French weekly reprints cartoons

The weekly’s front page carried the new cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad burying his face in his hands and saying: “It’s hard to be loved by fools”.

Inside pages showed the 12 cartoons that were first printed in Denmark. It published other cartoons on its back page which caricatured other religions including Christianity and Judaism.

French Muslim organisations said they would continue to try to take legal steps against Charlie-Hebdo and the daily newspaper France Soir, which reprinted the controversial cartoons last week.

Meanwhile Germany’s deputy Foreign Minister today decried the announcement of a major Iranian newspaper that it was starting a Holocaust cartoon competition. “It is often the case that tastelessness is answered with tastelessness,” said Gernot Erler.

“But in this case it is more serious, because the Iranian government here is deliberately provoking a conflict.”

Hamshahri, one of Iran’s five biggest newspapers, said its contest for Holocaust cartoons was meant as a test of the West’s principle of freedom of expression. Both the paper and the centre are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is well known for his opposition to Israel.

Russia on Wednesday also strongly condemned the contest for Holocaust cartoons. “We condemn such provocations on both sides. This is counter-productive and is only fanning tensions,” the Russian Foreign Minister’s Middle East envoy Alexander Kalugin told reporters while commenting on the retaliatory move made by the Iranian newspaper.

Protests around the world

AFGHANISTAN: Police fired at a crowd trying to storm a US military base on Wednesday, killing three and wounding 20 bringing the total number of Afghans who have been killed this week during protests to 10.

Bangladesh: Muslims burned the flag of Italy and called for the boycott of goods from EU in Dhaka

Yemen: The English-language paper Yemen Observer was shut until further notice and a arrest warrant for the editor-in-chief has been issued on Wednesday for reprinting the cartoons last week.

UAE: A US professor at Dubai’s Zayed University Claudi Keepoz was fired after she distributed copies of the cartoons.

ISRAEL: Palestinians attacked the headquarters of an international monitoring team Temporary International Presence in Hebron. —Agencies