The UN Human Rights Council is “still badly falling down on its job” after only a year in existence, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said today. It called for the system of UN special rapporteurs to investigate human rights in individual countries to be maintained. RSF said that the mandates of the rapporteurs on Cuba and Belarus, two of the world’s worst violators of press freedom, had not been...
A Swedish Muslim group is planning to sue a local newspaper for publishing a drawing of the prophet Mohammed with a dog's body. The Nerikes Allehanda newspaper in Orebro printed the cartoon made by artist Lars Vilks in an August editorial that criticised Swedish art galleries for not displaying Vilks' art. Mahmoud Aldebe, chairman of the Swedish Muslim Federation, told the Associated Press (AP)...
More Islamic countries have protested against a Swedish newspaper's publication of a cartoon that has been deemed offensive by Muslims. The Swedish government has, however, refused to apologise on behalf of the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper. The Egyptian ministry of religious endowments Sunday denounced the cartoon as "irresponsible and offensive", according to Kuwaiti news agency KUNA. "Such an...
(BIANET/IFEX) - The judiciary in Turkey has again blocked access to a website because of the content of one item on the site. Following the blocking of the alternative dictionary website "Eksisözlük" (literally, "sour dictionary"; http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/Default.asp? ) and the website Antoloji.com ( http://www.antoloji.com/ ), access to the website WordPress.com ( http://wordpress.com/ ) has...
Another cartoon row seems to be brewing up in – this time in Sweden where a newspaper has published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a dog. Iran summoned Sweden's charge d'affaires on Monday to protest against the publication of the “disrespectful" drawing of the prophet. Leading figures in Sweden's media industry have backed newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, which has published the cartoon...
Artist Lars Vilks has made three drawings ridiculing the prophet Mohammed. The prophet is portrayed as a “roundabout dog”. So far three art exhibitions have declined to publish his pictures. The Art Association in Tällerud said no. Then the school Gerlesborgsskolan in the county of Bohuslän said no. Now the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm has also said no. This is unacceptable self-censorship. A...
The leader of a nationalist party has been acquitted of calling Islamic leaders traitors after they had sought support in the Middle East against a Danish newspaper, which first published controversial cartoons of prophet Mohammed. In December 2005 and January 2006, nine imams from Denmark travelled to Egypt, Syria and Lebanon to seek support from religious and political leaders to protest the...
A journalist with Ontario-based Pakistan Post newspaper was assaulted by two men who had warned him to stop writing against Islam. Jawaad Faizi was attacked in Mississauga, Ontario on the evening of April 17, according to the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). Faizi described being attacked by two men in his car outside the home of his editor, Amir Arain. Two men, one armed with a...
When Carsten Juste decided to publish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten in September, he could not have imagined the fallout that would drag on almost to the year-end. A Pakistani fundamentalist party has announced a bounty for murdering the Danish cartoonists. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) made an issue of it at its recent summit. Srinagar downed shutters...
