Thursday 8 January 2015

Je suis Charlie enragé

I did not go down to Trafalgar Square last night to join in the vigil. I was broken by despair at the atrocity perpetrated in Paris. But today I find there are people actually starting to find justifications for what happened. "Oooh they shouldn't have drawn those pictures...it's a bit racist... they gave Mohamed a big nose WHAT THE FUCK?"
Now I am ANGRY. NOTHING justifies this outrage. Charlie Hebdo has been fighting bigotry since before I was a teenager. It targets injustice, stupidity, corruption and hypocrisy indiscriminately, regardless of colour, nationality, faith, political leaning or social status. These men (and one woman) were executed in cold blood by fanatics. THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION.
As someone for whom drawing is as necessary as breathing, who has healed herself by laying down her anxieties and neuroses on paper, and tried to be truthful on the page, I cannot envisage how this event can in any shape or form be acceptable or even understandable. WE MUST NOT BE INTIMIDATED.

No comments: