Resignation in Paris - AFP news agency refused to sign the French press appeal in defense of freedom of expression

Written by Michaela Wiegel for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The vague fear of attacks has never completely disappeared in the French capital. It made it possible for the boundaries of freedom of expression to be tacitly redrawn.

The vague fear of attacks has never completely disappeared. The knife attack in front of the former editorial building of the weekly “Charlie Hebdo” made many French suddenly aware that the debate on the roots of radical Islamism cannot be postponed, as President Emmanuel Macron preferred. The President believed that he could concentrate entirely on the health crisis and its economic and social consequences. He postponed a long-announced speech, which is to be followed by a legislative proposal to combat “Islamic separatism”. But now “the nightmare is returning”, as the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls put it. The knife attack has painfully brought to mind the vulnerability of French society.

It can be doubted that the powers of self-assertion have become stronger since the attack on the "Charlie Hebdo" editorial team on January 7, 2015. Many have given up and resigned themselves to the fact that illustrators and journalists need police protection because they do not want to be forbidden to ridicule and criticize Islam. The boundaries of freedom of expression are being tacitly redrawn. Most recently, the AFP news agency refused to sign the appeal by French press organs in defense of freedom of expression, ostensibly in order not to endanger its employees in Muslim countries.

Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung