http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/17/humanrightsagainstcartoons.shtml
Russian Human Rights Activists Warn Against Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Contest <http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/iran.shtml#news> Iran's biggest-selling newspaper has plunged into the Mohammed controversy by holding a competition to find the 12 "best" cartoons about the Holocaust in response to the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper. Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Tehran's Hamshahri newspaper, said the deliberately inflammatory contest would test how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression. Russian human rights organizations have stated that the Holocaust cartoon exhibition in Tehran will provoke Islamophobia and called on the Iranian authorities to close it down, Interfax news agency reports. "This is a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries," said Masoud Shojai-Tabatabai, head of the Cartoon House which helped organise the exhibition, as he stood next to a Statue of Liberty drawing. Organizers say displaying more than 200 entries from Iran's International Holocaust Cartoons Contest aims to challenge Western taboos about discussing the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews died but which Iran's president called a "myth", Reuters news agency reports. In an appeal to the Iranian embassy and the UN office in Moscow, Russian human rights activists called on Iranian authorities "to listen to the public voice and to close down the exhibition in order to prevent unrest throughout the world, to prevent the prerequisites for Islamophobia." "The caricatures mocking the Holocaust tragedy amounts to jeering at the memory of six million innocent lives stopped in gas chambers, shot in ditches and burned in crematoria. This is scoffing at the suffering of the survivors of the fascist ghettos and concentration camps," the letter states. At the same time, the authors of the letter expressed confidence that the exhibition "will fail to drive a wedge between adherents of Islam and Judaism and to instigate them to a new spiral of tension and aggression." The <http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/humanrights.shtml#profile> <http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/humanrights.shtml#news> human rights activists also pointed out that "the Russian legislation, unlike laws in European countries, does not provide, regrettably, for any responsibility for the denial of the Holocaust tragedy and the Russian education system has no single program for studying the history of Holocaust." The address was signed by the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, the Holocaust Foundation and the Al-Haq Muslim human rights organization. Earlier this week Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Parliament's international affairs committee called the Holocaust cartoon contest "utterly unacceptable." Tehran's decision to launch a Holocaust cartoon competition is as unacceptable as Prophet Mohammed cartoons in the European press, he stressed. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
