Dutch businesses threatened on Saturday to sue far-right legislator Geert Wilders if his anti-Islam film led to a commercial boycott, as EU foreign ministers and more Muslim countries condemned it.
"I don't know if Wilders is rich, or well-insured, but in the case of a boycott, we would look to see if we could make him bear responsibility," Bernard Wientjes, chairman of the Dutch employers' group VNO-NCW, told the newspaper Het Financieel Dagblad.
"A boycott would hurt Dutch exports. Businesses such as Shell, Philips and Unilever are easily identifiable as Dutch companies," he was quoted as saying.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad called for a boycott on Saturday, echoing a call by media in Jordan.
"If we boycott Dutch products, they will have to close down their businesses," Mohamad said. "If the world's 1.3 billion Muslims unite and say they won't buy, then it [the boycott] will be effective."
Muslim nations including Malaysia and Singapore have condemned the 17-minute film Fitna, released online on Thursday, which links images of extremist attacks to verses from the Koran.
Although there were no mass disturbances in the Netherlands, in Utrecht two cars were set afire on Friday night, with a message calling for the Wilders' death.
Late on Friday the British Web site host pulled Fitna from its site www.liveleak.com, citing threats made to staff. It can still be seen on YouTube and other sites.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film, calling it "offensively anti-Islamic."
The Dutch government rejected the film, which appeared two years after clashes were sparked by the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in Danish papers.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS