Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdullahian said Paris chose the “wrong path” by allowing the publication of “abusive” cartoons of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Wednesday,
Amir-Abdullahian tweeted, “The outrageous and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against religious and political authority will not go without a decisive and effective response.”
“We will not allow the French government to go beyond all limits,” he wrote, “they have certainly chosen the wrong path.”
Published by Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday dozens of caricatures Illustrations of Khamenei being stoned by naked women or being hanged by the hair of naked women.
The pictures were selected as part of a competition launched by the French publication last monthwhich asked press cartoonists to send “the funniest and meanest caricatures of Ali Khamenei”.
They are meant as a tribute to Iranian women who have since taken to the streets across the country last SeptemberCharlie Hebdo’s publishing director said after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini Tuesday on french radio,
“Caricature is something that is almost part of a political weapon used by mullahs, so we used it against them as well,” explained cartoonist Laurent Sorriso, who goes by his artist name “Ris”.
The magazine received “more than 300 caricatures from around the world,” including some from Iranian cartoonists and refugees, Riss said.
The publication date of the pictures also falls in the week of the anniversary. January 2015 attacks Charlie Hebdo’s Paris newsroom, which killed 12 people. The newspaper was targeted for publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Riss, like other members of the newsroom who survived the attack, is living under police protection Since then.
When asked if he feared the consequences of publishing these new caricatures, he defended “the right to draw what we want” and said they were “not blasphemous.”
“It can’t please them [the Iranian regime]But it does not matter.
Christian Oliver and Louis Westenderp contributed reporting.