Protests Over
Cartoons of Muhammad
Turn Deadly
By CARLOTTA GALL,
NYTimes on the Web, February 6, 2006
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 6
— Demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by
newspapers in Europe spread across Asia and the Middle East today, turning
violent in Afghanistan, where at least four protesters were killed and over a
dozen police officers and protesters injured.
|
 |
|
|
Rafiq Maqbool/Associated Press
Protesters
crowded outside the Danish embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. |
|
The protests gained momentum all over
the Muslim world, a day after attacks on the Danish consulate in Lebanon and the
Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus, Syria, on Saturday. Muslim
clerics led demonstrations in half a dozen cities in Afghanistan, and protesters
turned out in Indonesia, India, Thailand, Iran, and even in New Zealand, where
local newspapers recently reprinted the offending cartoons.
A teenager died in Somalia in East Africa today when police fired in the air to
disperse stone-throwing protesters and set off a stampede. A crowd of
about 200 people stoned and broke the windows of the Austrian Embassy in the
Iranian capital, Teheran, and tried to hurl gasoline bombs inside, Reuters
reported. Police with riot shields prevented further damage and the crowd
dissipated after an hour, the agency reported.
The worst violence occurred outside the main American military base at Bagram,
north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, as 1,000 protesters clashed with Afghan
police officers who guard the outer gate of the base. Three protesters
were killed (one dying later in the evening in a hospital) and five were wounded
as police struggled to stop the protesters from breaking through the gate, the
district chief of Bagram, Kabir Ahmad, said in a telephone interview.
Eight police officers were also injured from stones and missiles thrown by the
demonstrators and the police post set on fire.
The protesters torched several buildings belonging to foreign organizations as
they marched from the nearby town of Charikar, and burned tires, threw stones
and smashed car windows in the bazaar at the entrance to the base, Mr. Ahmad
said. Ten people were arrested in Bagram and more detained and taken to
Charikar, officials said.
Another protester was killed and two wounded as hundreds of people demonstrated
in the town of Mehtarlam, east of Kabul. Two policemen were also injured,
a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Yousuf Stanezai, said.
He said the police did not shoot and the protestor was killed by someone firing
from the crowd. The Associated Press reported two protesters were killed
in Mehtarlam, which would bring the total dead in Afghanistan to five.
Both Afghan officials blamed troublemakers in the crowd for causing the
violence. Some 5,000 people, gathered by local clerics, had demonstrated
peacefully in Charikar, and only some of them had chosen to march on Bagram, Mr.
Ahmad said. Demonstrations in at least five other towns around Afghanistan
passed without incident, officials reported.
In Kabul, angry youths carrying sticks threw stones at the Danish, British and
French embassies and the United Nations head office and smashed the windows of
guardhouses outside offices of foreign organizations. Protesters burned the
Danish flag in front of the Danish consulate, and chanted "Death to America" and
"Death to Denmark," an eye-witness, Mohammad Reza, said.
The demonstrations came as no surprise in Afghanistan, a deeply religious
country and still volatile after so many years of war, and where 19 people died
in violence in Afghanistan last year over the reported desecration of the Koran
by American guards at Guantánamo Bay. Officials and clerics here have
condemned the 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in different guises
that first appeared in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September and
have been reprinted in a number of European papers.
President Hamid Karzai said the cartoons were an insult to more than 1 billion
Muslims but urged his people to forgive the perpetrators.
"We must have as Muslims the courage to forgive and not make it an issue of
dispute between religious or cultures," he said to journalists on Friday.
"But that doesn't mean that insulting cartoons about Islam must continue to
appear. They must definitely, definitely stop," he said.
Members of Afghanistan's Parliament also condemned the publication of the
cartoons, one of which shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, and called
for Denmark to prosecute those responsible for printing them.
Iran has withdrawn its ambassador to Denmark and has said it is reviewing trade
ties with all the countries where the cartoons have been published. In
comments today, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the argument of freedom
of speech employed by European newspapers to justify publication of the
cartoons.
"If your newspapers are free why do not they publish anything about the
innocence of the Palestinians and protest against the crimes committed by the
Zionists?" the semi-official
Mehr news agency quoted him as saying, Reuters reported.
More than 200 lawmakers from Iran's 290-seat Parliament also denounced the
cartoons. "Apparently, they have not learned their lesson from the
miserable author of the Satanic Verses," they said in a statement carried on the
official IRNA news agency.
Iran's state radio said the Health Ministry had banned the importation of Danish
medical products.
Qatar's Chamber of Commerce said it had halted dealings with Danish and
Norwegian delegations, urging Muslim states to do the same. In Bahrain,
Parliament formed a committee to contact Arab and Islamic governments to enforce
the boycott, Reuters reported.
In Lebanon, a day after violent demonstrations led to the destruction of the
Danish mission and the resignation of Lebanon's interior minister, Hassan al-Sabaa,
people grappled with the sectarian implications of Sunday's events as
politicians called for patience.
Many people expressed their fears that the protests could become a catalyst for
renewed sectarian tensions, and many responded by blaming the incident on
outsiders, especially Syrians.
Residents of Achrafieh, the predominantly Christian neighborhood that saw the
worst of the violence, swept the broken glass off the seats of their cars and
drove to work with shattered windshields.
Information Minister Ghazi Aridi apologized to Denmark for the demonstrations on
behalf of the Lebanese government, saying that the government "rejected and
condemned the acts... that harmed Lebanon's reputation."
Attending a conference in Dubai, Secretary-General Kofi Annan of the United
Nations said today that Muslims should accept apologies for the publishing of
the cartoons, The A.P. reported. He urged them to "act with calm and dignity, to
forgive the wrong they have suffered, and to seek peace rather than conflict."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Abdul Waheed
Wafa from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Katherine Zoepf and Hassan M. Fattah from
Beirut, Lebanon.
|
