STOCKHOLM, March 17: Danish Muslim organisations are to take the cartoon case to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, the Danish Islamic Community organisation said on Friday.
The move came after Danish State Attorney Henning Fode on Thursday ruled that the controversial drawings of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) published in daily Jyllands-Posten did not violate Danish blasphemy and racism laws.
“The UN is the natural place for us to file our complaint,” Islamic Community spokesman Kasem Said Ahmad told the Ritzau national news agency on Friday. “Muslims living in the Islamic world have greater confidence in the United Nations than in the European Union,” he said. “The state attorney’s ruling was lousy.”
Ahmad Akkari, the Imam in Denmark’s second city Aarhus, accused Denmark of breaching UN human rights conventions.
“Our point is that in failing to censure Jyllands-Posten, Denmark has committed a breach of its duties as a signatory of UN conventions on human and political rights as well as international agreements on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” he said in a statement issued on Thursday.
The Danish Islamic Community is an umbrella organisation for 27 Muslim organisations throughout Denmark. The organisation had previously said it might take its case to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.
Of Denmark’s 5.3 million people, 200,000 are Muslims. —AFP
