PAKISTAN: Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a banned protest against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamabad yesterday as Denmark brought its ambassador to Pakistan home.
The Pakistani government banned the demonstration after similar protests in the country turned violent, with at least five people killed in the past week.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, an alliance of six Islamist parties, said its followers would defy the ban and around 1,000 protesters managed to congregate near a central bazaar, chanting religious and anti-government slogans.
Denmark said its ambassador to Pakistan had returned home. "The Danish ambassador in Pakistan, Bent Wigotski, has returned temporarily to Denmark because it is practically impossible for him to do his job under the current circumstances," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Lars Thuesen, director general of Denmark's consulate service, said the envoy's departure was for security reasons.
The 12 cartoons, including one depicting the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, were published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last year and reprinted in many newspapers, mainly in Europe.
Protests have turned violent in several countries, including Libya, where 11 people died, and Nigeria, where 15 people were killed in rioting on Saturday.
Nigerian officials had earlier put the death toll from the cartoon protest at 16.
Troops patrolled the Nigerian city of Maiduguri yesterday to prevent further violence. The protesters in the Borno state capital burned churches, hotels, shops and vehicles, residents said, while police said they arrested 115 people.
The predominantly Muslim state of Borno on the edge of Lake Chad, which has a sizeable Christian population, is one of 12 northern states that introduced Sharia law in 2000.
As in past sectarian violence in northern Nigeria, most victims of the riots on Saturday were Christians from the south of Africa's most populous country, the Christian Association of Nigeria said.
Thousands have died in Christian-Muslim blood-letting over the past five years in Nigeria, the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter.
An Italian minister who wore a T-shirt featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad resigned on Saturday after he was blamed for deadly riots outside an Italian consulate in Libya in which 11 people were killed.
Roberto Calderoli, who is known for his inflammatory statements against immigrants and Muslims, said he had quit out of a "sense of responsibility and certainly not because it was demanded by the government and the opposition".
In Saudi Arabia, newspapers printed an apology by the Danish paper. "Allow me in the name of Jyllands-Posten to apologise for what happened and declare my strong condemnation of any step that attacks specific religions, ethnic groups and peoples," wrote Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten.
"It is extremely important to point out that the aim behind these cartoons was not to attack the Prophet at all or devalue him, but as an opening to dialogue on freedom of expression."
Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, wrote in yesterday's Washington Post that his newspaper had meant no disrespect for Islam.
"We certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter," Mr Rose wrote.
However, he added: "We cannot apologise for our right to publish material, even offensive material.
"If a believer demands that I as a non-believer observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.
"And that is incompatible with a secular democracy," he added.
He contrasted what he said was religious tolerance in the West with laws in Saudi Arabia against displays or possession of Christian items.
"Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right," Mr Rose said.