PARIS (AFP) ― French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that Muslims were the “main victims” of fanaticism, as funerals were held in Paris for five of the 17 people killed in last week’s Islamist attacks.
Speaking at the Arab World Institute in Paris, Hollande said: “It is Muslims who are the main victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance,” adding the whole country was “united in the face of terrorism.”
Members of the Muslim community in France, Europe’s largest, have “the same rights and the same duties as all citizens” and must be “protected,” the president vowed.
The five buried included two of Charlie Hebdo’s best-known cartoonists and Franck Brinsolaro, 49, a police protection officer who was killed in the satirical magazine’s editorial meeting.
Even as the ceremonies took place, the magazine continued to fly off the shelves, sparking fury in some parts of the Muslim world.
Georges Wolinski, 80, and Bernard “Tignous” Verlhac, 57, who were gunned down by two Islamist brothers in the attack claimed by al-Qaida, were buried at private family funerals.
Thousands braved drizzle outside the town hall memorial service for Tignous, laying flowers under a huge portrait of the cartoonist as his wife Chloe paid tribute inside.
His cartoon-covered coffin was carried through an applauding crowd for final burial, as people held aloft banners reading “Thank you Charlie Hebdo” and “Our heroes.”
“It would really annoy you to see us here today with our long faces.
“We shouldn’t be sad, but proud to have known you,” said Coco, a fellow Charlie Hebdo cartoonist.
After the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people died, the French rushed to get their hands on the “survivors’ issue” which sold out Wednesday before more copies of an eventual print run of 5 million hit newsstands.
Long queues formed again on Thursday as copies were snapped up.
“Charlie Hebdo is alive and will live on,” Hollande said Wednesday. “You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas,” he said.
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