Protesters attack US Embassy over Prophet drawings
Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad attacked the US Embassy in Indonesia with rocks and sticks today as police detained lawmakers in Pakistan and fired tear gas to quell demonstrations there.
There were no reports of injuries.
About 400 people arrived at the heavily fortified US mission in the centre of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, marching behind a banner that read “we are ready to attack the enemies of the Prophet”.
They then tried to storm the gates, brandishing wooden staves and lobbing stones. They set fire to US flags and a poster of US President George W Bush, and smashed the windows of a guard outpost before dispersing after a few minutes.
The US Embassy called the attacks deplorable, describing them as acts of “thuggery”.
In Pakistan, where protests last week left five people dead, police raided offices and homes of dozens of radical Islamic leaders, putting several under house arrest and detaining hundreds of their associates to foil a rally in the capital Islamabad, officials said.
But opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman and about eight other lawmakers pressed on with a protest by about 25 of their supporters, marching toward a square in central Islamabad.
Police fired tear gas and at least one gun shot to disperse about 100 people who attempted to reach the same square and arrested some of them
Authorities mounted roadblocks around the city and declared they would arrest anyone joining a gathering of more than five people to prevent the rally called by Rahman’s six-party hardline Islamic coalition, Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) or United Action Forum.
The Danish cartoons, including one showing Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with an ignited fuse, have set off protests – some violent – around the world.
After the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed the caricatures in September, other Western newspapers, mostly in Europe, followed suit, asserting their news value and the right to freedom of expression.
Compared to protests in Pakistan, Nigeria and countries in the Middle East, demonstrations in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, have been peaceful.
The decision by demonstrators to target the US Embassy today illustrated how America is often blamed for many of the perceived injustices felt in the Islamic world.
“They (Western countries) want to destroy Islam through the issue of terrorism … and all those things are engineered by the US,” said Maksuni, a protest organiser who only uses one name.
“We are fighting America fiercely this time,” he said. ”And we also are fighting Denmark.”
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