WASHINGTON — A peaceful vigil was held Wednesday night at the Newseum in the wake of a deadly terror attack on a newspaper in France.
A large crowd of people, many of them French or French-American, came out in bitter cold to stand together.
Part of the event was held outdoors, but the Newseum also welcomed the participants inside its large atrium to warm up.
There was a reading of the names of those killed in the attack at the Paris office of the satirical paper “Charlie Hebdo,” and after each name, the gathered crowd chanted “Je Suis Charlie,” or in English, “I am Charlie.”
“Je Suis Charlie” was projected on the Newseum’s giant atrium screen, and placed outside in the cases where each day’s newspapers from around the world are displayed.
“We want to be here in solidarity for obviously the families, but also to condemn the act which is an offense to the liberty of expression,” said Paul Gardener-Debeville. “I’m half French, half American, but my heart is very very French.”
Alex Cremieu-Alcan is an intern at the French Embassy in D.C.
“We want our democracy to work in a way that allow everyone to express themselves, and if they’re wrong, well, we try to work it out together,” Cremieu-Alcan says. “But we never kill just because we don’t agree.”
Hugo Remaury is a French citizen who has been in contact with relatives there since the attack.
“There’s a lot of emotions obviously, and a strong sense that what we fought for for centuries, especially in France, is today, on high threat,” he said.
“Like people around the world, we’re outraged by the barbarity of these killings of cartoonists and editors who were innocently practicing their craft, and killed because these people don’t like what they said,” Newseum Chairman Peter Prichard told WTOP. “It’s murder, it’s an outrage, and it’s a blow against free expression. At the Newseum we support free press, free speech, free expression.”
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