For its special issue “January 7”, the anniversary of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015, the satirical weekly chose to support Iranian men and women and inflict a “thrashing the mullahs”, according to the terms of the one.
The country has been shaken for almost four months by a wave of protest and repression triggered by the death, on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died after her arrest by the morality police, who accused her of for violating the dress code requiring women to wear the veil in public. At least 503 civilians have since been killed, according to human rights organizations.
In reaction, Charlie Hebdo launched, on December 8, 2022, an international competition called “Degagez les mullahs” (“Mullahs get out”). To see his drawing selected, the newspaper advised to make the caricature the “funny and meaner” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Cartoonists and cartoonists must support the struggle of Iranians who are fighting for their freedom, by ridiculing this religious leader from another age, and sending him back to the dustbin of history”then invited Charlie Hebdo. The tone was set with the design of Coco, who also officiates at Releaseon which we discovered the Ayatollah Khamenei, his nipples pierced, wearing a sadomaso outfit under his costume, rejoicing in the abolition of the morality police and slipping a ” finally free ! ».
Riss, the director of the publication, had no doubts: this protest movement has a global importance and it was necessary that charlie opens its columns to report on it. “We wanted drawings to come from all over the world and not lock ourselves into a Franco-French logic”, he explains, adding that it was essential to show “the graphic diversity of protest”.
“Women, life, freedom”
For this 1,589e issue, entirely devoted to the protest movement in Iran, available on newsstands Wednesday, January 4, and that The world was able to consult, thirty-five drawings were selected from among the 300 sent to the editorial staff from Iran, Turkey, the United States, Senegal and even Australia.
On one of them, Ayatollah Khamenei takes the slogan “Women, life, freedom” like a punch in the face, while in another caricature, a mullah ends up crushed under a heel. These drawings, very political, also depict a Supreme Guide as Marilyn Monroe whose costume is lifted by the wind caused by the whirling of the scarves from which the women have freed themselves; on another, armed with stones, they stone him.
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