Russian prosecutors has opened an investigation after a newspaper in the southern city of Volgograd published a cartoon of Jesus, Moses, Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed, a senior prosecutor said today.
The Prosecutor General’s office for southern Russia has sent investigators to the city to determine whether to open a criminal case for inciting religious hatred, said Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel.
The newspaper, Gorodskiye Vesti, or City News, published the cartoon on Thursday last week and received notification of the prosecutors’ probe on Monday, said its editor, Tatyana Kaminskaya.
The drawing depicted Jesus, Moses, Buddha and the Prophet Mohammed watching television to illustrate an article titled "Racists Can’t Be in the Government".
The TV screen showed two groups of people about to start a fistfight, and the drawing was accompanied by a caption that reads: "We did not teach you that", said the editor.
She denied that the caricature could have caused offence and said none of the city’s religious communities had complained. She accused the local branch of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party of stirring up the scandal. Ekho Mosvky radio reported that United Russia had organised a boycott of the paper.
"The main idea was to unite all four religions in appealing to people to do good things. In no way did we call on people to instigate religious strife, just the opposite," said Kaminskaya.
The Russian state body in charge of licensing the mass media signalled today that any media outlet which published articles that offended people’s religious feelings could face possible sanctions including the withdrawal of its registration if ordered by a court.
"If a media outlet gets two warnings over one year, we can bring the matter to the court with a request to repeal their registration," said Yevgeny Strelchik of the Rosokhrankultura agency.
Demonstrations erupted in Muslim countries after newspapers in several European countries reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that were first published in Denmark in September.
No Russian newspapers have reprinted the Mohammed cartoons.
