Geoffrey MG's Beyond Wallacia

Indonesian cartoonist Tommy Thomdean is in the running for the prize for the world's "best" anti-Jewish-Holocaust cartoon being presented by Iran Cartoon and Iran's largest selling newspaper Hamshahri. Interest is mounting as an exhibition of the competition's 204 finalists from the more than 1,100 cartoons submitted by participants from 60 countries was opened in Tehran's Palestine contemporary art museum yesterday. The top three cartoons will be announced on 2 September with the winners being awarded prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.

Thomdean may have a good chance of finishing in the top three and proudly raising anti-Semitism in Indonesia to a new level of prominence as he previously won an Excellence Prize at the 2004 LM International Cartoon Competition held in Nanjing, China. and was also a prize winner at this year's Syrian International Cartoon Contest.

According to the Syria Cartoon website, Thomdean began his career as freelance cartoonist and illustrator in 1997 while working as an architect "for many local social projects and low income housing in Indonesia" and now works as a cartoonist and illustrator for Kompas morning daily, Indonesia's largest circulating and most prestigious newspaper.

Aljazeera newsagency reported that Thomdean's cartoon "shows the statue of liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other". This accords with the objective of the competition to parody the documented murder of some six million European Jews by the German Nazi terror regime between 1933 and 1945, known as the Holocaust.

Thomdean's cartoon appears to be displayed on the gallery wall to the right in the photo above. Blogger View From a Height, who has reproduced many more scenes from the exhibition's oepning ceremony, makes the point that half the cartoons are in English, "which tells you a little something about the target audience." He also observed that while the exhibition wanted to deny the Holocaust happened, numerous cartoons portrayed Iraelis Jews as "latter-day" Nazis. "The genius of good propaganda is doublethink," he mused.

The contest was announced in February after caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad were first printed in Denmark in September 2005 and then, surprisingly six months later, were attacked by Muslims worldwide. The cartoons were then republished by other publications, mostly in democratic countries. Many Muslims considered the cartoons offensive and a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophets. In some Islamic countries Muslim demonstrators were killed in riots that got out of control.

Masoud Shojai, the competition organiser, said "we staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in ... they can freely write anything they like about our prophet, but," he claimed, "if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison."

According to Aljazeera, "Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has also prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a 'myth' used to justify the creation of Israel."

Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders are increasingly calling for Muslims to join together to ensure the destruction of Israel (see Ahmadinejad very clear on Israel's "elimination").

Indonesian connections

In February, about 200 Muslims demonstrated outside the Danish Embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to protest the publishing of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper six months before. Danish Ambassador Neils Erik Andersen told CNN that about a dozen of the demonstrators, members of Defenders of Islam (FPI), broke through security and, once on the embassy grounds, demanded to meet with him. During the meeting, Andersen reiterated an apology made earlier by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said at the time that radical groups around the world were exploiting public Islamic anger over the cartoons and protests were now "out of proportion."

Last month, however, an Indonesian journalist was arrested over his decision to publish the controversial cartoons in Rakyat Merdeka newspaper back in February. Teguh Santosa, online editor of the newspaper, was charged with inciting hatred towards a religious group. (namely the country's 80% Muslim majority).

He said he published the images to give readers the full story on the cartoons issue. "We just wanted to let people know about the cartoons, which were being strongly protested at that time," he told the Associated Press. Santosa faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty.

Blogger Indonesia Matters reported that the Committee to Protect Journalists had denounced the arrest and charges, as an attack on the freedom of the press. The Alliance of Independent Journalists (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen) also voiced its concern, claiming that Santosa had not breached the journalists? code of ethics.

The AJI insisted that 30-year-old Santosa had no desire to provoke Muslims when he posted the cartoons and that his sole aim was to provide his readers with background to the controversy they had caused and noted that he was the second Indonesian journalist to suffer consequences for reproducing the cartoons. David Da Silva, the editor of the Christian magazine Gloria, was fired by his employers in February.

Emails may possibly be received by Tommy Thomdean at tom_thomdeanjunior@yahoo.com and via his editor at Kompas. Emails may possibly be received by Teguh Santosa via the Alliance of Independent Journalists.

UPDATE

Exhibition curator Masoud Shojai has since told an Iranian News Channel (IRINN) reporter that "Zionist circles" had "severely attacked" the exhibition website and he'd received "thousands of threatening e-mails" and "offers to money" to prevent the exhibition. Who would have thought Zionist violence or sinister cash transactions were possible in the centre of Islamic revolutionary Tehran?

In another suprise, there have no news reports yet of angry Jewish protests or riots against the exhibition anywhere in the world. No burning of embassies or public calls for the beheading of Iranian or Muslim leaders either.