FRANCE-SHOOTING/ONE MONTH One month on, the French national assembly pays hommage to Charlie Hebdo

Record ID: 324457

  • Title: FRANCE-SHOOTING/ONE MONTH One month on, the French national assembly pays hommage to Charlie Hebdo
  • Date: 7th February 2015
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - JANUARY 7, 2015) (REUTERS) RESCUERS OUTSIDE CHARLIE HEBDO OFFICES SHORTLY AFTER THE SHOOTING BULLET IMPACT IN WINDOW INJURED VICTIM BEING BEING TAKEN AWAY DAMMARTIN-EN-GOELE (FILE - JANUARY 9, 2015) (REUTERS) POLICE ON ROOF OF PRINT FACTORY/EXPLOSION
  • Embargoed: 22nd February 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAAIAYXJQ58JJG9IC2HVM1G67BA
  • Story Text: One month on, the Islamist attacks in France in which 17 people died, are still on most French people's minds.
    Outside the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Saturday (February 7), people came to see the flowers and the many messages still lying a few metres away from where the bloodshed happened in which a number of members of the magazine staff died.
    "Today is a day to reflect, think of those people who died for a stupid thing. A drawing has never harmed anyone," said Vivianne, a French citizen.
    The French national assembly paid hommage to the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Saturday (February 7) at a yearly political book day reward.
    In one of the corridors of the parliament, a selection of the covers of past issues were being displayed.
    Charlie Hebdo columnist Patrick Pelloux, who came as a guest, said it was important that the French parliament showed support.
    "We need to absorb what has happened not just by saying it is a commemoration because we will never be done with it. We're not going to mark one month, and then two months, three months, no. We are in continuity. The fact that at the National assembly they show the front pages, some of which have resulted in a kind of fascism against journalists, against laughter, against caricature, against the right to blaspheme, that the national assembly takes this into its hands represents an important step. But for the paper (Charlie Hebdo) this isn't a commemoration," Pelloux said.
    Being able to publish caricatures is a "sign of freedom" said the president of the French national assembly Claude Bartolone.
    "Of course, it is the right to freedom, this French originality where blasphemy isn't forbidden, where there is this freedom - sometimes corrosive or disconcerting when targeted by those caricatures - but which are also a sign of freedom," he said.
    Seventeen people were killed by three gunmen in a series of attacks that began at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and ended at a Jewish supermarket, prompting a national outpouring of grief that saw over a million people protest in the streets of Paris on January 11.
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