A top German cartoonist has been bombarded with death threats after depicting the national football team of Iran as suicide bombers with explosives strapped to their chests.
Germany was plunged into its own cartoon war when Klaus Stuttmann, a caricaturist for Der Tagesspiegel, decided to criticise a government plan to deploy soldiers during the World Cup, which will take place around the country this summer. Such a deployment would break the postwar convention of not using the German Army to support the police, a subject of intense debate, given the security issues posed by the tournament, which will run from June 9 to July 9.
The cartoon, published on Friday, showed four Iranian players primed to explode alongside four German players dressed in army uniform. œThe real reason why the German Army has to be used during the World Cup, a caption read.
There seems to be quite a bit of anxiety around the globe concerning cartoons of various shapes and sizes. I’m sympathetic — more than once I have threatened to kill myself — and take many others with me — if my local paper continued to run this.