Check Out Charlie

The last I spoke to ‘Charb’ or Stephane Charbonnier, the slain editor-in chief of Charlie Hebdo, was on November 22, 2014. We had featured together in a current affairs programme on the Franco-German television channel Arte. I was analysing the week’s news. Charb was live-cartooning.

“How are things going at Charlie, have the threats lessened somewhat?” I asked him later. “Oh no,” he twinkled. “They haven’t in the least. If at all, they’ve increased.” “Your offices were burnt...in two separate attacks. Are you not afraid?” I asked. “Who isn’t afraid? But I willingly chose this profession. I wasn’t forced to become a journalist or cartoonist. But a safe nine-to-five job was never for me.... I also know what my convictions are,” he said, his youthful smile belied the seriousness of his words.

Charb and his colleagues never compromised. “We run a mile from the politically correct,” Wolinski, the doyen of the pack, said once. “Nothing is sacrosanct.” They were upholding a long and glorious tradition.

In what can only be described as prescience or supreme irony, Charb’s last cartoon carried the headline ‘Still no attacks in Paris’, with a pat answer from a radical Islamic figure: ‘We have until the end of January to present our good wishes.’

France, which has a long history of derisive satire, has been struck a body blow, losing several of its most talented cartoonists and humorists in one go in the attack on its offices on January 7. These men, Wolinski, Charb, Cabu and Tignous, were legends in their lifetimes and had a huge fan following.

Charlie Hebdo’s future after this attack appears uncertain. It is hoped that the weekly will survive. The skeletal staff, with help from other journalists and the publishers’ guild, is bringing out a special issue next Wed­nesday with eight instead of its usual 16 pages. The print run is an impressive one million copies. Hebdo’s usual sales were not more than 40,000 copies a week. Their lan­d­mark issue, titled Charia Hebdo, sold an unprecedented 4,00,000 copies.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo has left France reeling. The spontaneous gathering at the historic Place de la Republique, bearing the statue of Mari­anne, the symbol of the republic with its principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, showed people are still attached to these values and that they reject hatred and communal strife. Holding aloft pens and placards, the crowds chanted, “I am Charlie Hebdo”, in an attempt to underline the universal and inalienable right of freedom of expression.

But how long is this unity and strength of purpose likely to last?

Already, the anti-Islamic and xenophobic extreme right-wing National Front party has made impressive headway in European and municipal elections held in mid-2014. On Thursday, three mosques were attacked, with five grenades thrown into a mos­que in the town of Le Mans. Muslims have already begun fearing a backlash from the extreme right. Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo—nothing short of a decapitation of France’s top satirical weekly—is making anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant elements here increasingly bolder, adding to the anxiety felt by the nation’s six million Muslims, the majority of whom are ordinary, moderate and law-abiding citizens.

That said, it is true that France’s dearly held principle of ‘integration and assimilation’ of persons of foreign origin, as against the multi-culturalism practised by Britain, the US or the Netherlands, has failed miserably. France has stubbornly refused to keep ethnic statistics, saying that every French citizen is ‘a child of the French Republic’ and therefore equal before the law and the French state, which consequently does not recognise colour, race or religion either.

In practice, however, it does not quite work out that way. The children of the republic who come from the Maghreb region of North Africa feel particularly betrayed. “We are the step-children of the Republic,” lame­nted a Latifa Soualah, a social worker. “There is condescension amongst our teachers. There is discrimination in the job market. A name like Ali or Moh­ammed gets you nowhere. For many children from the immigrant suburbs, Paris is a foreign country. Unlike the Poles or the Italians, the Portuguese or the Spaniards, whose exa­mples are thrown at us—‘if they could integrate why can’t you?’—we are not white, Caucasian or Christian. Our colour, our kinky hair stick out a mile. I am a third generation immigrant. Born and bred here, I barely speak Arabic. Yet I’m persistently asked: ‘Where do you come from; I mean really come from?’”

The major waves of migrants came to France in the ’50s at the invitation of the French government desperately in need of cheap labour. They came to man the car factories of Renault, Peugeot and Citroen and the heavy industries that mushroomed across the country fed by the Marshall Plan. But in the ’70s two developments coincided: there was an oil shock in 1974 just as Giscard d’Estaing’s centrist government decided to allow foreign workers, mainly from the former colonies of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco to bring in their families.

Unemployment spread as a result of the oil shock as workers struggled to raise families on unemployment benefits. What were once self-contai­ned workers’ cities turned into imm­­igrant ghettoes. Poverty and desp­air, compounded by an undeniable dose of racism, gave way to delinquency, failure at school and anti-social behaviour.

Unlike Mohammed Atta or some 9/11 plotters who were educated and skilled, the social profile of most young French Muslims—mostly second or third generation mig­rants—is that of poor schooling, petty crime and social alienation. They are radicalised in pri­sons, mosques or through the int­ernet. In Europe, France has the largest number of youngsters who have gone to Syria or Iraq to wage jehad.

Years of neglect, coupled with rac­ism and poverty—both cultural and economic—has led to a growing division in French society. A horrific incident like the Charlie Hebdo attack forces the republic to ruefully ponder: is it too late to bridge this looming gulf?

By Vaiju Naravane in Paris