2 October 2018

On 17 October, Charlie Hebdo employee Marika Bret had her Twitter account blocked because her profile picture – a caricature by Charb, who was one of 12 people killed in the 2015 attack at the magazine’s Paris offices – violates the rules of Twitter, reported Le Figaro.

The cartoon, titled ‘The extremes are touching each other’ had been her profile picture since she joined Twitter about two years ago. It shows a priest and an imam holding each other’s genitals. See it here in full.

“This censorship really makes me angry. I checked the rules of Twitter. This drawing does not break any. It is neither racist nor violent … It has never been subject to any legal proceedings or convictions. This is just another offense to Charb,” Bret told Le Parisien.

She removed the cartoon in order to access her account again.

In a letter to the Minister of Culture Françoise Nyssen and Secretary of State for Digital Mounir Mahjoubi, Bret said Twitter’s decision is a censorship on Charb’s work.

“I react strongly and also appeal to you because to accept this decision without saying anything, is to trample on the memory of Charb and to make part of his work disappear. It would be to murder him a second time. This is unacceptable. It’s unbearable,” she said.