TEHRAN, Feb 13: A controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust was launched in Iran on Monday in a tit-for-tat move over the anti-Islam caricatures that have enflamed Muslims worldwide.
The first entry was said to be from renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, according to the website organising 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,” Mr Leunig was quoted as saying in a statment on the Irancartoons.com website.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international anger by dismissing the killing of Jews by the Nazis as a myth used to justify the creation of Israel.
The first of Mr Leunig’s two cartoons on the website show a poor man with a Star of David on his back walking towards 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 entrance and the same man walking towards 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 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.
“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 criticising 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 government is supportive of Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the killing of Jews by the Nazis during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.
The newspaper said the contest was open until May 5. It did not announce what the prize would be but said every artist would receive a book of the cartoons submitted. —AFP
