Russian prosecutors have launched an investigation against a local Volgograd newspaper that has published a cartoon featuring Jesus, Moses, Buda, and Mohammed.
The prosecutors are to decide whether to launch criminal proceedings for hate instigation on religious grounds against the Gorodskiye Izvestia newspaper.
The cartoon portrays all the four gods looking at a TV that is showing two groups of people preparing for a fight. "We did not teach them to do that..." the caption underneath reads.
Prosecutors are mainly concerned about the effect this cartoon might have in view of the current situation. The newspaper's editor Tatyana Kaminskaya, however, said that the article accompanying the cartoon explained the paper's stand against the cartoon-induced violence.
A cartoon of Muhammad, published in a Danish newspaper months ago rattled the world as thousands of people raided embassies in the Middle East and predominantly Muslim countries. So far newspapers in about 20 countries, Bulgaria included, have published the controversial drawing. In the meantime, outraged Iranian newspaper Hamshahri retaliated with a contest for Holocaust cartoons. The first cartoon on the topic was published Tuesday.
