(dpa) - Hundreds of Thai Muslims marched on the Danish embassy in Bangkok Wednesday to protest the reprinting last month of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers and the Danish government's "disregard" of the incident.
About 600 members of the "Muslims Group for Peace," rallied outside the embassy, shouting "Allah Akbar," or "Allah is Great," and calling on all Thai Muslims to boycott Danish goods.
The protestors also burned the Danish flag and photos of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fosh Rasmussen and of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, one of the offending humourists.
"We should do something more violent than just protest, but today we are keeping it peaceful," said Suloh Salaimad, a member of the Muslim Group for Peace.
The protestors, some of them wearing t-shirts reading "Jihad" or "We Love Mohammad," sat in the road in front of the embassy and listened to speeches denouncing the Scandinavian country. Several demonstrators unfurled a banner saying "Boycott Denmark."
Most of the protestors hailed from the Nong Chok district in Minburi, a Muslim neighbourhood in Bangkok.
Thailand is a predominately Buddhist country, where Muslims account for less than 5 per cent of the population. But they are a majority in the three southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, where a long-festering separatist movement has claimed more than 2,700 lives over the past three years.
The Bangkok protest was prompted by last month's reprinting of 12 cartoons that triggered an uproar in 2006 when they were first published in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspapers, sparking violent protests in many Muslim countries.
The cartoons were reprinted in February in several Danish newspapers after police said they had foiled a murder plot against Danish newspaper cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban was deemed especially offensive.
"We want the world to know that you can't fool with Islam," said Mureed Teemasean, addressing the demonstration outside the Danish embassy in Bangkok.