Dear Editor,
Unless somebody was living under a rock, they will know about the attack on the French cartoonists a couple of weeks ago. I extend my sincere condolences to all who lost their family members.
Maybe I didn’t share all of Charlie Hebdo’s views, or like the cartoons. Maybe I found them to be out of place and maybe distasteful, but what may not be pardoned is the escalation from there to an act of violence. I find the statements made by several political and religious figures very disturbing when they are basically saying, the attacks were unjustified but so were the cartoons.
I believe that statement gives the justification we are supposed to deny.
The attacks were violent, heinous and completely unjustified, period. The nature of the cartoons does not belong in the sentence after making that statement, because whether you like them or not is a question of personal opinion.
Imagine a different scenario where an old person steals candy from a store and the owner shoots the person in the head. Who in their right mind would say that killing an old person is wrong, but so is stealing candies? Or, suppose that two persons are arguing about something trivial, like this same subject of the cartoons, when would it be OK for one person to take a gun and kill the other just because they didn’t agree with what the other was saying?
I believe that relating these attacks to the subject of freedom of expression is not showing consideration for those who lost their loved ones. Even my own countryman, the revered pope, has shown his lack of leadership by bringing up the subject of the nature of the cartoons when referring to the attacks, and suggesting the French editorial line should be less offensive.
There is a movie called Amistad, where a judge in the USA has to make a decision whether to free or condemn a number of slaves who had seized their freedom aboard the ship that was bringing them to Cuba. At that time there was a lot of tension and the decision would have serious repercussions in terms of the laws of the country.
Finally the judge makes the right and moral ruling to free the men, and in his final statement he indicates that it wouldn’t matter if his decision brought civil war to the United States, because it was the just one. The aims of political and religious figures nowadays appear to be only to please everybody instead of standing for moral and ethical values.
France is an independent country with its own laws, which are accepted by the people of France. Drawing obnoxious cartoons is not illegal in France, and even if it were, no one should take justice into their own hands, (otherwise the world would be in chaos). The people of France live their lives in the way they want, and as long as they do not harm anybody there is no reason to ask them to change their laws.
Editor, what would be worse: to live in a city with 100 obnoxious magazines or a city with 100 terrorist attacks?
I am displeased and outraged with the mellow, appeasing political declarations of most of our religious and social figures. Anyone who wants to discuss their taste in cartoons, or flavours of ice cream, for that matter, can feel free to do so as much as they want; the attacks on Charlie Hebdo were violent, heinous, cruel and completely unjustified, period.
Yours faithfully,
Pierre Boucher
