Thread: Paper to run "Holocaust cartoons"

Paper to run 'Holocaust cartoons'

More deaths as anti-cartoon riots spread

(CNN) -- An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports.

The newspaper, called Hamshahri, said the contest would be launched on February 13 and would be co-convened by itself and the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons.

The competition is in response to the publication, mainly in European newspapers, of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, something which is forbidden under Muslim belief.

Both the paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is well known for his opposition to Israel, AP reports.

Last year Ahmadinejad provoked outcries when he said on separate occasions that Israel should be "wiped out" and the Holocaust was a "myth."

Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition and said it wanted to see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust.

"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in a short article on its back page.

The Iranian newspaper's plans come as violence sparked by the cartoons shows little sign of abating, with Afghan police killing four protesters on Tuesday.

Tuesday's protests -- from Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe -- came as political leaders urged restraint and struggled to contain the backlash, some of which has turned from peaceful to volatile and deadly.

In Iran, which is locked in a nuclear stand-off with the West and has cut trade ties with Denmark where the cartoons were first published, crowds pelted the Danish Embassy in Tehran with petrol bombs and stones for a second day.

Also in Tehran, protesters threw Molotov cocktails at the Norwegian Embassy, breaking several windows, a witness told CNN.

Ole Kristian Holthe, the Norwegian ambassador to Iran, said he had gotten word that about 100 demonstrators had gathered in front of the embassy, as were 100 police officers.

"At least one petrol bomb was thrown against the embassy," he told CNN in a phone interview from Tehran.

The embassy was closed Tuesday due to the protests all over the Middle East, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian foreign ministry said, and all embassy personnel are safe.

Meanwhile, the United Nations evacuated staff and NATO peacekeepers rushed reinforcements to a northwest Afghan town after deadly fighting erupted during a protest against the cartoons, The Associated Press reported.

Denmark's prime minister on Tuesday described the protests as a global crisis and called for calm.

"We are now facing a growing global crisis," Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a news conference. "Now it has become an international political matter," he said. "I urge calm and steadiness.

"Denmark and the Danish people are not enemies of Islam or any other religion. We believe in freedom of expression, we believe in freedom of religion and we respect all religions," he said.

"We believe in dialogue between cultures and we oppose violence and hatred and we believe in equal rights for everyone."

Nordic countries are bearing the brunt of the protests in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was offering help to many Danish embassies.

"One thing that we are going to do is go out to our embassies around the globe and ask them to offer any assistance to the Danish government, the Danish embassies, representatives in countries where they have representation, see if they need any assistance," he said.

Tuesday's rioting in the remote town of Maymana was one of about a half-dozen flashpoints that erupted across Afghanistan. Reuters said four people were killed.

Four protesters were killed on Monday and 17 others injured in protests near Bagram Airbase, a U.S. base north of Kabul, and separately in the Afghan city of Mihtarlam, according to AP. (Watch as police and rioters clash -- 2:25)

Also Monday, a stampede during a protest in the east African nation of Somalia killed a teenager, AP reported. (Full story)

Further protests erupted Tuesday in Egypt, Yemen, Djibouti, Gaza and Azerbaijan, while Croatia became the latest country where a newspaper printed the cartoons.

At least 10,000 people marched in the Bangladeshi capital and tens of thousands turned out in Niger's capital Niamey in sub-Saharan Africa to vent their anger about the cartoons.

On Tuesday, in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, more than 6,000 people demonstrated, chanting slogans against European nations and demanding justice, police said.

The protest was led by the Chief Minister of North West Frontier Province, Mohammad Akram Khan Durani, and several other provincial ministers.

"Hang the man who insulted the prophet," some Pakistani protesters shouted.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has issued a statement condemning the publication of the cartoons and expressing concern about controversy.

In Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police fired tear gas Tuesday to disperse hundreds of Shiite Muslim protesters. At least six protesters and two police officers were injured, police told AP.

In the southern Philippines, hundreds of Muslims burned a Danish flag.

And in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, rallies were held in at least four cities Tuesday. Rock-throwing demonstrators have attacked Denmark's diplomatic missions in the sprawling country on a near daily basis.

"The Foreign Ministry recommends that Danes already in Indonesia leave and that those interested in coming postpone their plans," said Niels Erik Anderson, Denmark's ambassador to Indonesia.

