Provocateur Italian Minister Resigns

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Provocateur Italian Minister Resigns
By Foreign News Desk
Published: Sunday, February 19, 2006
zaman.com


The Italian Minister, who wore a T-shirt printed with cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, unable to resist the reactions resigned.

The Minister’s provocation caused extensive protests in Libya, a former colony of Italy. During the demonstrations police fired at the demonstrators as they wanted to burn the Italian Embassy in Benghazi and 11 people were killed. Yesterday 16 people were killed in the demonstration in Nigeria.

Libyan Internal Minister was accused of intervening in the events too harshly and an investigation was launched on him. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reacted harshly to Calderoli’s wearing the t-shirt with insulting cartoons and called him to resign. Umberto Bossi, leader of Calderoli’s Northern League party, condemned the event and supported his coalition partner Berlusconi and had to resign as well.





The events in Benghazi, having caused a political quake in Italy, were encouraged by Calderoli’s provocations. The people that died and were wounded in the armed conflicts between the demonstrators torching the Italian Consular Section and the police, were reportedly Libyan citizens. The angry mob attacking the only Western consulate in Benghazi could not be stopped. Approximately 1,000 people burning a Danish flag and marching to the consulate attacked the building with stones and bottles. The angry mob burned four vehicles in the area and stoned the windows of the building protected by the Libyan security forces.



Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini stayed late in the ministry building to follow the developments. Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi was given up-to-the-minute information about “the events in the old colony”. Mr. Berlusconi offered his condolences and to the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi and Qaddafi sent his sorrows on the torch of the Italian consulate, during a telephone conversation. The Libyan administration condemned the events, attributing them to a “small and irresponsible group.”



The parliamentarians who are members of Italian Minister Calderoli’s party, marked Calderoli’s wearing a t-shirt printed with one of the caricatures as “an example of irresponsibility.” Romano Prodi, the leader of the olive tree alliance having the central leftist parties in its structure, also criticized the minister.

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Cartoon protest toll mounts worldwide

Monday, February 20, 2006

Sixteen killed in Nigeria; police fire teargas and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Pakistan's capital, despite sealing the city to stop Islamists protesting against cartoons of the Prophet

LAGOS/ISLAMABAD - Reuters


Deadly protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed spread in Africa, killing 16 people in Nigeria on Saturday a day after claiming 11 lives in Libya.

Many of those who died in northern Nigeria were Christians, killed after a Muslim protest over the cartoons turned violent and rioters torched churches, shops and vehicles, police and local officials said.

It was the bloodiest protest so far over satirical cartoons of the Prophet, first published in a Danish newspaper, that Muslims regard as blasphemous.

"They went on the rampage, burning shops and churches of the Christians. The protesters killed the others. Some were even killed in the churches," said Joseph Hayab, north-west secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

The row over the cartoons also forced two ministers out of their jobs in Europe and the Middle East after 11 people died in the Libyan town of Benghazi in clashes on Friday between police and protesters who had tried to storm the Italian consulate.

Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli, who had the cartoons made into a T-shirt which he wore on television, resigned after he was widely blamed for the violence in Libya.

In Tripoli, the General People's Congress fired Interior Minister Nasser al-Mabrouk Abdallah and police chiefs in Benghazi, saying "disproportionate force" had been used.

The Congress hailed the dead as "martyrs" and declared Sunday a day of mourning across Libya.

In Nigeria, whose 140 million people are divided about equally between Christians and Muslims, 15 people died in the northeastern state of Borno and one died in the north-central state of Katsina, police spokesman Haz Iwendi said.

He said 11 churches had been torched in Borno and the army had been called in to state capital Maiduguri to impose order.

"The Muslim group came out to protest and the security forces tried to ensure it was peaceful, but there were some hoodlums in the crowd and somehow the security forces shot one or two of them," said Hayab of CAN.

Thousands have been killed in Christian-Muslim clashes over the last five years in Nigeria. Twelve northern states, including Borno, introduced Islamic sharia law in 2000 which has contributed to the animosity between the two religions.

The satirical cartoons were first published in a Danish newspaper last year, but last month newspapers in Europe and elsewhere republished them to assert freedom of expression, triggering protests across the Muslim world.

Britain's Muslim Action Committee (MAC) which organized the London event said they expected 40,000 to rally peacefully in Trafalgar Square. A police spokeswoman said 10,000 were present. One placard read: "Free Speech = Cheap Insults".

