I think some of it was vulgar and insensitive too, apparently there is one cartoon showing the girls abducted by boko haram asking when they can be allowed gov benefits.
Read thisJean-Baptiste Froment, toulousain
This cover is mixing two unrelated elements which made the news at about the same time:
- Boko Haram victims likely to end up sex slaves in Nigeria
- Decrease of French welfare allocations
In France, as in probably every country who has welfare allocations, some people criticize this system because some people might try to game it (e.g., "welfare queens" idea). Note that if we didn't had it there would probably be much more people complaining because the ones who really need it would end up in extreme poverty.
Charlie Hebdo is known for being left-wing attached and very controversial, and I think they wanted to parody people who criticize "welfare queens" by taking this point-of-view to the absurd, to show that immigrant women in France are more likely to be victims of patriarchy than evil manipulative profiteers.
And of course if we only stay on the first-degree approach, it's a terrible racist and absurd cover.
As Adrien points out in his answer, it was neither the first nor the last time Charlie Hebdo used this kind of "satirical news mixing", and had no "preferred target".
Adrien Lucas Ecoffet, French citizen
I can only confirm what Jean-Baptiste Froment and Stephen Reed's answers have been saying: it's easy now for non-French observers to imagine Charlie Hebdo as a right wing, racist, anti immigrant publication because of the fact that they have only seen covers about fundamentalist Islam.
The reality is, Charlie Hebdo is a far left, pro-immigrant publication, of which many contributors have been members of anti-racist organizations.
As the other answers have mentioned, this cover is simply the combination of two news stories to make a provocative joke. This is a very common occurrence in Charlie Hebdo front pages.
Government reshuffle: Can we show these images?
The characters are the French prime minister (with a knife), and one minister whose job got... cut, in that specific reshuffle.
As I mentioned in my answer to Attack on French Magazine Charlie Hebdo (January 2015): What should everyone know about Charlie Hebdo?, Charlie Hebdo came from a banned publication called Hara-Kiri. The front page that got Hara-Kiri banned was itself an example of news story combination:
Tragic ball in Colombey - 1 dead
This refers to president de Gaulle's death in the city of Colombey, as well as the then-recent tragic incident during a ball in another French city in which 146 people died.
Overall I don't think you should make much of this front page. Clearly people are cherry-picking Charlie Hebdo covers in an attempt to prove that it is a racist, anti-Islam publication, perhaps in some form of victim-blaming, when this assertion is absolutely preposterous to anyone who actually knows the newspaper.
Incidentally, this particular issue was preceded and followed by anti-Le Pen front pages, Le Pen being the front figure of the French anti-immigration far right.
Anther comment I found:
Adjowa Fuji Deva:
And I call bs on this. I am french, black with far left inclinasion and I can say without a doubt that Charlie is a great publication who always attack bigots of all kind.
Sorry but the op is propaganda. France is a racist country and Charlie was calling it out all the time.
(Adjowa is female. Charlie Hedbo is being accused of hating those as well)
Topic: Deadly attack on office of French magazine Charlie Hebdo