Malaysia's prime minister slammed the foreign media and a local daily on Tuesday for running the drawings, one of which shows Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as a bomb.

Iran said it was cutting off all trade with Denmark, and Tehran withdrew its ambassador to Denmark in response. (Full story)

Demonstrators in the Iranian capital protested outside the Danish Consulate and the Austrian Embassy, tossing Molotov cocktails at the buildings. Austria currently serves as president of the European Union. (Full story)

On Tuesday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the West's publication of the cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas' win in the Palestinian elections, AP reported.

Arrest warrants

The cartoons of Mohammed first appeared in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in September. The paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media was censoring itself over Muslim issues.

Islam forbids depictions of Mohammed and many Muslims were furious at the drawings, one of which shows the religious figure wearing a turban shaped like a bomb.

Some other European papers later published some of the cartoons, as a way of covering the controversy and also, some papers said, as a matter of freedom of expression.

Two New Zealand newspapers also reprinted the cartoons, sparking protests in that country and drawing condemnation from the government.

In Paris, France Soir -- a newspaper that published the cartoons -- was evacuated for nearly three hours Monday after receiving a bomb threat.

Two small weekly Jordanian newspapers also reprinted the cartoons and, according to Jordan's Petra News Agency, arrest warrants were issued for the editors-in-chief.

The Danish paper issued an apology in late January after weeks of quieter expressions of outrage and diplomatic efforts to avoid the widespread violence.

The Danish government says it does not control what is in the country's newspapers and that courts will determine whether the newspaper that originally published the cartoons is guilty of blasphemy.

The government has also expressed apologies for the offending drawings. (Danes feel threatened)

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

-- CNN Producer Syed Mohsin Naqvi and Journalist Tom Coghlan contributed to this report

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.





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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc...sts/index.html

I swear - we're dealing with 4th graders trapped in the bodied of adults.

k

Originally Posted by krellum

I swear - we're dealing with 4th graders trapped in the bodied of adults.

k

Are you sure you want to give them THAT much credit?
-OT

That's a mature decision......yeah kindergartners are about this level of maturity

Well, the new Iranian President said his sole purpose is to bring about Armegeddon... Who would of thought that a cartoon could be the start of it... Isn't it amazing that the EU finally gets a backbone over a cartoon. I hope it keeps its backbone.

imho, this editorial outlines the situation in very realistic terms. i particularly enjoyed the european newspaper "freedom of speech" discussion.

Washington Post Editorial
The Uses of Cartoons

Wednesday, February 8, 2006; Page A18
EXTREMISTS AND political opportunists across the Muslim world are rushing to exploit the controversy over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Late to the game but conspicuous in its crudeness is the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which yesterday oversaw a second day of demonstrations outside European embassies while a newspaper it controls announced a contest for Holocaust cartoons. The Taliban is probably behind violent demonstrations in Afghanistan, including one directed at the largest U.S. military base in the country. And the Bush administration has rightly fingered the secular but cynical government of Syria for orchestrating the burning of embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

A clash of civilizations between Muslims and the West is the fondest ambition of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, from Britain to Indonesia. But it also is a convenient refuge for authoritarian regimes hoping to resist the rising pressure for political liberalization in the Middle East. That explains why Muslim outrage over the original publication of the cartoons in Denmark was patiently cultivated not by Osama bin Laden but by the Egyptian and Saudi governments. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Egypt's ambassador in Denmark worked with local Islamic clerics as they prepared an inflammatory propaganda campaign about the cartoons for dissemination through the Middle East last fall. In December a delegation of the Danish militants was received by senior clerics and government officials in Cairo, where the manufactured outrage contrasts with the quotidian persecution of a Christian minority and publication of anti-Semitic libels in the government-controlled press.

Europeans, too, have participated in the stoking of passions, if for different reasons. The cartoons, whose vulgarity and offensiveness are beyond question, were published as a calculated insult last September by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem. The Danish government depends for support in Parliament on a far-right populist party with an anti-immigrant agenda: Maybe that's why Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrogantly refused to meet with ambassadors from Muslim countries last fall, when the controversy might have been defused.

