DENMARK: Islamic boycotts costing Danish firms millions a day

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Copenhagen --- The boycott of Danish goods called by Islamic countries to protest the publication of Prophet Mohammed caricatures is costing Danish businesses millions of dollars a day, analysts and companies said.

So far, Arla Foods, one of Europe's largest dairy companies, is suffering most, but the effects could spread.

Danish goods are threatened in 20 Muslim countries, representing 10 billion kroner (US$1.6 billion) annually, said Steen Bocian, a chief analyst with Danske Bank.

"However, seen in a macro-economic perspective, that amount is rather small," Bocian said on Monday.

In 2004, Denmark's exports worldwide amounted to 452 billion kroner, with 25 percent of that from dairy products, he said.

Overall, it's too early to say how much the boycott is hurting business, said Marianne Castenskiold, a spokeswoman for the Confederation of Danish Industries, representing the country's major companies. Saudi Arabia began the boycott Jan. 26 when supermarkets either put up signs urging shoppers to stop buying Danish goods or removed products from the shelves.

Anger has spread over the 12 caricatures of the Prophet Moh-ammed that were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September and recently reprinted in European media and elsewhere in what the newspapers say is a statement of free speech.

One depicted the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. The Danish paper said it had asked cartoonists to draw the pictures because the media were practicing self-censorship when it came to Muslim issues.

The drawings have touched a raw nerve in part because Islamic law is interpreted to forbid any depictions of Islam's most revered figure for fear they could lead to idolatry.

Arla Foods is losing an estimated 10 million kroner per day in the boycott, said spokeswoman Astrid Gade Nielsen.

The Danish-Swedish cooperative, which placed ads in Saudi newspapers last week to try to counter the boycott, has 2.6 billion kroner in annual sales in the Middle East and about 1,000 employees in the region, its main market outside Europe.

The boycott of its products was almost total in the region, Gade Nielsen said.

Placing ads appears to have worked for Nestle. An Arab boycott of milk powder products made by the Swiss food and drink giant subsided shortly after the company ran a newspaper advertisement in Saudi Arabia explaining that the products were not made in Denmark, a company spokesman said on Monday.

"There was a campaign of e-mails, of flyers, saying that Klim and Nido were products made in Denmark," said Nestle spokesman Francois-Xavier Perroud. "We corrected that wrong information and within one or two days the situation normalized again."

He said the ad published about 10 days ago in a Saudi newspaper was "simply reacting to misinformation that was being bandied about."

Lego, one of Denmark's best-known brands internationally, said the protests and boycotts had had little consequence.

"The region is a very small market for us," Lego spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen said. "We have been told that some shops in the Middle East have removed our products from the shelves."

The privately held group doesn't market its toys as being Danish -- "Lego is an international brand" she said.

Danish tour operators, meanwhile, have canceled trips to Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia following warnings by Denmark's Foreign Ministry urging people to avoid Muslim countries.

Alarm deepens as anti-cartoon protests spread

Tehran and Kabul --- A wave of Muslim fury spread across the Middle East and Asia over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed yesterday as leaders struggled to contain a deepening diplomatic crisis between Europe and the Muslim world.

In Iran, which has cut trade ties with Denmark where the satirical images were first published, a crowd pelted the Danish embassy in Tehran with gasoline bombs and stones for a second day.

Denmark's Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller called his Iranian counterpart "and demanded in clear terms that Iran does all it can to protect the embassy and Danish lives," a spokesman said, as the Tehran mission was attacked again.

Meanwhile, Denmark's ambassador to Indonesia urged his countrymen to leave Indonesia to avoid possible threats.

"The Foreign Ministry is advising Danes not to travel to Indonesia and Danes already in Indonesia to leave the country," Ambassador Niels Erik Andersen said.

Andersen said Danish flags and pictures of the Danish prime minister had been burned in three Indonesian cities.

"Some of the information I have provided to the Foreign Ministry is about threats we have received in the embassy, the threats that have been published against Danes and the activities going on in terms of demonstrations in front of our consulate," he said.

Denmark has been the focus of Muslim rage since the images -- one showing the prophet with a turban resembling a bomb -- appeared in a newspaper there and were later published elsewhere.

Depicting the prophet is prohibited by Islam but moderate Muslims, while condemning the cartoons, have expressed fear about radicals hijacking the affair.

The latest reported death came yesterday in Afghanistan when a mob attacked a base manned by Norwegian troops in Maymana, Faryab Province.

The Norwegian troops fired on hundreds of protesters outside the base, after the demonstrators shot at them and threw grenades, provincial Governor Mohammed Latif said, adding that one of the demonstrators had been shot dead.

A Norwegian military statement said 200 to 300 demonstrators broke through the base's main gate, started fires and hit two Norwegian soldiers with stones.

The fighting came one day after four people died and 19 were injured on Monday in protests.

At least seven people have now been killed in protests in Somalia, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

Afghan police used batons to beat stone-throwing protesters outside the Danish diplomatic mission and the offices of the World Bank in Kabul yesterday.

In Herat, an Italian peacekeeping base was attacked by about 3,000 stone-throwing protesters, but no one was injured, said a witness, Faridoon Pooyaa.

In Pakistan, two rallies in conservative provinces bordering Afghanistan drew an estimated 5,000 protesters apiece.

Further protests erupted yesterday in Egypt, Yemen, Djibouti, Gaza and Azerbaijan, while Croatia became the latest country where a newspaper printed the cartoons.

Iran, which has withdrawn its ambassador from Denmark and moved to the front-line of the confrontation, said the cartoons had "launched an anti-Islamic and Islamophobic current which will be answered."

In a new twist, Iran's top-selling newspaper yesterday launched a competition to find the best Holocaust cartoon.

The daily Hamshahri said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech, the reason put forward by European newspapers for publishing the cartoons of Mohammed.

"Does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?" the paper said.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran called for an emergency meeting of the world's largest Muslim body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference to discuss Islamophobia in the West.

Meanwhile, an editorial, Saudi Arabia's Okaz urged restraint.

"The use of violence, spreading chaos and destroying facilities... only distorts Islam's image, especially after our enemies have tried to label us with so many accusations," the Saudi daily said.