Secretary: Int’l Cartoon Contest on Holocaust “No Racism”

“We are not after anti-Semites, rather we seek to address the fake Zionist regime,” Shojayee Tabatabayee told FNA on Wednesday.

“The issues that we raise about the Holocaust are not related to spreading racist hatred and violence,” he added, referring to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent interview with New Yorker on the Holocaust Contest in Iran.

When asked by the New Yorker in an interview earlier this week, why Iran allows a cartoon festival on the Holocaust, Zarif told the US magazine “why does the United States have the Ku Klux Klan? Is the government of the United States responsible for the fact that there are racially hateful organizations in the United States? Don’t consider Iran a monolith. The Iranian government does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you’re talking about”.

Shojayee Tabatabayee filed a response to Zarif, saying “Generally speaking, Mr. Zarif is not familiar with the events happening in relation to the Holocaust exhibition (and cartoon contest) and no one has provided him with any relevant information either”.

He, meantime, pointed to the western media (including Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo)’s blasphemous cartoons of Islam’s holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), and said “we held the first edition of the Holocaust Cartoon Contest” as the westerners claim that freedom of expression is limitless and anything can be worked on.

Shojayee Tabatabayee questioned the western states’ claims about freedom of expression, and said all people who have voiced doubt and suspicion about Holocaust, including Roger Garaudy, Robert Faurisson and David Irving, have been pressured and even imprisoned.

He stressed that even if the Holocaust happened to this extent, the main question then would be why the Palestinian people should pay the price for it and their territories should be occupied by the Zionist regime in reprisal.

“The second question is why they had not granted the Jews parts of Germany which was the main culprit behind the World War II to build their homes,” Shojayee Tabatabayee asked, voicing regret that the western states are now staunch supporters of the Zionist regime which is committing savage crimes against the Palestinians and spreads hatred and racism in the world.