France: politics back freedom of speech

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on February 8, 2007 at 12:09 PM

In a surprise intervention, French minister of the Interior and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, along with other politicians, defended the press’ freedom of speech, in light of suit against Charlie Hebdo launched by Islamic organizations, a year after it published cartoons of Mahomet.

Sarkozy unexpectedly supported the weekly, saying its decision inscribed itself “in an old French tradition, satyre.” “I prefer excess of caricature to absence of caricature.”

Socialist party leader François Hollande, later said that he “rejoiced that, during this trial, men and women come out to defend freedom of expression.”

The interventions by the politicians do raise questions, if not about press freedom, about judiciary non-interference and independence this time.

It seems that, for the time being, whatever the final outcome of the trial, freedom of speech is still among the top values in France, judging by the ‘risk’ some politicians take in explicitly defending the cause.

“The right to criticize any religious or political ideology is the key to freedom of expression,” said one of Charlie Hebdo’s witnesses, none other than Fleming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish Jyllands-Posten, which had first published the Mahomet cartoons.

Source: AFP