Iranian newspaper calls for cartoons on the Shoah

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
A prominent Iranian newspaper planned on Monday to open an international competition seeking cartoons about the Holocaust in what it says is a test of whether the West would be as supportive of freedom of expression over the Nazi genocide as it was with caricatures of Islam's prophet. Hamshahri, a Tehran-based paper, published a call for cartoons under the title: "What is the Limit of Western Freedom of Expression?" on its Web site. The advertisement was also to appear on page 31 of the print version of the paper, said Davood Kazemi, executive manager of the contest. "We don't intend retaliation over the drawings of the prophet. We just want to show that freedom is restricted in the West," Kazemi said. "We would not accept any insulting cartoons in the contest," he said, without elaborating.