Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
Dutch cartoonist protests his arrest for 'anti-Islamic' work

Dutch cartoonist protests his arrest for 'anti-Islamic' work

Author: AFP
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 17, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Danish_cartoonist_protests_arrest/articleshow/3049125.cms

A Dutch cartoonist and political parties across the board hit out on Saturday following his arrest and detention for alleged incitement to hatred in his drawings.

Prosecutors said eight cartoons by Gregorius Nekschott considered reprehensible had been pulled from his website for "exceeding the limits" of freedom of expression.

Following a complaint by a Muslim imam laid in 2005, Nekschott was arrested and his house searched on Tuesday by police in Amsterdam. He was released on Friday.

Nekschott, whose caricatures single out Islam and the Dutch political establishment, said in an interview published on Saturday that in the Netherlands there was a tendency to muzzle artists.

"In Denmark they protect cartoonists, in the Netherlands police arrest them," he told the left-wing daily De Volksrant , referring to caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in Danish newspapers, which caused a furore across the Muslim world.

The public television station NOS said that political parties from extreme-right to extreme-left, including the Labour party, a member of the centre-left coalition government, had criticised Nekschot's arrest.

Islam and how to integrate minority communities have become contentious issues in the Netherlands in recent years, particularly after film-maker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a radical Muslim in 2004 for making a film critical of Islam's treatment of women.

Far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders fanned the flames of controversy again this year by making his own film, Fitna , which features violent imagery of terrorist attacks in New York and Madrid intertwined with Koranic texts, and sparked outrage in Muslim countries.

The reaction to Wilders' film was still less than the violent protests which followed the printing of the Danish cartoons in September 2005.

At least 17 Danish dailies reprinted one of the cartoons in February, vowing to defend freedom of expression a day after police in Denmark foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist.


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements