Swedish paper sparks fresh cartoon row
Gwladys Fouché
Tuesday August 28, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk
Iran has summoned a senior Swedish diplomat to protest against the publication in a local newspaper of a drawing of Muhammad showing his head on a dog's body, calling it "an insult against the prophet".
The Swedish chargé d'affaires, Gunilla von Bahr, was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry yesterday.
"A protest was given to her because of the publication in a newspaper of a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad," a Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman, Sofia Karlberg, said today.
"She was told it was an insult against the prophet. We consider the matter closed."
The row follows the publication earlier this month of a hand-drawn sketch by Swedish artist Lars Vilks in Nerikes Allehanda, a local newspaper in Örebro, a city in southern central Sweden.
Mr Vilks' drawing depicted Muhammad's head on a dog's body in a street with traffic around it.
Nerikes Allehanda decided to publish the drawing following a row in the Nordic country this summer over Mr Vilks' attempt to exhibit his series of drawings about Muhammad. At least two galleries declined to show the pictures, citing security fears.
"Alongside the picture, we published a comment piece saying that it was serious that there is self-censorship among exhibition [galleries]," said the Nerikes Allehanda editor-in-chief, Ulf Johansson.
Nerikes Allehanda has a circulation of about 65,000 copies.
The row in Sweden echoes the one that began in Denmark in September 2005 when one of the country's top daily papers, Jyllands-Posten, printed 12 cartoons depicting Muhammad, after a children's book author complained that he had difficulties finding an illustrator for his book on the life of the prophet.
These drawings sparked violent protests across the Muslim world, culminating with the burning of the Danish embassy in Damascus and its consulate in Beirut in February 2006.
The editor who published the cartoons, Flemming Rose, had to go into hiding for an extensive period with police protection.
Asked whether he was concerned, before the publication of Mr Vilks' drawing, that Nerikes Allehanda might face a similar backlash to Jyllands-Posten, Mr Johansson said: "Of course I was [concerned], but I still went ahead with it."
Regarding Iran's reaction, he added: "I am not that interested in what they said, it's a special kind of regime."
A week after the publication, a group of about 60 people demonstrated outside the newspaper's office to protest.
Swedish paper sparks fresh cartoon row
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