| I understand banning an opposition newspaper, but the state newspaper? |
TEHERAN - Iran has suspended publication of its official state newspaper after it published a cartoon that sparked violent ethnic protests in the northwestern city of Tabriz, a senior judiciary official said on Tuesday.
The cartoonist, Mana Neyestani, and the editor-in-chief, Mehrdad Qasemfar, of the “Iran” newspaper were arrested over the lampoon that was deemed to insult Iran’s Azeri minority, Teheran’s chief Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi said. “Some charges were brought against both of them and they were transferred to Evin prison,” he told state television. He did not specify the charges.
| In the VIP suite, to be released when things calm down. |
He added the publishing manager of the newspaper, Gholamhossein Eslamifard, had been summoned to court.
Furious members of the Azeri minority pelted government buildings and banks with stones in Tabriz on Monday night, enraged by the cartoon, eyewitnesses in the city told Reuters. The cartoon, which appeared in Friday’s edition of Iran, showed a boy repeating the Persian word for cockroach in different ways while the uncomprehending bug in front of him says “What?” in Azeri.
NeyestaniÂ’s relatives told Reuters he had not intended to insult Azeris.
| "No, no, certainly not! If I had intended that, I would have cursed their mustaches!" |
The Azeris of northwestern Iran speak a language related to Turkish. Although Azeris have many luminaries among IranÂ’s commercial elite, IranÂ’s majority Persians mock them in jokes.
The conservative Siyasat-e Rouz daily on Sunday said a crowd of Azeris had set fire to IranÂ’s local office in the city of Orumiyeh, where Azeris make up the majority of the population. Azeris account for about 25 percent of the overall population of the Islamic Republic. |