Dozens of people gathered on Sunday in front of the French Embassy in Tehran to denounce the publication of caricatures of the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
Several dozen Iranians gathered on Sunday January 8 in front of the French Embassy in Tehran, where they burned French flags, to protest against the caricatures of the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Republic published in “Charlie Hebdo”.
Gathered in the center of Tehran, the demonstrators, for most of the students of Shiite seminars and women in Chador, held Iranian flags, portraits of Ali Khamenei and signs denouncing the satirical newspaper, found journalists from the France-Presse agency (AFP). “Oh France, abandon your hostility!”, And “Shame on France”, chanted the demonstrators who burned French flags.
“Charlie Hebdo” published on January 4 a series of drawings featuring the highest religious and political personality of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran denounced in the wake of “insulting and indecent” caricatures, published in a special edition on the anniversary of the murderous attack of 2015 against the premises of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
The Iranian authorities had warned France that they would take measures in retaliation. Tehran has thus announced the closure of the French Research Institute in Iran (IFRI), the oldest and most important French research center in the country, affiliated with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Closed for many years, IFRI had reopened under the chairmanship of the moderate Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021) as a sign of warming bilateral relations.
rally similar to Qom
Sunday, in front of the French Embassy, Karim Heydarpour, pupil of a 17 -year -old seminar, told AFP that he participated in the rally to “support the revolution and the supreme guide”. “We must give (to the opponents of the Islamic Republic) an answer so that they do not think that we do not support our revolution,” he said.
A similar rally took place before in Qom, a holy Shiite city located nearly 150 km south of Tehran, according to images of state television.
The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanani, said on Sunday that freedom of expression should not be used as a pretext to “insult” religious personalities. He called on Paris to “respect the fundamental principles of international relations”, and not to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran.
Charlie Hebdo had declared that he had published these caricatures to support the Iranian people during the protests triggered by the death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian 22 years old who died after her arrest by the moral police.