“Liberation” defends Coco after a wave of threats targeting the designer

MEDIA – “We assure him of our solidarity and support. » This Tuesday, March 12, the management of the newspaper Release denounced the violent attacks, including death threats, targeting its cartoonist Corinne Rey, who signs her drawings under her artist name “ Coco »after the publication the day before of a caricature on the famine in Gaza.

“The editorial management of the newspaper and the Society of Journalists and Staff of Libération (SJPL) denounce with the greatest vigor this intimidation, some including death threats”writing Release in a statement, adding that these attacks must not be “trivialized”. Dov Alfon, the editorial director, however, did not comment on possible complaints.

Threats also targeting his family

The drawing in question, published in a thumbnail “Ramadan in Gaza” and accompanied by the legend “beginning of a month of fasting”shows a skeletal Gazan running after rats, while a woman hits his hand while throwing “Ttt, not before sunset”all in the middle of ruins where we can see the hand of a corpse.

The caricature “underlines the despair of the Palestinians, denounces the famine in Gaza”a Palestinian enclave relentlessly bombarded by the Israeli army and where the UN fears widespread famine, “and also mocks the absurdity of religion”, argued Coco on Tuesday on X (ex-Twitter), as you can read in the tweet below. Alongside this drawing with a universal message, she also published a “little anthology” death threats targeting her and her family, as well as anti-Semitic messages received since its publication.

On X, for example, an Internet user says to Coco, in English, “Run, run whore… You’ll be down soon.” The whole family dead ». “ They should have liquidated you on January 7th”agrees another, in reference to the attack which decimated the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, and from which Coco emerged alive.

The “indecency” of Sophia Chikirou’s tweet denounced

“You will not have our hatred but you deserve it”also commented on X the LFI deputy Sophia Chikirou, close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in reaction to the drawing.

Internet users were offended by this message, one of them criticized: “I can’t even understand a caricature denouncing the famine in Gaza. I can’t imagine the state of freedom of expression, the right to satire and blasphemy if you were in power. »

“It only takes a cartoon about Ramadan in Gaza to arouse the hatred of the rebels and put targets on a cartoonist. Shame on Sophia Chikirou who seems to have a problem with freedom of expression (…)”also condemned the feminist Charlotte Rocher, on the same social network.

Support from his colleagues

The designer, who joined Release in 2021 and has lived under close protection since the 2015 attack, can also count on the support of some of his colleagues, like the France Inter journalist, Claude Askolovitch. The latter denounces: “Parodying a man’s words [Antoine Leiris, ndlr] whose wife was killed at the Bataclan, to insult a designer whose friends perished at Charlie, is an indecency that an elected representative of the Republic should spare herself, even if a drawing displeases her.he wrote, asking the LFI MP from Paris to withdraw her tweet.

“We don’t get used to the stupidity of tweeters nor to the bad faith and low-level political co-opting…” also tackles Jean-Loup Adénor, deputy director of Charlie Hebdo, on X. “Faced with small hate mongers, you obviously have the support of the whole team, always. We love you “wrote the editorial team as a whole.

On the political side, the national secretary of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, brought his “full support” in Coco, while the environmentalist MP Sandrine Rousseau wrote on her X account: ” A drawing. It’s just a drawing. #I am Charlie “.

Messages to which Coco responded this Wednesday: “I really thank you for this brotherly attention”. And concludes: “I am already focused on my next drawing, determined to continue doing my work. »

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