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June 21, 2006

Iran: Islamist Regime's Political Cartoon Jihad

The publication of a cartoon in the Friday, 19 May edition of the state-owned newspaper Iran led to ethnic riots, and the subsequent arrest of the cartoonist and the editor, and caused the Islamist regime to close down the paper. Five people died in the cartoon riots that followed, protesters who were gunned down by Iranian security forces.

The cartoonist is a mild-mannered Iranian of Azeri descent, Mana Neyestani (pictured, left). The BBC reported on 28 May that there had been several demonstrations in northwest Iran, by ethnic Azeris, who comprise the largest minority in the nation, about 24% of the total population of 70 million.

The riots took place in Ardebil, Naqadeh and Meshkin Shahr. It was here that five rioters were shot dead. Following on from the initial protests, Azeris on 27 May demonstrated outside government buildings, burned down television stations and banks.

Earlier, on 23 May, the BBC reported that in the initial riots, police had used tear gas on demonstrators in the city of Tabriz.

The state press supervisory board had already suspended the newspaper by this time, claiming that it had published "divisive and provocative materials".

Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Iran's Interior Minister, said the offending cartoon was "an insult to all Iranians, and we cannot tolerate that. The law will confront this offence."

The Committee to Protect Journalists published a report on the same day, which said that Saeed Mortazavi, Iran's chief prosecutor had ordered the arrests of Mehrdad Qasemfar, editor of Iran Friday, and Mana Neyestani. Charged with "insulting the Azeri ethnic minority", the pair were whisked off to Evin prison in Tehran for interrogation. The newspaper's publisher, Gholamhossein Eslamifard, was summoned to court. The paper was closed under the terms of Article 12 of Iran's Press Law.

On May 21, the local office of Iran in the city of Orumiyeh was torched. Before the riots, which saw several policemen injured, the Iran newspaper had fired the cartoonist and its editor-in-chief, and for three days running, it had published apologies to the Azeri people, who are frequently ridiculed by the Iranian majority.

So what on earth caused this disintegration of law and order? A small segment of the cartoon is shown at right. The entire feature ran on a whole page, and can be found HERE from Iranian.com.

The cartoon features a range of characters, principally a young boy, who try to talk to a cockroach in Farsi, the Persian language, but all the cockroach seems to do is to reply in Azeri: "What?"

Azeris felt that the cartoon mocked them as being stupid, though the cartoonist, Mana Neyestani probably intended to portray his fellow ethnic Azeris as "obtuse".

Today, CNN Matthews reports that Mana Neyestani and his editor-in-chief Mehrdad Qassemfar will be tried in the Islamic Revolutionary Court, the highest court in the land, which normally deals with cases of sedition, national security infringements, major drug-trafficking and human trafficking.

The Iranian minister of Justice asked for the judiciary to punish the accused pair with the "highest penalty". He said that the case should be dealt with under the terms of criminal law, and not Press law. The trial will be held behind closed doors, with a single judge deciding the fate of the editor and cartoonist. They are to be charged with "inciting ethnic unrest".

Since they were sent to Evin prison, the pair have been interrogated several times, and the cartoonist's Azeri family say that they have received death threats from the Azeri community.

Aida International states that the hardline Iranian paper Kayhan had blamed foreigners for encouraging the violent protests, saying: "Our fellow Azeri countrymen are too clever to be exploited by Iran's sworn enemies in their plots."

In April, a weekly paper in southern Iran was closed down for "insulting the Islamic Republic's leadership". The month before, an Azeri weekly newspaper was shut down for its supposed ethnic bias and of acting against the national interest.

Currently eight journalists and webloggers are detained in Iran. The offending cartoon of May 19 is not even one of Mana Neyestani's best. Born in Tehran in 1973, he has won prestigious awards for his skilled use of imagery. His styles are many and varied, but his line work with cross-hatched shading is superb. Some examples of his other, superior artwork can be found on Iran Cartoon with a list of his awards.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 21, 2006 11:47 AM

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