Denmark warns its expats as cartoon protests rage

JAKARTA - Denmark has urged its citizens to leave Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, as Islamic outrage over a cartoon controversy continues to rage across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia.

A day after Iran said it was severing trade ties with Denmark - where political cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad first appeared - Copenhagen's ambassador to Indonesia urged his countrymen to leave Indonesia to avoid possible threats.

Fresh protests also erupted in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, where a NATO peacekeeping force base used by Norwegian troops was attacked by an angry mob.

"The Foreign Ministry is advising Danes not to travel to Indonesia and Danes already in Indonesia to leave the country," Ambassador Niels Erik Andersen told Reuters.

"The security situation is at a level where the Foreign Ministry advises against being here."

Andersen said Danish flags and pictures of the Danish prime minister had been burnt in three Indonesian cities, adding:

"Some of the information I have provided to the Foreign Ministry is about threats we have received in the embassy, the threats that have been published against Danes and the activities going on in terms of demonstrations in front of our consulate."

There were about 250 registered Danish citizens in Indonesia, but the envoy estimated the actual number would be higher. At this time of the year Asian tourist destinations attract scores of Scandinavians seeking a brief escape from their long winter.

Denmark has been the focus of Muslim rage since the images - one showing the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb -- first appeared in a local newspaper and were subsequently published elsewhere in Europe and further afield.

Depicting the Prophet is prohibited by Islam but moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fear about radicals hijacking the affair.

The furore has developed into a clash between press freedom and religious respect. Some academics say it is also a clash between Islam and the West.

At least six people have been killed in protests linked to the controversy - in Somalia, Lebanon and four in Afghanistan - and violence has broken out cities across Europe and the Middle East.

NATO BASE ATTACKED

The latest reported death came yesterday in Afghanistan when a mob attacked a base manned by Norwegian troops in Maymana, Faryab province.

"When the crowd tried to enter the camp, ISAF troops used passive means to deter them," said a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

One person was killed and several wounded when police opened fire to break up the crowd of about 1,000 protesters, said provincial police chief Khaliullah Ziaye.

In Pakistan, two rallies in conservative provinces bordering Afghanistan drew an estimated 5,000 protesters apiece.

Iran, which has withdrawn its ambassador from Denmark, said the cartoons had "launched an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current which will be answered".

But in a twist, Iran's best-selling newspaper yesterday launched a competition to find the best cartoon about the Holocaust.

The daily paper Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech - the reason given by many European newspapers for publishing the cartoons.

"Does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?" the paper said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called for an emergency meeting of the world's largest Muslim body, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to discuss Islamophobia in the West.

In Canberra, Kumar Ramakrishna, head of studies at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, said the publication of the cartoons played into the hands of the al Qaeda network.

He described the publication of a depiction of the Prophet Mohammed as a "cosmic own goal", and said the world needed to be careful to avoid such errors.

"If you attack the founder of the religion, you are just playing into the hands of al Qaeda," he told a terrorism conference in Canberra.

- REUTERS