|
BRUSSELS: Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said
Wednesday that the Dutch Cabinet has no plans to ask the courts to
ban the controversial film Fitna, due to be released this month by
right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders, Dutch news service ANP reported.
“We looked at the possibilities
and there are none,” Verhagen was quoted as saying.
His comments came after former
Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek, now a government advisor,
called on the cabinet to take the issue to court.
Dutch paper De Volkskrant
published an interview Wednesday in which Van den Broek said Dutch
people around the world could become victims of violent actions by
angry Muslims if the anti-Islam film was released.
“Let the judge decide what is
the most important: freedom of expression or national interest,”
he was quoted as saying.
“It is unwise to wait until
people have been killed before reviewing what can be done,” he
said.
Wilders, leader of an
anti-immigration, anti-Islam party with nine seats in the 150-member
Dutch parliament, plans to release his 15-minute film by the end of
this month.
He has said his film will be
provocative but will remain within legal boundaries.
It remains unclear when and where
the film will be released after US web-hosting company Network
Solutions recently suspended the website where Wilders had intended
to show the film.
No television broadcaster has as
yet agreed to screen the film.
Although the film’s exact
content is not yet known, it has sparked protests in many Muslim
countries and has been condemned as inciting hatred toward Islam.
The Dutch government, worried
about the consequences of the film, had tried in vain to persuade
Wilders to abandon his plan.
The Netherlands’ Prime Minister
Jan Peter Balkenende said the government cannot ban the film
beforehand, but it can file a lawsuit after it is released.
--XINHUA
|