Last week, as protests escalated in the Middle East, European newspapers in Spain, France and Germany rushed to republish the cartoons, claiming they were defending freedom of speech. But there is no threat to freedom of speech in Europe -- no newspaper was prevented from publishing the cartoons, and demands by Muslims that European governments impose such censorship were quickly dismissed. In reprinting the drawings the European papers demonstrated not their love of freedom but their insensitivity -- or hostility -- to the growing diversity of their own societies. It is just such attitudes, more than any insult to Islam, that have inspired much of the Muslim resentment toward the West, and the growing anger of Muslims who live in Europe.

The few heroes in this sordid episode reside not in continental newsrooms but in the Middle East. In Jordan, where freedom of speech really is at issue, two editors bravely republished the offensive cartoons; they now face prosecution. In Iraq, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani condemned the Muslim inciters. It's not an accident that these Arab voices of reason are also leading proponents of democracy: They, more than anyone, are the ones deserving of the West's support.

Originally Posted by krellum

I swear - we're dealing with 4th graders trapped in the bodied of adults.

k

No, it's virulent hatred.

Not only do journalists write about conflict they create it...

Yeah, wow...I'm usually able to look at both sides and see where people are coming from (or at least try to)...but dang...making light of a crime against humanity vs a cartoon of a dude. I could have sworn there were Muslim evangelistic comic books...so I guess they don't "show" the prophet?

Anyhow...ugh.

Great article - this is scary stuff. On a closely related note, I saw a clip of the Iranian president on the news the other day giving a speech about what like world would be like without Israel and the US, and encouraging his listeners that such a goal is possible. The podium he was speaking from had a banner that said "The world without Zionism." Sent a shiver down my spine considering how eerily reminiscent that is of Hitler...

I'm taking some solice in the fact the international community (with the excpetion of 3 anti-US countries) agrees that, under no circumstances, can this guy be allowed to develop nuclear facilities...

Italian minister puts Mohammad cartoon on T-shirts By Crispian Balmer
Tue Feb 14, 10:50 AM ET



Italy's Reform Minister Roberto Calderoli has had T-shirts made emblazoned with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a move that could embarrass Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, told Ansa news agency on Tuesday that the West had to stand up against Islamist extremists and offered to hand out T-shirts to anyone who wanted them.

"I have had T-shirts made with the cartoons that have upset Islam and I will start wearing them today," Ansa quoted Calderoli as saying.

He said the T-shirts were not meant to be a provocation but added that he saw no point trying to appease extremists.

"We have to put an end to this story that we can talk to these people. They only want to humiliate people. Full stop. And what are we becoming? The civilization of melted butter?" Calderoli said.

The publication of the cartoons in some European newspapers, including one showing an image of the prophet with a bomb for a turban, have provoked widespread anger in the Muslim world.

Many Muslims believe it is blasphemous to depict the Prophet and there have been a number of violent protests in the Middle East and Asia.

The Northern League, which is gearing up for an April general election, has leapt on the controversy to promote its own far-right political agenda.

RELIGIOUS WAR

The League has long led the charge against illegal immigration and its leaders say the cartoon violence shows the dangers of allowing Muslim immigrants to settle in Italy.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg of the religious war Islamist extremists have declared on us," Calderoli told reporters earlier this month.

The Italian press reported that Berlusconi last week urged Calderoli to take a more moderate stance over the issue, but the minister said on Tuesday he had no intention of keeping quiet.

"As for Berlusconi, seeing as he has compared himself to Jesus Christ, I would call on him to follow (Christ's) example and think about evangelizing Christian values and not be evangelized by Islam," Calderoli was quoted as saying.

Berlusconi caused a storm at the weekend when he said: "I am the Jesus Christ of politics...I sacrifice myself for everyone."

Maintaining a steady stream of anti-foreigner invective, Calderoli earlier this month dismissed a Palestinian journalist on a television chat show, as: "that suntanned lady." He also said he was delighted newcomers to Italy would not benefit from a government scheme to encourage people to have more children.

"I am proud of the fact that the baby bonus will only go to Italian citizens. I say to all those Ali Babas that either Allah or their governments will have to think of them."

The League's anti-immigrant stance has found a sympathetic audience in the wealthy north of Italy, where many third world immigrants have settled in recent years.

League politicians say the immigrants are responsible for growing crime rates and are also challenging Italians for jobs.

Latest opinion polls say the League will get up to six percent of the vote in the April election against just 3.9 percent in the 2001 ballot. However, it is not clear what part the anti-immigrant rhetoric has played in this increase.