A group of Jordanian political parties and media syndicates will launch a major campaign calling for the boycott of Danish and Dutch products in a delayed reaction to February’s reprinting of offensive cartoons by Danish newspapers.
The controversial pictures were originally printed by the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, outraging the Islamic world. At least 17 Danish newspapers reprinted a controversial cartoon of Prophet Mohammed on February 13, vowing to defend freedom of expression, after police foiled a murder plot against the cartoonist.
The drawing, featuring Prophet Mohammed’s head with a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse, has infuriated Muslims worldwide, who believe the cartoon mocks Islam.
One of the Jordanian protest leaders, Zakaria Al-Sheikh, told Saudi daily Arab News, Dutch products have been added to a list of blacklisted Danish goods after Dutch MP Geert Wilders released an anti-Islam film on the Internet in March.
The campaign organisers had decided to delay the launch to give ample time for local agencies of Danish and Dutch products to sell the already imported goods, he added.
The campaign would include highway billboards, posters, printed T-shirts, bumper stickers and the like “to inform consumers not only to boycott foods but anything associated with Denmark and the Netherlands such as airlines and shipping agencies.”
Campaign organizers also decided to launch legal action against those involved in the offensive behaviour, arguing that their behavior violated the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and several articles of the Jordanian Penal Code.
Three men were arrested on February 12 in Denmark for planning to murder Kurt Westergaard, 73, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the paper that originally ran the controversial drawings in September 2005.
A number of Danish embassies were attacked and more than 50 people were killed in rioting across the Middle East, Africa and Asia following the original publication of the cartoons, first in the Danish press and subsequently by numerous media outlets around the world.
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