FRANCE-SHOOTING/FUNERAL UPDATE Emotions run high as Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Tignous is buried
Record ID:
324357
FRANCE-SHOOTING/FUNERAL UPDATE Emotions run high as Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Tignous is buried
- Title: FRANCE-SHOOTING/FUNERAL UPDATE Emotions run high as Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Tignous is buried
- Date: 15th January 2015
- Summary: WOMAN TAKING PICTURES MUG WITH PENCILS
- Embargoed: 30th January 2015 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- Country: France
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA6CMJNKMPTEPOYN3MXFHWTKKD6
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: EDIT CONTAINS PROFANITY (SHOT 20)
Hundreds turned up on Thursday (January 15) to bid farewell to murdered French cartoonist Tignous (pronounced Ti-ny-oos). Tignous was one of the 12 killed in last week's attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.
The crowd broke into applause when his coffin - covered in cartoons and goodwill messages - was carried from the town hall into a waiting hearse.
Before the burial, Tignous' wife Chloe Verlhac and French justice minister Christiane Taubira spoke at a ceremony to celebrate his life.
"And I thank you for pushing through for him, for being strong, for continuing to make us laugh and to say important things and to fight because we have, right now, I think, a duty and a responsibility," Verlhac said.
"There is a phrase which I find a bit silly but I said it a lot - he should not die for nothing. I think it's fundamental. We are, they (cartoonists) are, today, messengers of hope," she added.
Referring to Voltaire, a French author and philosopher who promoted Enlightenment, Taubira said: "We can draw anything, including a prophet because in France, in the France of Voltaire and irreverence, we have the right to make fun of religions. A right. Yes, because a right is democracy and democracy is the realm of the law."
The ceremony took place in Montreuil, a city on the outskirts of Paris where Tignous lived.
Hundreds came to pay their last respect to Tignous.
"I am in tears today because, it's difficult to phrase it, they didn't deserve this, that's the problem. This Charlie twat, thankfully he did... he left.... But (the fact that) families must be destroyed today, this is the problem," Laurent said.
"I am here as a citizen to defend freedom of expression, as a resident of Montreuil, and as a mother, because I also lost my partner very early and I ended up alone raising two small children, and I share the pain of every victims and their families," Nathalie said.
Tignous, whose real name was Bernard Verlhac, was to be buried during a private ceremony at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. There, he will join other famous denizens like Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust and Jim Morrison. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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