Je Suis Charlie 2

Today, like millions of people in the world, I walked to defend our democracies' values. I took the streets in Périgueux having decorated my bag with the words "Je Suis Charlie" especially for the occasion. This walk meant so many different things to me.

People walked to honour the memory of the 17 victims of different terrorist attacks, to show the world they care, to defend freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of cult, people stood together as one in Paris and several other cities in France and the world. Today millions of people were Charlie.

As well as regular citizens, 50 country representatives joined the French president, François Hollande, in Paris to show their support to France. Among them were representatives of Greece, Israel, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, the Emirates, all of which walked arm in arm in the name of Freedom of speech.

All day in the press I heard no mention of the 12 Palestinian journalists who died in the last 4 weeks in Gaza, killed by Israeli soldiers, neither did I hear about the closure of Greek public television and radio or the hundreds of Greek journalists who continue to work for free when they could be arrested at any time like many already have, no mention of the threats Turkish journalists got from their government after the attack, no mention of the massive censorship in the media that goes on in all these countries, all the journalists that are thrown in jail every day in these countries for speaking up.

I cannot believe all the journalists covering the events today are that naive or ignorant, these things are no secret.

And where were the people when the Greek media was shut down? Where were the people when Syria started executing its journalists? Where is the world when freedom of speech is under attack in Russia? and in other countries?

Today, not only did I walk for the journalists who died on Wednesday and the police officers and hostages who died but I also walked for all my colleagues and friends around the world who are threatened, imprisoned, oppressed by their government, the ones the media forgot or intentionally omitted today. They too are the victims of terrorism, they too are Charlie and have been all along.

Comments

  1. This is a lovely post written about such a horrific event, I'm so glad that people all over the world have remained strong and stood up for their freedom and humanity.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"She's a good woman"

Je suis mouru à Liège mon amour.

Let's work for free.