(Reuters) – Russia’s ambassador to France was summoned on Friday to the French Foreign Ministry over an earlier embassy Twitter post that Paris deemed unacceptable, the foreign ministry said.
The Russian Embassy in Paris on Thursday had posted a picture depicting a body lying on a table called “Europe” with characters representing the United States and European Union jabbing needles into it.
“We made that clear today to the Russian Ambassador,” the ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters. “We are trying to maintain a demanding channel of dialogue with Russia and these actions are completely inappropriate.”
Speaking to reporters in Brussels, President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the cartoons as false propaganda.
“It’s unacceptable. We believe in a respectful dialogue and will continue it and that means respect on all sides. It’s a mistake. It’s been corrected and I hope it won’t happen again. We demanded it.”
The drawing implied that the European continent was being destroyed by policies undertaken by the United States and the EU.
The needles, seen being jabbed into the body illustrating Europe, contained words such as “NATO”, “COVID-19”, “Cancel Culture” and “Sanctions”.
The Russian Embassy in Paris had timed its publication of the cartoon to coincide with Thursday’s unprecedented triple summit in Brussels of NATO, the G7 and the European Union to discuss how to tackle Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Comment:
The war in Ukraine has exposed many hypocrisies in the way Western nations and media view the world. Calls for regime change are deemed as good if it is America supporting it, but bad if it is anyone else. Refugees are an unacceptable sight if they are white Europeans, but “just part of the norm” if they are not. The latest hypocrisy is the French opposition to the Russian embassy cartoon. There is clearly no celebrating of freedom of speech, as they did when Charlie Hebdo magazine published cartoons insulting the Prophet Muhammad (saw). Offensive statements against Islam and Muslim were and still are acceptable to many in the West, but calling into question the actions of all parties to the Ukrainian conflict is not.
The hypocrisy of the Western leaders and their media should not be viewed as a simple anti Muslim bias, as it is far deeper than that. Their avowed hatred for autocracy is not genuine, as they have continued to create and support autocratic governments throughout the world. They are driven in all their actions by their secular capitalist ideology which recognises no standard of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, other than their own personal interests, so they will always twist and turn hypocritically when there is an advantage to be gained. The hypocrisy is not only in their actions, but the very values and systems that are built on their contradictory and hypocritical secular belief.
(مَثَلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ أَوْلِيَاءَ كَمَثَلِ الْعَنكَبُوتِ اتَّخَذَتْ بَيْتًا وَإِنَّ أَوْهَنَ الْبُيُوتِ لَبَيْتُ الْعَنكَبُوتِ لَوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُون)
“(The) example (of) those who take from besides Allah protectors (is) like the spider who takes a house. And indeed, the weakest (of) houses (is) surely (the) house (of) the spider, if (only) they know.” [Al-Ankabut: 41]
Yahya Nisbet
Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Britain