PARIS, KOMPAS.com – French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo who prints again cartoons Nabi Muhammad in the latest edition, sold out in a day.
The edition, published on Wednesday (2/9/2020), features dozens of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, including images that sparked huge protests when they were first published.
Charlie Hebdo distributed three times more than its normal print quota on Wednesday, and sold out within a day.
Also read: Charlie Hebdo Magazine Announces Reprint of Caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad
Even so many enthusiasts, Charlie Hebdo will publish an additional 200,000 copies which will be available on French newsstands starting Saturday (5/9/2020).
“This shows that we are supported, that freedom of expression, secularism and blasphemy are not values, and that they are supported by the French public who buy them,” said the magazine cartoonist under the pen name Juin when contacted. AFP.
A total of 12 people including several well-known French cartoonists were killed on January 7, 2015, when Said and Cherif Kouachi opened fire on the newspaper office blindly in Paris.
“We will never get down. We will never give up,” wrote chairman Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau in Wednesday’s editorial entitled “All this, just for that.”
The decision to reprint the cartoon angered Pakistan, Iran and Turkey as well as Egypt’s supreme Muslim authority, Al Azhar.
On Friday (4/9/2020) thousands of people rallied in anti-French demonstrations across Pakistan. Demonstrators are calling for a boycott and expulsion of the French Ambassador.
Also read: Pakistan slams Charlie Hebdo magazine’s plans to reprint caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad
Charlie Hebdo, however, defended his decision in the editorial, citing reasons for the cartoon’s re-publication “important.”
“We work on the principle that some people don’t know the cartoon, some weren’t even born when Charlie published it in 2006, and they need to understand why the attack happened,” said Juin.
“The right to blasphemy and freedom of opinion exists if we use it. For us, reprinting of cartoons is justified, because it shows these rights still exist and allows us to defend them,” he added.
– .
