Many outlets yesterday reported Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier’s brave declaration:
‘‘I am not afraid of reprisals. I don’t have kids, I don’t have a wife, I don’t have a car, I don’t have credit. This may sound a bit pompous but I would prefer to die standing than to live on my knees.’’
But although he did not have a wife, he did have a companion, former secretary for Youth and Community Life Jeannette Bougrab. In a TV interview, Bougrab spoke about what the attack means for France, and firmly rejects the idea that people’s solidarity with Charlie Hebdo is a consolation. Quartz has translated the video from French below:
Jeannette Bougrab (JB): I think that today in this war—because it’s the word ”war” that we have to pronounce, a war that has been declared… I am not convinced that the legislative measures and devices that are at our disposal today are enough. I think that today Internet, Twitter $TWTR, is a diffusor of hate, where anonymously people can decide fatwas, they can decide who must live and who must die, and well we haven’t gotten its measure yet. What is strange is that… I have made a documentary Interdites d’école, on the women…
Interview: On the women—in Pakistan, notably—who are forbidden from going to school…
JB: …I have been to Pakistan, I have been to the Afghan border, I went near the Taliban, I went to Yemen, I went to the north of Kenya while in the Congo where there was al-Shaabab, and I went to the ill side. Nothing happened to me. Nothing happened to me, I spent 17 days in Pakistan and nothing happened to me. And today, in France, where we give lessons to the whole world, well my partner is dead, murdered because he drew in a magazine.
Then I would like that today that it was explained to me what’s happening in France. And I think some will not pursue the adventure of Charlie [Hebdo] because they are terrified, because they are scared for their lives, because it’s now known that today in France you pick up a pencil and that may kill you. That’s it, that’s France today. I don’t know… We must stop being langue de boi [literally, wooden languange, it refers to speaking in a politically correct and vague way], we must stop and say, today there are policemen, innocents in the streets who died, and people who drew who have been killed in France.
Interview: Charlie will continue, Charlie must continue.
JB: It must continue but the founding fathers of Charlie—Cabu, Wolinski—are gone, Stephan who was Stephan and the one who held the fort… and now we must find people as pugnacious. Stephan was a kind of soldier, he was someone who didn’t do anything but working, who never took any holidays, and I hope Charlie doesn’t disappear because if it did we would murder Stephan a second time, we would murder Cabu a second time, we would murder Wolinski a second time, we would murder Tignous…
Interview: “Je suis Charlie” say many French people, many European people, Americans, people all over the world, it’s a form of victory…we hope…
JB: No, no, no, because he died.
Interview: Of course.
JB: No, absolutely not. It’s absolutely not a victory, it’s a defeat, it’s a tragedy for our country, and I refuse to rejoice at the idea that people demonstrate in the streets because they have snatched the dear being that accompanied me in my life. And so, no.
