
Jan Egesborg and Pia Bertelsen
The group expressed outrage that a planned exhibit had been cancelled by the Gamle By museum in the central-western town of Aarhus for including sexually explicit caricatures of Denmark's royal family.
Surrend condemned the double standard in a country that has repeatedly stressed the importance of freedom of expression when dealing with Muslims angered by a Danish newspaper's publication of 12 caricatures of Prophet Mohammed.
To protest the cancellation of its exhibit, the group on Tuesday covered the centre of Copenhagen in posters featuring both the drawing of Queen Margrethe and other royal family members in an orgy, and the most famous of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, showing him wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
"Make fun of Muslims, not the royal family," read the poster.
"It is beyond hypocricy that Denmark, which pretends to be a world leader in the fight for freedom of expression, would censor a poster of the royal family," Egesborg said.
The group also criticised the Jyllands-Posten daily, which published the Mohammed cartoons in 2005, sparking protests across the Muslim world, but which was the only major Danish media outlet to refuse to publish the royal family poster.
"This is the same paper that criticised other medias for refusing to republish the caricatures of the Prophet ... that is supporting the museum's decision to cancel Surrend's exhibit," Egesborg said.
The curator of the Aarhus museum, Thomas Bloch, acknowledged that he had demanded that the poster featuring the royal family, which he described as "satirical and very pornographic," be withdrawn.
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Surrend condemned the double standard in a country that has repeatedly stressed the importance of freedom of expression when dealing with Muslims angered by a Danish newspaper's publication of 12 caricatures of Prophet Mohammed.
To protest the cancellation of its exhibit, the group on Tuesday covered the centre of Copenhagen in posters featuring both the drawing of Queen Margrethe and other royal family members in an orgy, and the most famous of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, showing him wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
"Make fun of Muslims, not the royal family," read the poster.
"It is beyond hypocricy that Denmark, which pretends to be a world leader in the fight for freedom of expression, would censor a poster of the royal family," Egesborg said.
The group also criticised the Jyllands-Posten daily, which published the Mohammed cartoons in 2005, sparking protests across the Muslim world, but which was the only major Danish media outlet to refuse to publish the royal family poster.
"This is the same paper that criticised other medias for refusing to republish the caricatures of the Prophet ... that is supporting the museum's decision to cancel Surrend's exhibit," Egesborg said.
The curator of the Aarhus museum, Thomas Bloch, acknowledged that he had demanded that the poster featuring the royal family, which he described as "satirical and very pornographic," be withdrawn.
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