Denmark faces financial crisis in wake of cartoon row

A row over the printing of a number of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammed has increased over recent days and created financial problems for Denmark where they were first published. Several Danish companies have been boycotted since the cartoons, originally published in September 2005, resurfaced in a number of European publications recently. Arla, who make more than £1.5 M per day in the Middle-East, have stopped many of their operations in the region. In Saudi Arabia sales of butter and other dairy produce has been suspended and
In Yemen staff have been advised to remain at home and in Denmark itself 170 employees have been sent home. Lego and Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company, have also been hit by the boycott. Besides a boycott, demonstrations against countries that have seen the publication of the offending cartoons, have continued. Threats of violence have also been made in Gaza [BBC] and in other areas of the Middle-East. The debate over the issue has also created problems for newspaper editors over how they might report the issue. In Jordan and in France, editors of two newspapers have been sacked after reprinting the cartoons. In Paris, the daily newspaper France Soir fired its managing editor after it republished the caricatures Wednesday, and in Pakistan protesters marched chanting "Death to Denmark" and "Death to France." France Soir said it had published the cartoons to show that "religious dogma" had no place in a secular society [CNN]
. In Jordan, the Arabic weekly Shihan ran three of the 12 cartoons, including the one that depicts Muhammed as wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse. The headline read: “This is how the Danish newspaper portrayed Prophet Muhammad, may God’s blessing and peace be upon him.” The paper said it was reprinting them to show readers “the extent of the Danish offence".The drawings first appeared in a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, in September. They were reprinted in a Norwegian magazine in January and in newspapers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain yesterday as editors have rallied behind them in the name of free expression. But the rally for the expression of free speech has become entangled in diplomatic arguments and apologies.

In England radio stations are awash with phone-in debates and the issue of free speech dominates many of the front pages of the British print media. The cartoons are however hidden from those in the UK since many editors have decided not to reprint them. Indeed the increasing number of protests, some held in London, UK, Istanbul in Turkey, as well as Iraq and Egypt, has made many fearful of fueling the debate further. [BBC] The France Soir website was last night inaccessible, and many of the other publications have not posted the offending cartoons online. One blog did publish some of the cartoons and can be found here. [churchofentropy blogspot]
[03/02/2006]