Strasbourg (AFP)

Still standing, capable of verve and self-deprecation, the writing of Charlie Hebdo took the floor in Strasbourg Saturday, during a meeting with the public, unpublished since the 2015 attack and very secure, to reaffirm the role of the satirical press and caricature.

"Can we draw Mahomet? In the land of the pretzel, yes!": With this drawing, made live, where the prophet's turban turns into a pretzel, the designer Coco remained faithful to the fundamentals of the weekly, set to Alsatian sauce.

For this first public speaking in public since the attack, about twenty members of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo made the trip to Strasbourg.

While the editorial journalists debated on the stage of the National Opera of the Rhine, in front of hundreds of spectators, readers faithful or simple curious, the draftsmen warmed their markers behind the scenes and their drawings, projected on the stage, provoked almost certainly the hilarity of the room.

However, between the nose and self-deprecation, many drawings referred to the bloodbath of January 7, 2015, which decimated the editorial, like this big hooded man, bardé explosives, asking: "You're still Charlie in Strasbourg? ".

To attend this ultra-secure meeting, the spectators had to submit to palpations and searches deep bags. Many CRS vans were parked near the opera and the drafting of "Charlie" enjoyed police protection throughout his stay in Strasbourg.

Despite this heavy context, "as you can see, Charlie is alive, it's still not negligible, with a young and renewed team, which has many projects," said the director Riss, welcomed by loud applause.

While just released a special issue of the weekly that traces a very dark landscape of press drawing in the world, between the timidity of newspapers and dictatorship of social networks, journalists and cartoonists have been happy to work in a title where exists a real debate of ideas, contradictory, with words often hard for the rest of the press and the French intellectuals.

Many intellectuals today are "not up to what we lived," said Riss, saying it might be necessary to wait "one or two generations" for the events crossed by "Charlie "be analyzed.

- "Enjoy your happiness!" -

"Here you will be paid at the end of the month, which is quite rare in the press drawing, and you will not be asked to redo your drawings," summed up the cartoonist June.

Among the new voices of the newspaper, the writer Yannick Haenel, who holds a chronicle, said that Charlie Hebdo was the only newspaper "that raises the question of subversion", while reporter Laure Daussy regretted the lack of knowledge of values the satirical newspaper of some young people, saying that far-left militants had called it a "reactionary and Islamophobic newspaper" during a report on the burkini.

Ukrainian activist Femen Inna Shevchenko, who participated in one of the roundtables, received a standing ovation saying: "Can you name one country where the population suffers from excessive freedom of expression? ? ". "In France, you do not enjoy enough of your happiness," she insisted.

Cabu, Charb, Honoré ... At the end of the round tables, the moderator ginned the names of the 12 victims of the attack of January 7th, before long applause of the public, standing.

Most of the people present had the latest special issue of CHarlie Hebdo signed, the book "One minute 49 seconds" by Riss or the Plato Banquet adapted by Coco.

A spectator, Marie-Claire Hingray, came to Riss to sign the number "historic" post-attack Charlie, with his famous A "All is forgiven".

"Today, I decided to re-subscribe, even more important than yesterday, democracy is increasingly threatened from all sides," she said.

© 2019 AFP