WINNIPEG — The University of Manitoba student newspaper has decided to run a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting Muhammad to show support for the victims of last week’s attack on the French satirical magazine.
The Manitoban‘s editorial board debated the issue for days but ultimately decided to run Ethan Cabel’s column about standing up to radical Islamists as well as the Charlie Hebdo cover from 2011. “People spoke in opposition to it pretty passionately just arguments against publishing it but we had a vote and the majority came out in support of it,” Craig Adolphe, a member of the paper’s editorial board told Global News.
Cabel wishes more media would run the cartoon, “”You assume that your audience can discern the difference between somebody else has done this and we’re reporting on it and we’re just printing this out of the clear blue sky which is not the case you’re reporting the news,” he said.
The attack by gunmen on the magazine’s offices last week killed 12 people, including cartoonists, editors and other journalists at the magazine. The Charlie Hebdo issue published Wednesday, a week after the attack, sold out in Paris before dawn.
READ MORE: New issue of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ sells out in Paris before dawn
Students at Manitoba’s biggest university have mixed reactions to their newspaper’s decision.
“I think it’s offensive to one group of people and they shouldn’t have run it out of respect,” said one student.
“I think more media should be running the cartoons in support of the victims,” another said.
READ MORE: Defiant French mourn 12 dead in Paris attack
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