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Australian cartoonist denies submitting Holocaust cartoon

Updated: 14/Feb/2006 18:53

Michael Leunig

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Renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig Tuesday denied entering a controversial Iranian contest for cartoons of the Holocaust, saying he had been maliciously set up.

The competition, which has triggered outrage in the United States and Germany in particular, was launched on Monday in a tit-for-tat move over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have angered Muslims worldwide.

Leunig’s entry was announced as the contest’s first on the website for the competition, run in association with Iran’s biggest selling newspaper
Hamshahri.

"As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying in a statement on the Irancartoons.com website.

But Leunig denied entering his work, saying that the first he knew of the publication of his cartoon was when he received a call from a concerned executive from his employer, Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

"I learnt last night that some of my cartoons from a few years back have been submitted as an entry in that competition," Leunig told ABC radio.

"This is a fraud and hoax emanating, we believe, from Australia."

"I’ve been set up horribly, maliciously," he said.

The website, which also named The Age, published a Leunig drawing in which a man with a Star of David on his back walks towards the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance.

The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan "War Brings Peace" over entrance and the same man walking towards it bearing a rifle.

The Age declined to publish the images in 2002 and Leunig said both would be withdrawn from the Iranian site after the artist complained to its editors.

Leunig said he had recently received anonymous emails taunting him to enter the competition but said he was shocked that the hoax had included comments claiming to be from him.

"It was a formal little thing saying my name is Michael Leunig here is this cartoon, which cannot be published in my own country I want to submit it... to express solidarity with the Muslim world," he said.

"These were not my words at all."

Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran’s conservative municipality,
launched the competition to explore the limits on freedom of expression in the West following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in mainly European countries.

The cartoons, first published in Denmark in September, have sparked violent demonstrations around the Muslim world.