There is no way that the violence and the assassinations of the journalist-caricaturists in the attack realized against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris can be justified. But the deed should be seen in context and explained.

 

The Arab and other peoples in the Middle East and the North of Africa, who are for the most part Muslims, have been invaded, massacred, exploited, divided, manipulated, humiliated, discriminated against and oppressed by Western capitalist powers, headed by the United States, England and France over the past century, and historically have been the objects of Western colonial power.

 

Muslim fundamentalists (Shiites and Sunnis) have – since 1978 – been created, organized, armed and utilized by the US (CIA and other US and European intelligence agencies), first against the Soviet Union (war in Afghanistan) and then set up as tools of destabilisation of the Arab region to justify the invasion and military and economic intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria and other countries through the forces of NATO.

 

The Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups are fanatics provoked and manipulated by the West and do not represent the feelings or the thought of the whole contingent of Arab and/or Muslim peoples. These groups – in their different versions – are a creation of the West, serve the interests of the capitalist Empire, have been employed by Western interests, and this kind of violent actions, paradoxically, have served imperialist interests to manipulate public opinion and to deceive their own peoples.

 

As is the case in Colombia, the task is to make clear to the people the causes of the process of degradation of the armed conflict and its actors, unmask the manipulation orchestrated by the oligarchy and the Empire, reject the violence unleashed in favour of the interests of the oppressors and the powerful, denounce the double morality of the major criminals who manipulate the media, using this kind of action and assassination to hide the crimes committed daily against the peoples and workers of the whole world.

 

Of course, we reject these actions and the death of these journalists, but we must also explain the true causes that explain these tragic events.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)