The furious international row over the publication of cartoons satirising the prophet Muhammad intensified on Tuesday when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed it was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas’ win in the Palestinian elections.
Iran on Tuesday also announced it was suspending all trade and economic ties with Denmark in protest of the caricatures. The move came after the European Union had warned Iran that boycotting Danish goods would place further strain on already frosty relations.
Speaking to Iranian air force personnel, Ayatollah Khamenei said the cartoons were a scandal, particularly as they came ”from those who champion civilisation and free expression”.
”The West condemns any denial of the Jewish Holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. The caricatures amounted to a ”conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas,” he said, referring to the militant group that won a surprise landslide victory in last month’s Palestinian elections.
On Monday, hundreds of Iranians hurled stones and petrol bombs at the Danish and Austrian embassies in Tehran in protest against the cartoons. The Austrian mission was targeted as the country currently holds the EU presidency.
A bestselling Iranian newspaper, Hamshari, announced it was retaliating by holding a competition to find the best images satirising the Holocaust. The move mirrors the exercise of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, whose publication of 12 images of Muhammad in September sparked the row.
As Ayatollah Khamenei made his comments, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Hamid Reza Asefi, said diplomatic missions should be respected and a small, peaceful protest took place outside the Danish embassy.
Later, Iran announced that it was suspending all trade and economic ties with Denmark and would bar Danish products from entering the country in protest of the cartoons.
The EU’s executive office had warned Iran earlier on Tuesday against attempts to cancel trade contracts with European countries. An EU spokesperson, Johannes Laitenberger, told reporters: ”A boycott of Danish goods is by definition a boycott of European goods. A boycott hurts the economic interests of all parties, also those who are boycotting, and can damage the growing trade links between the EU and the countries concerned.”
Elsewhere, angry protests against the publication of the cartoons showed no sign of abating.
At least one person was killed and scores were injured when thousands of rioters clashed with police and Nato peacekeepers across Afghanistan, officials said.
Norwegian troops fired on hundreds of protesters outside their base in Maymana, a city in the north-west of Afghanistan, after the demonstrators shot at them and threw grenades, said the provincial governor, Mohammed Latif.
A spokesperson for Nato’s peacekeeping force, Squadron Leader Annie Gibson-Sexton, said tear gas was used against the protesters, adding that there were no reports of injuries among the troops.
The United Kingdom Ministry of Defence later said British reinforcements had been sent to the riot-hit town. Britain’s Quick Response Force (QRF) — part of the Nato operations in the country — involves the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, and was being sent from its base at Mazar-al-Sharif. The United Nations was evacuating its staff from the area.
In the capital, Kabul, police used batons to beat stone-throwing protesters outside the Danish diplomatic mission office and near the offices of the World Bank.
Security has been tightened in the past 24 hours in Kabul, home to about 3 000 foreign diplomats, aid workers and others. Police have set up barricades and peacekeepers have been on constant patrol.
More than 3 000 protesters threw stones at government buildings and an Italian peacekeeping base in the western city of Herat, but no one was injured, a witness said.
The Danish government advised its citizens in Indonesia to leave the country after protests spread to other islands. Several hundred students rallied outside the offices of the European Union in Aceh province on Sumatra, but dispersed after meeting an EU representative outside the gates, witnesses said.
Rowdy protests were also held in Jakarta and at least two other cities. Danish missions have been repeatedly targeted by protesters and have been shut because of security concerns, said Niels Erik Anderson, the country’s ambassador to Indonesia.
”The foreign ministry recommends that Danes already in Indonesia leave and that those interested in coming, postpone their plans,” he said.
The 12 cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, but have since been republished by newspapers in several other countries, most of which have claimed to support free speech in doing so.
Anderson said he did not know exactly how many Danes were in Indonesia. Close to 250 had registered at the embassy, he said, but the number was likely to be much higher.
”My concern is that I have not seen any adequate security measures at all to protect the Danish embassy or other places,” he said.
In the Pakistani city of Peshawar, around 5 000 demonstrators gathered in the country’s biggest protest yet against the cartoons, chanting and burning effigies. The demonstrators — many of them bearded religious students wearing white prayer caps — shouted, ”Hang the man who insulted the prophet!”
Some burned effigies of Denmark’s prime minister and the cartoonist who first drew the prophet’s image for a Danish newspaper. Under Pakistani laws, insulting the prophet or the Qur’an can be punished with the death sentence.
The city is the capital of the conservative, Islamist-ruled North-west Frontier province. The province’s most senior elected official, Akram Durrani, led the rally, joined by other members of his Cabinet.
”We demand that whoever made the cartoons should be punished like a terrorist,” Durrani told the crowd. ”Nobody has the right to insult Islam and hurt the feelings of Muslims.”
Australia temporarily closed diplomatic missions in the Palestinian territories and warned its citizens to be wary if travelling to Israel, Lebanon, Syria or Iran because of the protests. Its foreign minister, Alexander Downer, told Parliament that the office in Ramallah had been closed because it shared a building with the Danish mission, which had been targeted by protesters.
The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, on Tuesday said the cartoons should not have been published and called for dialogue. Authorities in China and Malaysia also criticised the publication and urged calm.
Elsewhere, the Turkish network, NTV television, reported that a 16-year-old student arrested in connection with the murder of an Italian priest on Sunday had told interrogators he killed the Reverend Andrea Santoro to avenge the publication of the cartoons.
Santoro (60) was shot while praying in his church along the Black Sea coast. Witnesses said the killer screamed ”Allahu Akbar”, Arabic for ”God is great,” before firing. Thousands have protested in Turkey against the publication of the cartoons.
Meanwhile, two Thai rap CDs featuring a song containing verses from the Qur’an have been recalled from stores after local Muslims complained that the track insults their faith, distributor Sony BMG said. Rapper Joey Boy and songwriter ”Suki” Kamol Sukosol Clapp apologised to ”all Muslims” for producing the song, Maya, insisting they did not mean to insult anyone. – Guardian Unlimited Â