It was like a replay of a horror movie at noon last Wednesday, January 7, 2015, as two brothers, armed with guns, burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, located in the heart of Paris, the French capital. What followed was a staccato of gunshots. The two men started shooting from the reception area before moving to the newsroom, where they killed journalists and cartoonists, a policeman and a visitor, and later executed another officer who tried to stop them. By the time the smoke from the booming guns finally died down, a total of twelve people were stone dead. The corpses of the casualties were strewn everywhere, from the lobby to the blood-soaked stairs and the second floor of the building where the bodies lay on one another. It was a commando-style attack, the sort that creates heavy carnage. It bore the signature of a terror strike.
The world was enraged, with many world leaders spitting fire and brimstone from their various comfort zones in condemnation of the dastardly act. Naturally, nowhere was the outpouring of emotion and solidarity more pronounced than in France where the citizens in their tens of thousands gathered spontaneously across the country for poignant vigils in the aftermath of the attack. At noon, a day after the attack, the country literarily came to a standstill as a minute’s silence was observed all over the country in memory of those who lost their lives in the senseless attack. Later in the evening of that day, several thousand people gathered again at the Place de la Republique in Paris, a traditional protest site, shouting, “He isn’t dead, Charlie” or “Hip hip hurrah, we are Charlie.” Also on Sunday, an unprecedented crowd attended the unity rally in Paris to denounce terrorism.
Today, Charlie Hebdo and France are mourning the callous murder of a total of 17 people, comprising 10 journalists, two police officers and five others. The fatal attack is an extreme example of the brutal, often violent reality for news hunters worldwide. In Syria, Yemen, Mexico, Iraq, Pakistan and many other volatile countries, the shock and fear that has stunned France is all too familiar. The International Press Institute, IPI, has always included in its annual report titled “Death Watch”, a list of journalists and media staff who are deliberately targeted because of their profession – either on account of their reporting or simply because they are journalists. Since 2011, at least, 158 reporters and photographers have been killed while doing their jobs making it the worst three-year period on record. With this growing statistics, it appears there is a global battle against freedom of expression as journalists are unquestionably under increasing threat these days.
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‘This spirit of oneness and unity demonstrated by warring political leaders in France and beyond, is worthy of emulation by our various political leaders in Africa, especially in Nigeria, a country that is plagued by deep seated political, tribal and religious animosities, chronic discontent and disunity even as the country battles a band of terrorists currently holding it by the jugular’
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What happened in Paris is a clarion call on newspapers and magazines across the globe to brace up for anticipated attacks in the foreseeable future as terrorists are not about to let down their guard at all. Instead, they are practically mushrooming everywhere and getting more vicious. There will, sadly and with outmost certainty, be more attacks across the globe as the year unfolds. When journalists are murdered, it is our entire society that should feel the wound. It remains to be seen, if, perhaps, this latest attack could be the one that finally jolts everyone to the stark reality that an attack on a journalist is an attack on us all.
After the beheadings all over the place and a terribly violent year in 2014, what the latest attack portends is that, journalistic entities that challenge power structures in their societies are constantly being attacked. The Paris shootings conform to that form of attack, except that, in this case, it happened in Paris, a place that was hitherto considered very safe in view of its vibrant and robust intelligence network. That alone makes it more shocking and much unexpected. Well, if the intention of the terrorists was to intimidate, it may have largely succeeded, except that the attack is nonetheless incapable of dampening the enthusiasm and resolve of journalists across the globe to sanitise the world, a world where journalists face threats from religious fanatics, organised crime and overzealous security agents. Presently in Italy, about six journalists live under police protection because of threats from groups like the Mafia. Lirio Abbate, a reporter with l’Espresso magazine, is one of them. Abbate goes around in an armoured car and is protected 24 hours a day by five police officers. The Paris attack has enabled the whole world to really appreciate the risk in the job of reporters. In the past, such devilish attack was a common sight only in Italy. Today, it has defied all borders.
Charlie Hebdo is one of the few publications carrying on a tradition of satirsing religion and rulers in cartoons dating back to the French Revolution in the closing years of the 1700s. Famed for its irreverent style, the magazine, which was attacked by extremists claiming a mission to “avenge” cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, is unique in France for its broad thematic sweep. The magazine is not only devoted to political satire but it is also a social critique, from ecology to economy and finance. At Charlie Hebdo, you can say and draw anything. There are no forms of taboos. The latest attack on the newspaper, strikes at the fabric of democracy, and aspiring democratic societies, the world over. This is because an attack on such a newspaper that is so bold, unwavering in its acerbic political satire and penetrating social commentary, is only intended as an attack on the values free societies uphold.
The fact that this attack occurred in a country that is nonetheless committed to believing in difference and diversity, while struggling with its multicultural identity – liberté, egalité, fraternité – is a tragic blow for those committed to these values. What is exceptional in this instance is that the climate of hatred that fuels attacks on journalists worldwide, has reached the heart of European newsrooms. As we grieve, and as the reasons unfold and the story develops, I hope it will register deeply in the hearts and minds of everybody just how precarious our freedoms as human beings and as information practitioners have become. That anyone, anywhere, should be killed for exercising the right to freedom of expression is a travesty. Whether it happened in France, Iraq, Syria or Yemen, there is no exception. Only in solidarity can we hope to withstand assaults like this. But the reality – based on the lack of reaction to previous, countless, tragic slayings of journalists everywhere, over the years – is that until it happens in our own backyard, it often goes unrecognised as posing any threat at all.
For those of us in Nigeria, in the face of this recent tragedy, we must reject the fear it was calculated to spread. We have a duty to those who died: to soldier on. They lived in the name of freedom, and died its truest defenders. Though democracy is hurt in their heart, we must not yield to provocation, intimidation and other forces that are ever willing to express themselves in this crude, cruel and abominable way.
However, for every development, there are always the bad and the good sides. Agreed that the terrorists’ attack in Paris was bad, but something good came out of it. This is the fact that even political foes within and outside the country, who would normally have met through gritted teeth, set their differences aside and became united in grief. The attack provided a platform for everybody to brush aside their differences and come together as one. This spirit of oneness and unity demonstrated by warring political leaders in France and beyond, is worthy of emulation by our various political leaders in Africa, especially in Nigeria, a country that is plagued by deep seated political, tribal and religious animosities, chronic discontent and disunity even as the country battles a band of terrorists currently holding it by the jugular.
