Right to Publish

I just drew this in protest of the Islamic censorship of pictures of prophets. If anyone wants to know, the publisher and artist (that would be me) is a European living in Sweden.

The picture is free for use as long as you do not alter it in any way.




Questions that arise now are: Do I need to fear for my life? Do all Europeans need to fear for their lives? Do all Swedes need to fear for theirs? Will more embassies burn?

In Sweden, the government in the form of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the secret police SÄPO have closed down the web pages published by the nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna. The government pressured the ISP Levonline into closing down the web pages after Sverigedemokraterna published caricatures of Mohammed.

SÄPO called Anna Larsson, vice president of the ISP and spoke about the threats that had been issued and SUGGESTED THAT THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION WOUD BE TO CLOSE THE SITE DOWN. The web pages was closed down by Levonline not long after.

At the moment of writing sverigedemokraterna.se is still unavailable.

The fascists in the present Swedish government must be stopped. Hopefully they will be fired in the next national elections in September.


Bibliography
JohanNorberg.net (en)
Sveriges Radio (sv)
Dagens Nyheter (sv)

At SvD.se we can read about the Iman Latifov's statement on the caricatures:

Latifov anklagade Jyllands-Posten för att ha grovt missbrukat yttrandefriheten och brutit mot Genèvekonventionen genom att hetsa mot religiösa grupper. Han krävde en "ärlig och sann ursäkt" av danske statsministern Anders Fogh Rasmussen och Jyllands-Postens chefredaktör Carsten Juste.

Roughly translated this mean:


Latifov accused the Jyllands-Post for gravely abusing freedom of speech and violating the Geneva convention through hate speech against religious groups. He demanded a "honest and truthful excuse" by the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Jyllands-Post's editor Carsten Juste.


What? The Geneva convention deals with the treatment of POWs, wounded soldiers and sailors and civilians during a time of war and armed conflict.

Am I the only one confused here?

France Soir Editor Fired

The editor of France Soir has been fired by the Egyptian owners of the news paper. The editor's offence was to publish the Jylland-Post caricatures of Mohammad. The France Soir also published their own caricature on the front page, where Budah, the Jewish God, the Christian God and Mohammad are sitting together on a cloud.

The headline states that "Yes, we have the right to caricaturise God". And considering how many men and women who burned at the stakes for this right, attempts to silence news papers like this is a sign of enourmous disrespect for the dead.

Comment on the Arab Reaction on European Caricatures

On BBC we can read that:
Ministers from 17 Arab countries on Tuesday urged Denmark's government to punish Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures, for what they described as an "offence to Islam".

Well, let me tell you, you wise seventeen (probably unelected) leaders. Your demand that the Danish goverment punish the people whom you do not agree with, and whose opinions you despise, are an offence against liberty, democracy and the free word.

I have two demands:

• I demand at once that you punish yourself for these acts of disrespect.
  
• I demand that you apologise to all friends of liberty and freedom of speech in the world.
  

I do not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall