert hall — decimated their editorial team, killing some of France’s most beloved cartoonists in a rampage that left 17 dead there and elsewhere in the city.
The latest attacks on Friday evening struck several targets in a trendy area of eastern Paris including pavement cafes and the Bataclan rock concert hall, where mostly young people were enjoying a night out, leaving 129 dead overall.
In the latest edition out Wednesday, Charlie Hebdo’s managing editor, Riss, writes: “Blood and tears, prophesied Churchill. That’s where we are. Without realising it, the Parisians of 2015 have sort of become the Londoners of 1940, determined not to yield, neither to fear nor to resignation, whatever catches them off guard.”
According to Riss, Islam “for the past 20 years has become a battleground where radicals want to exterminate non-believers and subdue moderates by force.”
“Avoiding the pitfall of division should not make us renounce the right to criticise religion on the pretext that its exercise is sometimes irritating. Among all the basic freedoms that make up our lives, it is also this freedom that the killers wanted to eliminate this Friday evening,” he adds.
