AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): French citizens and residents living in New Zealand gave inspired messages and speeches in Auckland today at a support Charlie Hebdo rally, vowing not to give in to the "destruction" of core human rights and freedom values.
A video production editor, Géraldine Clermont, who worked with Elise Fournier to organise this rally in Auckland's civic heart, the Aotea Square, told the cheering crowd she wanted to show that "democracy and freedom of speech is not dead".
She vowed to fight for core values in spite of the brutal assassinations of 12 people - 10 of them media plus two police officers - during the attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo by jihadist gunmen on Wednesday.
Eleven people were also left wounded in the worst case of urban terrorism in France since the Algerian War in the 1960s.
"I am Charlie: the statement identifies the speaker - us, me, you, everyone here today - with those who died at the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and by extension for freedom of speech and resistance to armed threats," Clermont said.
"The right to be rude, the right to be crude ... are at the core of Charlie Hebdo’s fight for freedom of speech.
"Its cartoonists and writers strongly believe that one should be able to laugh at everything, from genocide to fundamentalism. If we destroy this fundamental right, we are destroying our own core human rights that we fought for so long: our freedom."
Resisting threats
She said the crowd was gathered today because not only "to show our support ... to the journalists who died at the Charlie Hebdo shooting and to their family".
"But [we also want] to show that democracy and freedom of speech [are] not dead - and that we will resist armed threats.
"We can’t stay quiet and we won’t.
"More than ever we need to show our solidarity, wherever we are on the planet. This is not just a national issue, it is an international one."
Clemont and her fellow organisers saluted both their support for France and journalists - and "also to support everyone’s right to freedom of speech".
Alexander Ingham, the 30-year-old Auckland University son of a Paris-based New Zealand journalist couple, told of growing up with death threats to the family and now risks for media workers were even greater.
"This terror attack was highly unexpected and leaves us dumbstruck," he said.
"What astonished me about this attack is that it was an extremely specific attack. The victims of this attack were not civilians but journalists.
Fundamental rights
"Freedom of speech and of the media has been fired upon, many journalists may no longer feel safe to write and cover sensitive subjects, such as those Charlie Hebdo was covering with a caricature point of view.
"Freedom of speech and press is one of the fundamental rights in France; it has now been physically besieged.
"I am the son of two journalists who live in Paris, one of them works for Agence France-Presse, a large press agency; my mother [Catherine Field] is a correspondent for The New Zealand Herald.
"She sometimes has to cover sensitive subjects which have sometimes led to threats. As a child, I remember my mother receiving death threats and being scared of car bombs.
"My father in his agency has to witness a constant increase and decrease in security at the headquarters. Over the past years his agency has also received several threats.
"This attack is personally concerning because it [raises] a possible risk for both of my parents as journalists."
Ingham said he hoped journalists in Paris would "hear our support and grief".
He pledged to continue to say, as all French people: “We are Charlie!”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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