This weekend, the Islamic Republic will hold its third Holocaust-cartoon festival, with submissions vying to mock the Shoah, deny that it happened, or insult Jews and Israel more generally. When asked about the contest in an interview for the New Yorker, the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted that it is run by an NGO and not sponsored by the government. Nikahang Kowsar, a cartoonist who fled Iran after receiving death threats for publishing work critical of the regime, sets the record straight:
The claim that the Iranian government doesn’t control this platform for spewing hate and denying the Holocaust is a pure lie, coming from a pathological liar [Zarif] whose previous absurd claim, exactly a year before this one, was “we do not jail people for their opinions.”
The director of the Iranian Cartoon House, a former member of the Revolutionary Guards, runs the contest according to rules set by the Culture and Arts Center, [part of the] Tehran municipal government. Cartoon House is not allowed to hold international competitions and contests without permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. . . . [T]he winners of this hate-fest are awarded prize money that is sent to them through the standard channels, controlled and monitored by the government.
Interestingly, the spokesman for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance denied Zarif’s claim.
Mr. Zarif is the darling of many American reporters, and he knows that most of them avoid scrutinizing whatever he spouts in order to secure another interview or even travel to Iran without facing any problems. . . . [T]he Islamic Republic has not only jailed but tortured, assassinated, and executed [citizens] for their opinions, including converts [from Islam], practitioners of the Baha’i faith, members of the LGBT community, and critics of the government.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/javad-zarif-holocaust-cartoons-and-lies/