PARIS (FRANCE) – During a naturalisation ceremony on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the right to lampoon and caricature even religion is an essential part of being French. This comes days after the beginning of a trial of the accomplices in an attack by Islamist gunmen on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
In a solemn ceremony at the Paris Pantheon to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Third Republic, Macron handed over papers to five new French citizens. The Pantheon is a mausoleum to France’s heroes.
“At the start of the trial of the attacks of January 2015, I say that to be French is to defend the right to laugh, jest, mock and caricature, of which Voltaire maintained that it is the source of all other rights,” Macron said.
More than a dozen alleged accomplices went on trial this week for their role in the mayhem unleashed in the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo leaving 12 people dead. This week, the magazine republished the caricatures of Prophet Mohammad that had led to the attacks.
Addressing the new citizens from the UK, Algeria, Cameroon, Peru and Lebanon, Macron said immigrants have long been a force for good in France. He added that the Third Republic was proclaimed by the son of an Italian immigrant, Leon Gambetta, on Sept. 4, 1870.
“He was, like you, a son of immigrants, French of mixed blood. It was he who resuscitated the republic, this reign of freedom,” Macron said.
He also pointed out other immigrants who shaped the history of the country such as Polish-born scientist Marie Curie, American-born singer Josephine Baker, Tunisian-origin feminist Gisele Alimi, and Felix Eboue, the first Black colonial governor of France and the first Black to have his ashes interred in the Pantheon.
