#JeSuisCharlie

Today has been a dark day for Paris: gunmen bursting into the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and opening fire, killing 12 and injuring 7. At this moment, Paris is on lockdown and the perpetrators are still armed and in hiding. A debate has arisen about the freedom of the press, and protests are taking place all over the world to mourn the victims and condemn the attack. I attended the key protest, in Place de la République, this evening. Truthfully, I’m a fraud. I set out in a voyeuristic capacity, not to make my voice heard but to see the drama for myself. Trumped up on my own ‘Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin’ sense of adventure, I was quickly knocked down a peg or two by the tangible nature of the danger. Paris is currently on its highest possible terrorism alert, and most people are voting with their feet and staying indoors. The streets were practically empty. At every metro stop, I’d catch a snippet of an announcement that was being made “...La prefecture de police...” but the doors would close before I heard the rest. Only when the train glided slowly through Richard-Lenoir station, doors remaining firmly closed, did I realise that the station was on lockdown due to “raisons de securité” (read: terrorist threat). And the amount of police officers, both uniformed and plain-clothes, at Place de la République made me unsure as to whether I should feel safe, or stupid for venturing out in the first place.  

The crowd itself, spilling out around the square’s monument, was divided into two halves, which seemed to reflect the two sentiments of the protest itself: grief at the massacre of the victims, and rage at the stifling of free expression. The far side was muted, contemplative, reverent. Faces and quotes of the victims were posted on the monument and there were candlelit shrines. The people had come not to shout, but to mourn, and to process the events of the day.  The people weren’t just rebellious students but Parisians from all walks of life. As many people have noted before me, nothing brings the French together like a manifestation. On the other side, the side with the TV cameras trained on it, there was a crowd of students on the monument itself, shouting catchy chants and clapping their hands, very aware that they were the centre of attention, teenagers taking selfies, pretty girls hanging around hoping to be interviewed, and reporters all searching for the poignant photograph to accompany their piece (In under a minute, I heard both “Je cherche un source de lumiere” and “Pardon, can I take a photo of your candle?”). It was easy to be cynical, to wonder whether the crowd was here to defend the freedom of the press, or simply to be mentioned in it. As one bypasser noted of the protest’s most ardent shouter, “How can a 16 year old know about the freedom of the press?” The young woman in question seemed drunk on the experience – but was it a desire for social justice, or publicity, that fuelled her fire?  

While I was there, playing at being a journalist (and ultimately failing, what with my stunning point-and-shoot camera and blog), I came to see the ugly side of it all: while citizens were coming together, genuinely mourning and expressing fury, the place was swamped with reporters taking photos and looking for their story’s angle. You can’t fail to see the irony in the situation: that the sincerity of a protest in favour of press freedom was corrupted by the presence of the press itself.

N.B. I arrived at the protest later on in the evening, not when it reached its peak at around 8pm.