Danish director angered at YLE decision to shelve documentary

Danish film director Karsten Kjær has reacted with anger and astonishment at a decision by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) not to show his film Bloody Cartoons, which analyses the controversy surrounding the publication of caricatures depicting the prophet Muhammad by a Danish newspaper in early 2006.
      The film is part of the world's largest international documentary project called Why Democracy?
      In October this year, more than 300 million people around the world will have access to ten documentaries concerning democracy. About 40 TV companies are involved in the project.
      Only nine of the films are to be aired by YLE. The decision to shelve Bloody Cartoons is exceptional: even the Al-Arabiya,the second-most popular TV channel in the Middle East, will air the film on November 11th.
      Kjær says that in Britain, the BBC pondered whether or not to allow shots showing the controversial cartoons during the airing of the documentary. The BBC decided to show the cartoons, even though it would not do so while the controversy itself was raging.
     
"Because of our recent history it would have been very important for Finns to see the documentary", Kjær says, in a reference to Finland's political balancing act as a neighbour of the Soviet Union, and the self-censorship that occurred in the postwar period.
      "In addition, the subject is very topical in the Nordic Countries.
      Kjær accuses Iikka Vehkalahti, producer of the YLE Documentary Project, of "personal censorship", after hearing the justification put forward by Vehkalahti for the decision.
      Vehkalahti had said that the documentary did not "reach the third dimension".
      "By that I mean that the film would have helped us understand that we know nothing about how sacred and untouchable religion can be for some", Vehkalahti said in Tuesday's Helsingin Sanomat.
     
In the film, Kjær travels around the Middle East showing the controversial cartoons to religious leaders, and to those who took part in the anti-Danish demonstrations that they sparked. It turns out that most of the leaders angered by the cartoons had never actually seen them before.
      The idea of the documentary is for Muslims to analyse the pictures themselves. He also meets with people at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which originally published the cartoons.
      One of the main leaders of the demonstrations, Iranian Ali Makhshi, comes to the conclusion that the drawing of a man with a bomb in his turban does not even depict the Prophet Muhammad.
      The film has been praised in Denmark, and has been seen specifically as an attempt to analyse and assuage the conflict.

More on this subject:
 YLE reverses decision: documentary on Muhammad cartoons to be shown

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish and Swedish media refrain from publishing Danish cartoons (6.2.2006)
  Foreign Minister Tuomioja: EU countries have to work together over Danish cartoon crisis (3.2.2006)
  Foreign Minister Tuomioja: Denmark should have reacted earlier to cartoons (2.2.2006)
  Vanhanen apology over Muhammad pictures was Prime Minister´s own decision (16.2.2007)
  Police to investigate Internet publication of Muhammad caricatures (15.2.2006)
  Finnish Broadcasting Company bans Muhammad pictures from its entertainment programmes (10.2.2006)
  Finnish Muslims understand indignation over cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (1.2.2006)