Merkel honours Mohammed cartoonist with press-freedom prize

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an impassioned speech in defence of press freedom on Wednesday, as she honoured the Danish cartoonist who once drew a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, dpa reported.
Kurt Westergaard, 75, was in Potsdam - near the capital Berlin - to receive the M100 Prize, which this year was dedicated to the freedom of the press.

His cartoon was one of 12 depicting the prophet Mohammed that were published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, provoking fury and violent riots across the Muslim world that killed some 50 people.

"It is about whether or not he can publish his cartoons, yes or no. Whether they are necessary or helpful or tasteful or not doesn't matter. Is he allowed to do it? Yes, he is," Merkel said, drawing on her own personal experience of East German Communist dictatorship in defence of personal freedoms.

"Europe is a place where a cartoonist can draw cartoons. That is not to contradict that Europe is also a place of freedom of belief and religion. The respect for belief and religion is a highly valued good," she said.

The decision by Merkel to attend the Westergaard award ceremony, arranged by the M100 Media Colloquium in Potsdam comes after two weeks of highly charged debate over the place of Muslims in German society. The controversy was set off by the publication of a book by central bank board member Thilo Sarrazin saying that Islamic culture was to blame for Muslims' poor integration into German society.

The Danish cartoonist arrived under tight security measures, with police snipers and members of the Danish security services on guard.

Westergaard, who has received several death threats since 2005, had his home broken into by an axe-wielding Somali man earlier this year who intended to kill him. The cartoonist took refuge in a panic room erected specially in his home.

"The cartoon is a product that has a life span of only one day, but sometimes the cartoon concerns itself with a subject that is eternally targeted," he said in his acceptance speech.

"I am a symbol for freedom of expression ... but for some I am a bad symbol, a devil," he had said in a press conference earlier Wednesday.

"I have no problems with religion, and I would always fight for the right of people to practice their religion in peace. I only have a problem with the Islamists, with those who use (Islam) as a form of ammunition," he said.

Westergaard said that he had often attempted to speak with Muslims about his cartoons and what they meant, but had rarely had success.

He went on to quote Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Jyllands-Posten, in arguing that satire is a way of including other faiths and cultures in European society.

"These images in no way exceed the bounds of taste, satire and humour to which we would subject any other Dane, whether the queen, the head of the church or the prime minister," he said. "They are an act of inclusion, not exclusion."

Westergaard is currently working on his memoirs to be published in November, which he says will feature his cartoon on the cover.

Rose is due to publish a book on freedom of speech later this month, entitled The Tyrrany of Silence, which will also feature Westergaard's cartoon.

The prize honouring Westergaard comes as tension has been rising between the West and the Muslim world over the construction of an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero in New York, and the threat of a United States pastor to publicly burn copies of the Koran.

Merkel used the opportunity to address the subject, saying "freedom is permanently, and for everyone, bound up with responsibility."

She said the Koran-burning plan by Pastor Terry Jones was "crass, disrespectful, even abhorrent. Just plain wrong."

Merkel has been criticised in Germany for her handling of the Thilo Sarrazin case, where she was accused of wanting to limit the banker's freedom of expression. She had called his book, Germany Abolishes Itself, "unhelpful."

The chancellor responded Wednesday by saying "the Sarrazin question is not a question that endangers freedom of opinion, but rather it is about what consequences a book can have for an author in a particularly important public office."

The M100 Media Prize has no cash element, and has been awarded for various topics since 2005.