Norway: Paper destroys possibly provocative illustration
Five years after the Mohammed-cartoon controversy, it recently flared up again, following a couple of terror plots and a book about the controversy. Kurt Westergaard intends to publish an autobiography next month which is expected to include the cartoons.
Jan O. Henriksen illustrated the debate with a satiric illustration on the last page of the Uke-Adressa section of Adresseavisen. When the newspaper management saw the cartoon, they immediately destroyed 90,000 copies of the paper.
Norwegian cartoonist Jan O. Henriksen created an illustration of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard holding one of his cartoons. Jan. O Henriksen told NRK that this cartoon might have provoked Muslims.
Jan. O. Henriksen thinks the illustration was harmless, and it was approved by the editors, yet he understands the management's decision. "I am not certain this is censorship, you need to take into account your employee's safety. If you deliberately provoke, you need to agree in advance about it, and have a discussion about what precautions to take," he says. He says he's never had something like this happen to him before.
The chief editor of Adresseavisen, Arne Blix, refused to comment.
Recently, a Norwegian publisher decided to cancel a planned biography of Mohammad.
Source: NRK (Norwegian)
