PARIS: French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is courting controversy again by running cartoons deriding the response of predominantly Christian European countries to a flood of migrants from mainly Muslim war zones.
The latest edition has attracted renewed attention — and criticism on social media.
One drawing plays on the harrowing photo of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian child whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey after a failed attempt to cross by boat with his family to Greece. The photograph galvanized world attention on the refugee crisis.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoon shows a toddler in shorts and a T-shirt face down on the shoreline beside an advertising billboard that offers two children’s meal menus for the price of one.
“So close to making it...” the caption says.
Another cartoon, also penned by a cartoonist who survived the militant attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris premises in January, runs under a caption saying: “Proof that Europe is Christian.”
It shows a figure walking on the water while another, smaller figure wearing shorts is up-ended in the water, with the former saying “Christians walk on water” and the latter “Muslim children sink.”
Newspapers from Asia to North America noted the cartoons.
“Aylan Kurdi’s death mocked by Charlie Hebdo,” read a headline in the Toronto Sun. “Charlie Hebdo criticized for dead Syrian toddler’s cartoon,” said the Times of India.
Britain’s Daily Mirror published a headline on its website saying: “Charlie Hebdo publishes cartoons mocking dead Aylan Kurdi with caption ‘Muslim children sink’.
Charlie Hebdo mocks drowned Syrian boy
Charlie Hebdo mocks drowned Syrian boy
