Iran warns France over ‘insulting’ cartoons depicting supreme leader Ali Khamenei
Publication by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo ‘will not go without effective response’, says Tehran foreign minister
Iran has summoned the French ambassador over publication of caricatures of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The
weekly magazine published dozens of cartoons ridiculing the highest
religious and political figure in the Islamic republic as part of a
competition it launched in December in support of the protest movement that began in Iran last September.
Later on Wednesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the French ambassador, Nicolas Roche.
“France
has no right to insult the sanctities of other Muslim countries and
nations under the pretext of freedom of expression,” said a foreign
ministry spokesperson, Nasser Kanani. “Iran is waiting for the French
government’s explanation and compensatory action in condemning the
unacceptable behaviour of the French publication.”
The foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian,
tweeted: “The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in
publishing cartoons against the religious and political authority will
not go without an effective and decisive response.”
Without
spelling out the consequences, he added: “We will not allow the French
government to go beyond its bounds. They have definitely chosen the
wrong path.”
Seen by supporters as a champion of freedom of speech and by critics as needlessly provocative, Charlie Hebdo
is controversial even within France. But the country was united in
grief when in January 2015 the magazine was targeted in a deadly attack
by Islamist gunmen who claimed to be avenging the decision to publish
cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
Charlie
Hebdo’s latest issue features the winners of a recent cartoon contest in
which entrants were asked to draw the most offensive caricatures of
Khamenei, who has held Iran’s highest office since 1989.
One
of the finalists depicts a turbaned cleric reaching for a hangman’s
noose as he drowns in blood, while another shows Khamenei clinging to a
giant throne above the raised fists of protesters. Others depict more
vulgar and sexually explicit scenes
All the cartoons published had “the merit of
defying the authority that the supposed supreme leader claims to be, as
well as the cohort of his servants and other henchmen”, he added.
Nathalie
Loiseau, a French MEP and former minister loyal to France’s president,
Emmanuel Macron, described Iran’s response as an “interference attempt
and threat” to Charlie Hebdo. “Let it be perfectly clear, the repressive
and theocratic regime in Tehran has nothing to teach France,” she said.
Khamenei, the successor of the revolutionary
leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is appointed for life. Above
day-to-day politics, criticism of him is prohibited inside Iran.
In
1989, Khomeini famously issued a religious decree, or fatwa, ordering
Muslims to kill the British author Salman Rushdie for what he deemed the
blasphemous nature of the writer’s novel The Satanic Verses. Many
activists blamed Iran last year when Rushdie was stabbed at an event in
New York, but Tehran denied any link.
The
Iranian regime has been shaken by three months of protests triggered by
the death in custody on 16 September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian
Kurd who was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code
for women. It has responded with a crackdown that the Oslo-based group
Iran Human Rights says has killed at least 476 people taking part in
protests. Iranian officials generally have described the protests as
riots.
Charlie Hebdo published the caricatures
in a special edition to mark the anniversary of the deadly attack on its
Paris office, which left 12 people dead, including some of its
best-known cartoonists.
“Eight years later,
religious intolerance has not said its last word. It continues its work
in defiance of international protests and respect for the most basic
human rights,” said the publication’s director.
