French Expats Rally For Paris Continued from page 3 following firefights with French law enforcement. Searches continue for remaining suspects in connection to the attacks. Seventeen people were dead — excluding the three gunmen — by the time the attacks subsided on Jan. 9, with 21 others injured, making it the deadliest terrorist attack on French soil since 1961. Thousands of miles from her homeland, Albane de Izaguirre could not find adequate comfort among her American friends. She would find solace by standing with her compatriots at a Jan. 10 rally in Washington Square Park. Several hundred people congregated there, as millions prepared to march in France over the weekend. They would express their solidarity mostly through silence with pens and pencils held up high. Occasionally, they would repeat Je Suis Charlie in unison as they held up signs. Some would battle tears as the crowd sang the French national anthem. “It’s really hard when you’re not in France,” said Raphael Bord, a resident of Williamsburg. “You see what’s going on but you cannot really participate.” Though predominately French expatriates and their families, the crowd at the event also included Hell’s Kitchen resident Teresa Cebrian. She said she grew up in Spain amidst the fall out from the 2004 Madrid bombing of a commuter train by an Al Qaedainspired group. Prior to that attack, she had thought that terrorism arising from Islamic extremism was a phenomenon relegated to other countries, she said. Even ten years later, she said she does
Photos by Zach Williams
Chelsea Film Festival co-founder Ingrid Jean Baptiste (right foreground) joined a prayer outside after a memorial reached full occupancy on Jan. 11.
not feel safe from the dangers of radical Muslim militants “It’s an attack on the freedom of expression in democratic societies and we’ve got to fight against that,” she said of Paris shootings. The slaughter evoked memories of the Sept. 11 attacks among many people present at the rally. However there is a key difference, according to Walmsley and his French wife, Sophie Thumashansen Walmsley. The 9/11 hijackers were foreigners, whereas in Paris, the attackers rose from a “tiny minority” within a native Muslim community living on the edges of French society. They were originally welcomed to France as laborers during more prosperous times. But as one generation gave way to the next, many Muslims in France struggled to assimilate even as second-generation citizens. Recently passed laws forbidding Muslim women from covering their faces in pub-
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lic stoked resentment among them. Radical clerics found a ready audience in recent years among disaffected men such as the Kouachi brothers who were children of Algerian immigrants, according to media reports.
French police arrested Chérif Kouachi in 2005 as he attempted to reach Iraq by way of a Syrian-bound flight. Like more than 1,000 Muslim Frenchmen in recent years who have fought in Syria, he wanted to wage jihad, according to media reports. While thwarted in that effort, Chérif would eventually achieve his purported goal of achieving martyrdom ten years later. Fighting back against such an ideology necessitates a non-violent approach, said participants of the Jan. 10 Washington Square rally. The attacks represent an opportunity to confront this fringe element of French society, according to Sophie Thumashansen Walmsley. “This could be a rallying cry to get France together again to come up with a new French identity,” she said. The next day millions of people mobilized across France in similar fashion: toting Je Suis Charlie signs,
Continued on page 14
Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) began as a hashtag on Twitter and quickly became a slogan used across the world.
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January 15 - 28, 2014
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