Imam and lawyer Seyran Ates meets Charlie Hebdo editor Gerard Biard in a conversation onstage, where they will reflect on the state of censorship and freedom of speech in our time.
“Nowadays, in liberal democracies, censorship is no longer a state prerogative. It strikes mainly from private structures. It serves multinationals such as Facebook or Google, which do not want to upset their precious users, who are monetizing data. It becomes a weapon used by associations militating for the defense of strictly sectarian interests, or by groups of purity fanatics on the lookout for the slightest deviance, or even by mere individuals who believe that their emotions or their choices take precedence over any other societal or political consideration,” Biard said in a statement to World Expression Forum earlier this year.
