Geneva, February 26: A company which created a controversial anti-minaret poster in Switzerland said Thursday it would file a lawsuit against French far-right party National Front for copying its idea.
Alexander Segert, who heads the graphic agency Goal, said his firm has asked their lawyer to lodge the complaint in France for violation of intellectual property.
Segert’s firm had created the poster which was used during a referendum in Switzerland against the construction of new minarets.
The referendum, backed by far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), was passed by more than 57 percent of Swiss votes, drawing worldwide criticism.
The poster depicted a burqa-clad woman against a Swiss flag upon which seven missile-like minarets stand.
In the French poster, a silhouette of a burqa-clad woman is set against missile-like minarets standing on a map of France, which bears the colours and design of the Algerian flag.
Segert accused the National Front of “robbery” in its poster campaign used by the party’s youth section during regional elections in the southern French region Alpes-Provence-Cote d’Azur.
“I was deeply shocked,” said Segert, calling on the National Front to withdraw the poster immediately.
In a statement, the youth section of the National Front said that “no political party, and much less communications agencies, are proprietors of issues dealt with by different political movements.”
“Our poster was completely drawn up by a professional — it was not a case of theft,” added the party.
But SVP party parliamentarian Ulrich Schlueer said that it was regrettable that the French party did not approach the committee which commissioned the Swiss poster before using the concept in their campaign.
Critics slammed both posters and the campaigns behind them as ‘fascist’, warning against the dangerous of Islamophobia and neo-Nazi tendencies targeting Muslims in Europe.
—Agencies