Americas News

The Jewish group B'nai B'rith, Simon Wiesenthal Center has claimed 'outrage' at a comic strip in an Argentine local daily portraying Hitler at concentration camp dance party.

Jewish groups have condemned an anti-Semitic cartoon strip, FieSSta by Gustavo Sala published in Argentine paper Pagina/12 and called on the country's government to denounce the daily newspaper under Argentina's anti-discrimination law.

Following the protests, the Argentine daily issued an apology on its website.

The cartoon strip's main character, DJ David Gueto (a caricature of the French DJ David Guetta) plays music in a concentration camp. At first, the prisoners don't want to dance because they feel there's nothing to celebrate, saying: Do you know that they kill us in gas chambers and make soap with us? Hitler then appears and convinces them to dance because life is short. Hitler then thanks the DJ, saying: If they are relaxed, the soap will be better.

B'nai B'rith International expressed its deep outrage and revulsion toward the cartoon, its creator and the newspaper that chose to publish it. B'nai B'rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin said:

This cartoon strip is beyond offensive---it is frightening. It epitomizes the blatant, ongoing anti-Semitism that still exists, in 2012, throughout the world. We hope the Argentine government will quickly speak out against this unbridled anti-Semitism.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has brought in new legislation that makes it harder for the country's news media to criticize her administration, critics said.

Fernandez already faces international criticism for draconian press laws that discourage independent media operations in Argentina.

But, buoyed by an October landslide victory, the government won a congressional vote that gives it control of the country's newsprint supplies, which are currently distributed by a company that has majority shareholding from a media group critical of the government.

Officials claim new rules would make newsprint available to all newspaper publishers at a fair price.

The harshest attacks on Argentina's proposed new bill came from Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo: The Argentine government is making the exercise of freedom of the press extremely difficult with acts of intimidation which do honor to a dictatorial regime, a dictatorship couldn't make it better.

The new legislation also targets journalists who face charges of terrorizing the population through words and pictures.

US photographer Nan Goldin has criticized the cancelation of her Brazil show.

It's ironic that this happens in Brazil, a country that has always seemed open, a place where I thought people were free, without the fear that showing one's body would result in Puritan social restrictions, Goldin told O Globo daily.

The photographer said any controversy over her photos pales in comparison to the crisis Brazil faces with its huge population of at-risk youths: Many of these children are in the streets, living difficult and dangerous lives, even facing death threats from police. These are much, much more serious problems than the issue of the work I do.

The Oi Futuro Flamengo museum reportedly scrapped the show, set for next January, after deciding some of the pictures, many of which depicted sexual situations, drug use, or children, were 'inappropriate'.

Several Brazilian artists have come out in support of Goldin, and Rio's Museum of Modern Art (MAM-Rio) has agreed to host the exhibition instead from February 11 to April 8.