Cartoons: Freedom has 'limits'

2006-02-14 17:48

New Delhi - Commonwealth chief Don McKinnon said on Tuesday that the huge controversy stirred by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is a reminder that freedom of expression has "its natural limits".

"The people responsible totally misread what could emerge from this," the secretary-general of the 53-member body told AFP in New Delhi where he was to hold talks with Indian leaders.

"From time immemorial, it (freedom of expression) has always had its natural limits, its natural boundaries," he said.

"Following this event, people will re-think those boundaries and be a bit more sensitive."

The cartoons have caused outrage throughout the Muslim world since they were first published in a Danish daily last September and then in other mainly Western newspapers.

McKinnon was speaking while on a week-long swing through South Asia that will also take him to two other Commonwealth members, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where there have been large, sometimes violent, protests against the cartoons.

Referring to violence that has occurred, including attacks on Danish missions, McKinnon urged people to remember the initial decision to publish the cartoons was taken by "one cartoonist and one editor".

b>'Excessive'

He said that the reaction to cartoons may have become excessive.

"The time has come to realise that this isn't the whole state of Denmark's responsibility or the whole Western world's responsibility," said McKinnon, whose visit to the region winds up next weekend.

"I am a Christian. I would not like to see a similar cartoon with Jesus Christ," said the former New Zealand politician.

"It would not bring me to bomb or burn anything... I am not sure it would justify me doing what others have done," he said.

"But I have to recognise that they have cultural sensitivities that may be different so I say we have all learnt from this," he added.

- AFP