KHALEEJ TIMES: ISLAMABAD - The Netherlands has moved its embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad to a hotel due to security worries following the release of an anti-Koran film by a Dutch politician.
“We didn’t feel safe anymore in that building for the time being, so we decided to shift temporarily,” an embassy spokeswoman told Reuters on Thursday. The embassy was previously housed in a building in a residential neighbourhood in Islamabad.
Titled “fitna”, an Arabic term sometimes translated as ”strife”, the controversial film by anti-immigration lawmaker Geert Wilders accuses the Koran of inciting violence.
The film has drawn strong condemnation and protests from Islamic countries, including Pakistan. An al Qaeda-linked Web site last month called for Wilders’ death and an increase in attacks on Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan[.]
“Obviously, our country has been on a higher profile because of this film and that’s why we are on alert for any sort of information coming in regarding our security situation,” the spokeswoman said.
Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim nation of 160 million people, has denounced the film as an attempt to propagate the politics of hate and xenophobia.
Hardline Islamic groups have held protests against the film as well as the reprinting of a cartoon of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers in February.
However, the reaction was more restrained compared with the violence in 2006 over the printing in Europe of the cartoons lampooning Prophet Mohammad, when more than 50 people, including five in Pakistan, were killed in riots in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Pakistan’s National Assembly, parliament’s lower house, on Tuesday passed a resolution denouncing the Dutch Koran film and the reprinting of the cartoons in Danish newspapers.
In February, Pakistani authorities ordered Internet service providers to block the popular YouTube Web site after several films purporting to be Wilder’s 15-minute movie appeared on it.
The ban was later lifted after YouTube removed the content deemed insulting to Islam. [Source: Dutch Embassy in Pakistan Relocated] - Reuters |April 17, 2008
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