Around 1,000 people protested in Copenhagen on Saturday against the cartoons.



Pakistani protesters teargassed:

In the meantime, police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Pakistan's capital on Sunday, despite sealing the city to stop Islamists protesting against cartoons of the Prophet.

The federal government imposed a ban on the Islamabad march on Saturday after similar protests in Pakistan led to violence in which at least five people have been killed in the past week.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamist parties, had said its followers would defy the ban.

Despite police cordons, teargas and warning shots around 1,000 protesters eventually managed to congregate near a central bazaar where they chanted religious and anti-government slogans.

Aside from the usual chant of "Allah-o-Akbar", or God is greatest, demonstrators also lampooned President Pervez Musharraf as a lackey of U.S. President George W. Bush.

"Bush has reared a dog wearing a uniform," they chanted, referring to Musharraf's broken promise to the MMA that he would give up his dual role as president and chief of the armed forces, and to his alliance with Washington in a war on terrorism.

Police and paramilitary troops patrolled streets in Islamabad, while barbed wire was placed across main routes leading to parliament and elsewhere.

Buses and other vehicles were stopped and searched at entry points into the city, witnesses said.

But around 100 protesters eventually broke through the cordons and were joined by hundreds of others from side streets.

Police fired teargas, and when the protesters retaliated by throwing stones police responded by firing warning shots into the air and what a local official said were rubber bullets into the crowd.

Helicopters later flew over the area.



Pre-emptive detentions:

Earlier, on Sunday morning police put MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmed under house arrest in Lahore before he could travel to Islamabad to lead the march.

Another senior MMA leader, Fazul-ur-Rehman and a group of around 30 followers, including parliamentarians, assembled at one of the main entry points to Islamabad, but were forced to abandon their march after police fired teargas.

"The whole Pakistani nation will continue and the Muslim world will continue coming on (to) the streets until an apology is offered for this sinister act and a promise made not to repeat it," the MMA's Rehman told followers after abandoning his march.

MMA supporters burned tires on roads in the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where police had earlier detained over 100 activists.

The government's determination to stop protests in the capital came as Musharraf left for a five-day visit to China.

Pakistan has issued diplomatic protests over the cartoons published in several, mainly European newspapers.

The editor of the Danish paper that started the controversy, Jyllands-Posten has apologized, and the apology was printed in Saudi Arabian newspapers on Sunday.

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Tens of thousands gather in Istanbul to protest cartoons

Tens of thousands gather in Istanbul to protest cartoons

Monday, February 20, 2006

ISTANBUL - TDN with wire services


Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Istanbul on Sunday to protest cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, chanting slogans against Denmark, Israel and the United States.

The protest was organized by the Islamic Saadet (Happiness and/or Contentment) Party (SP), whose organizers shouted over loudspeakers that the massive crowd symbolized the anger of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims and urged them to "resist oppression."

Turkey is a 99 percent Muslim nation and protests of various sizes against the cartoons have been a nearly daily occurrence in the past week. Turkey is also the only Islamic majority country applying to join the European Union.

"They are the ones who are trying to depict the expanding Islamic community as terrorists, though all we want ispeace," said Ethem Erkovan, 47, who held a banner in one hand and his daughter in the other.

"Our difference: you are writing the history of occupation and tyranny and we are writing the history of justice and mercy," his banner read.

Some protesters carried posters combining a Jewish star, a Christian cross and a Nazi swastika. Others depicted a man with a dog, which was attacking a red rose. The dog symbolized the United States, the man holding it Israel and the rose Islam. Another banner showed an equation: Jewish star plus Christian cross equals blood and tears.

"Down with global imperialism!" Felicity Party leaders led the crowd in shouting. One spokesman yelled over aloudspeaker: "The Western spirit is Abu Ghraib, it is Guantanamo, it is Hiroshima and genocide!"

The protesters called for a boycott of Denmark, where the cartoons were first published in a newspaper in September. Some banners could be seen reading, "The Muslim Turkish nation is with its Palestinian and Iranian brothers."

The Danish cartoons, including one showing Mohammed wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse, have set off sometimes violent protests around the world.

After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed the caricatures, other newspapers, mostly in Europe, followed suit, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.

Depiction of the prophet is forbidden by Islam, and many Muslims took the publication of the cartoons as aprovocative attack on their religion.