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Iran kicks of Holocaust-bashing cartoon fest
A controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust was launched in Iran on Monday in a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have enflamed Muslims worldwide.The first entry was said to be from renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, according to the Website organizing the competition with Iran's biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri, triggering outrage in the United States and Germany in particular. "As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying in a statement on the Irancartoons.com Website. Hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international anger by dismissing the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel. The first of Leunig's two cartoons on the Website show a poor man with a Star of David on his back walking toward the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance. The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan "War Brings Peace" over the entrance and the same man walking toward it bearing a rifle. "I have had some difficulty getting this work published in my own country, and I believe it would help highlight the hypocrisy of the West's attitude to free speech if you were to publish it," the Melbourne-based Leunig was quoted as saying. Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran's conservative municipality, said that the contest was officially launched on Monday with the title "What is the limit on freedom of expression in the West?" Its graphics editor Farid Mortazavi said earlier this month that the aim was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression. Anger over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark in September, has boiled over into violent demonstrations across much of the Muslim world. "Freedom of expression has always been a pretext for Westerners ... to insult the beliefs of Muslims," Hamshahri charged in its advertisement for the contest. "This assault is taking place while criticizing many issues such as the crimes of the United States and Israel as well as historical events like the Holocaust are seen as an unforgivable crime all over the West." Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated. The newspaper said that the contest was open until May 5. It did not announce what the prize would be but said that each artist would receive a book of the cartoons submitted. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-14 |
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