The Valaisian judiciary has just concluded that a drawing may be considered shocking, but it does not also constitute a representation of violence.
A complaint filed in Switzerland against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after the publication of a caricature related to the Crans-Montana tragedy has been dismissed by the justice of the Valais canton (western Switzerland). In their “non-competence order” dated April 17, the Valaisian magistrates indicate that while the caricature may be “considered shocking”, it does not meet the conditions of a representation of violence. In early January, Swiss lawyer Stéphane Riand filed a complaint with his wife Béatrice, a writer, claiming that this drawing constituted a representation of violence “violating the human dignity of the victims.”
The complaint targeted Charlie Hebdo and the cartoonist Eric Salch. The incriminated drawing depicted two skiers covered in bandages with blackened skin descending a slope with a sign reading “Crans-Montana”, accompanied by the phrases “The burns go skiing” and “The comedy of the year”, referring to the 1979 comedy “The Bronzes Go Skiing”. It was published on January 9, the national day of mourning in Switzerland in honor of the victims of the Crans-Montana bar fire, which killed 41 people – mostly adolescents and young adults – and injured 115 on New Year’s Eve.
Several foreigners were among the victims, including French and Italians. According to the public prosecutor, this caricature is “stylized”, “not realistic”, shows no explicit act of cruelty or depiction of suffering, and does not constitute a representation of violence “as such”. In addition, the magistrates considered that, while the timing of its publication may have “shocked and offended”, “the shock that this caricature can produce is not intense enough to become prejudicial to the psyche” of the victims and witnesses of the tragedy.
“In Switzerland, as in France, and in all civilized countries, a drawing cannot be equated with violence, and we must stop claiming otherwise,” responded Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer Richard Malka to AFP. “A drawing may be shocking, considered in bad taste (…) but in any case, we must stop trying to prohibit, censor, censor everything that disturbs us. This is not a matter of justice, but of each individual’s conscience,” he insisted. Contacted by AFP, the plaintiff Stéphane Riand was not immediately available to comment.
