Charlie Hebdo's editor-in-chief, Gerard Biard (L) speaks as film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret, looks on at the Freedom House in Washington, DC, on May 1, 2015

Two of the surviving journalists from French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on Friday brushed off a protest by dozens of writers over the decision to hand the magazine a literary award for its championing of free speech.

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The publication, which saw 12 people killed at its offices in January after it was attacked by gunmen enraged by its printing of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, is set to be honoured by the PEN authors association at a gala in New York on Tuesday, May 5.

But more than 150 writers have pulled out of the event in protest at cartoons published by the magazine they say are offensive to France's minority populations.

Speaking in Washington, Charlie Hebdo's film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret – who only avoided the attack because he had been late for work – said the critics had misunderstood the reason for the PEN award.

"Maybe there is a little misunderstanding, I guess they imagine this award was given to Charlie Hebdo regarding its content," he said.

"There is a confusion. It's an award given to the principle of freedom of speech."

‘Cultural arrogance of the French nation’

Those pulling out of the PEN American Center gala include celebrated writers such as Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi.

“We do not believe in censoring expression. An expression of views, however disagreeable, is certainly not to be answered by violence or murder,” the writers said in an open letter explaining their decision.

“However, there is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.”

Carey, a two-time Booker Prize winner, said the award went beyond the group's traditional role of protecting freedom of expression against government oppression.

"A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about?" the New York Times quoted him as saying.

"All this is complicated by PEN's seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognise its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population."

Charlie's Editor-In-Chief Gerard Biard dismissed this argument.

"It's always gratifying to have a contrarian opinion, to say 'I don't think like the masses. I'm above all that,'" he told AFP.

"That's their problem. If they think PEN is no longer about protecting free expression, why don't they leave it?"

‘A hard-earned award for courage’

Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Nossel, the president and executive director of PEN American Center respectively, also defended their decision to honour Charlie Hebdo, saying the award was not for the cartoons themselves, but the magazine’s courage in publishing them.

“In offering this award, PEN does not endorse the content or quality of the cartoons, except to say that we do not believe they constitute hate speech,” they wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times published Friday.

“The question for us is not whether the cartoons deserve an award for literary merit, but whether they disqualify Charlie Hebdo from a hard-earned award for courage."

Charlie Hebdo has frequently sparked controversy with cartoons some critics have labelled racist or Islamophobic. Along with the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, it also once published a cartoon depicting France’s black Justice Minister Christiane Taubira as a monkey – though defenders of the magazine say this was meant to lampoon racism within France’s far-right National Front party.

Speaking at Freedom House, a democratic rights watchdog, Thoret pointed out that out of 500 Charlie Hebdo cover stories published before the attack – only 11 dealt with Islam.

"That's the reality," he said. "We have never publish racist cartoons. Historically, we are an anti-racist magazine. It's in our DNA.”

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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