Danish Cartoon Case to be Judged by United Nations (Law & Justice)

Denmark's Director of Public Prosecutions has recently decided not to press criminal charges against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the twelve cartoons (see them here, halfway down the page). The Islamic Faith Community, an umbrella organisation of 27 Danish Muslim organisations, has reacted by announcing that it plans to sue Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in a Danish court. The Islamic Faith Community is also preparing a complaint against the state of Denmark with the United Nations High Commisioner for Human Rights in Geneva, because Denmark won't pursue the newspaper and therefore acts as a barrier to justice.

AFP reports that Islamic Community spokesman Kasem Said Ahmad said that “Muslims living in the Islamic world have greater confidence in the United Nations than in the European Union”. Ahmad Akkari, the Imam in the city Aarhus, accused Denmark of breaching UN human rights conventions and stated that “our point is that in failing to censure Jyllands-Posten, Denmark has committed a breach of its duties as a signatory of UN conventions on human and political rights as well as international agreements on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.”

They had previously said they planned to take the case to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. The European Court of Human Rights has already received another earlier application from French Muslims asking it to declare the publication of cartoons in French newspapers an infringement of the non-discrimination provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.