Iranian security forces prevented a January 8 gathering by a group of Iranian journalists who wanted to express their solidarity with the victims of the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Nevertheless, according to this tweet by the French Embassy in Tehran, some Iranians expressed their solidarity by laying flowers and lighting candles in front of the embassy’s gate in the Iranian capital.
There were also online shows of solidarity, including by Iran’s prominent human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh.
Sotoudeh posted a picture of herself holding a pen on her Facebook page. Many of those who have taken to the streets in the past two days to show their solidarity for those killed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, have held up pens and pencils.
“Those who claim they’re defending a particular religion should know that no religion recommends this violence,” Sotoudeh wrote while expressing her condolences to the families of the victims and the French people.
“I thank the French government and French people for not denying other citizens freedom, under the excuse of creating security and order,” Sotoudeh wrote on Facebook.
Her husband, Reza Khandan, also expressed his solidarity by posting a picture of himself with a candle and a Charlie Hebdo pen on Facebook.
Iranian journalist and political satirist Pouria Alami condemned the attack on his Facebook page.
"People can solve their problems by talking, not with acid [through violence]. Fools, however, can't laugh, they can't debate, they can't solve their problems, [so] they shoot. As a fool, they attack a satirist, four cartoonists, they shoot at 12 intelligent and civilized people," he wrote.
Alami added that the "foolishness of the fools" is laughable, even with "eyes full of tears."
Sobhan Hassanvand, a journalist with the reformist Shargh daily, expressed his sympathy with the victims of the terrorist attack in Paris on Twitter.
Tehran condemned the killing on January 7, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham saying, "All acts of terrorism against innocent people are alien to the doctrine and teachings of Islam."
But Afkham also said that "making use of freedom of expression...to humiliate the monotheistic religions and their values and symbols is unacceptable."
-- Golnaz Esfandiari
