Tensions flared again in Iraq on Saturday over a series of recent protests in Europe involving the desecration of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, which sparked a debate over the balance between freedom of speech and religious sensitivities.
Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone that houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government early on Saturday, following reports that an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, the previous day.
The protest came two days after people angered by the planned burning of the Islamic holy book in Sweden stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad.
Security forces on Saturday pushed back the protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy.
Elsewhere in Iraq, protesters burned three caravans belonging to a demining project run by the the Danish Refugee Council in the city of Basra in the south, local police said in a statement. The fire was extinguished by civil defense responders, and there were “no human casualties, only material losses,” the statement said.
The council confirmed in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that its premises in Basra “came under armed attack” early Saturday.
“We deplore this attack — aid workers should never be a target of violence,” Lilu Thapa, the Danish Refugee Council’s executive director for the Middle East, said.
Iraq’s prime minister has cut diplomatic ties with Sweden in protest over the desecration of the Quran in that country.
An Iraqi asylum-seeker who burned a copy of the Quran during a demonstration last month in Stockholm had threatened to do the same thing again onThursday but ultimately stopped short of setting fire to the book.
The man — an Iraqi of Christian origin living in Stockholm, now a self-described atheist — did, however, kick and step on it, and did the same with an Iraqi flag and a photo of influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr and of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The right to hold public demonstrations is protected by the constitution in Sweden, and blasphemy laws were abandoned in the 1970s. Police generally give permission based on whether they believe a public gathering can be held without major disruptions or safety risks.
On Friday afternoon, thousands protested peacefully in Iraq and other Muslim-majority countries.
In Iran, the powerful Revolutionary Guard’s chief, Gen. Hossein Salami, said that “we do not allow those who insult the Quran to be safe”, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported Saturday.
Muslims “will decree a severe punishment for the perpetrators of these crimes,” he continued. ALI JABAR & JARI TANNER, BAGHDAD, MDT/AP
