A prominent Dutch cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo heaped scorn on the French satirical weekly’s “new friends” since the massacre at its Paris offices on Wednesday last week.
“We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. It really makes me laugh,” Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch daily Volkskrant in an interview published on Saturday.
“[France’s National Front leader] Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place,” said Willem, 73, a longtime Paris resident who also draws for French daily Liberation.
He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”
Commenting on the global outpouring of support for the weekly, Willem said: “They’ve never seen Charlie Hebdo.”
“A few years ago, thousands of people took to the streets in Pakistan to demonstrate against Charlie Hebdo. They didn’t know what it was. Now it’s the opposite, but if people are protesting to defend freedom of speech, naturally that’s a good thing,” he said.
Willem was on a train between northwestern Lorient and Paris when he learned of the attack by two Muslim gunmen as the paper was holding its weekly editorial meeting.
He told Liberation: “I never come to the editorial meetings because I don’t like them. I guess that saved my life.”
Willem added that Charlie Hebdo must continue to publish. “Otherwise, [the Muslim extremists] have won.”
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