Je suis Newsday

The murder of a dozen people on Wednesday in Paris, including two police officers, and the editor and workers of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has provoked horror and outrage worldwide. Gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and a rocket-launcher opened fire in the offices of the weekly in Paris. The attack had a bloody follow-up when, during a manhunt for the two prime suspects, a third gunman emerged, killing four at a Jewish grocery. The attackers were heard shouting Allahu akbar, “the Prophet is avenged”. One also reportedly said to a reporter, “I’m not killing you because you are a woman.” But they did not keep this promise as one woman, columnist Elsa Cayat, was killed in the shooting.

The attack was believed to be retaliation for years of provocative features in the magazine which several times poked fun at religious deities, including the Prophet Muhammad. Charlie Hebdo had a reputation for being, at times, boorishly politically incorrect. On New Year’s, the magazine sent out a tweet wishing an Islamic State (ISIS) leader “best wishes”. In fact, even the French government would appeal to the magazine to temper itself. The publication had, after all, weathered a previous attack in 2011 which saw its offices firebombed.

But whatever the provocation, the killings cannot be justified. Charlie Hebdo may well have been disliked and unpopular, their cartoons and features may well have been blasphemous to Muslims and others (the magazine has a long history dating back to the 1960s when its precursor would ridicule even national tragedies in France). But the magazine has a right, within the limits of law, to be offensive

In this country that freedom is tempered by libel and slander laws. But the prima facie position of our system of rights is that a person may still libel if they chose and then pay the price. In any event, murder is not a proportionate and appropriate response to any offence, as deeply felt as it may well have been. It is because we have freedom of expression that we are then able to voice our own concerns and objections and to engage in a conversation.

It is important that these principles are grasped, because freedom of the press and freedom of expression is clearly under threat all over the world. In addition to the murders in France, ISIS has been engaging in a drip feed of executions of journalists day by day. And on Friday, in Saudi Arabia, a blogger Raif Badawi was flogged fifty times for “insulting Islam”.

Here at home, many will remember the terrorist attack of July 1990 which saw the Jamaat al Muslimeen target not only the Parliament, but also television and radio stations. The newspapers, too, fell under siege amid the unrest in the city.

Terrorists attack the media because they want to control the voice of the people, and to set limits on self-expression, limits that conform to their ideas. They wrongly feel that it is the messenger that defines the world and not the world that defines the messenger. No amount of suppression of the media will hinder free will in its entirety. Indeed, Badawi has steered steadfast into the maelstrom. “My commitment is…to reject any repression in the name of religion,” he said in an interview in 2007.

In the wake of the attacks in France, all over the world, the slogan “Je suis Charlie” was used as a means of expressing support for freedom of expression. Today, we stand in solidarity with the world and say, in our own way, “Je suis Newsday.”