CHANTING “Death to the cartoonist”, dozens of Islamist students this week burned the Danish flag in southern Pakistan after the republication of a caricature of Prophet Mohammad.

And In Kuwait, several parliamentarians called for a boycott of Danish goods.

Wailed Waleed al-Tabtabai, a member of parliament:

The government has to take action against Denmark.

Kuwait’s deputy prime minister Faisal al-Hajji said the Gulf Arab country would make an official complaint, and added:

The sons of dogs published drawings that are offensive to the Prophet.

The cartoon was reprinted after a Danish citizen of Moroccan descent and two Tunisians were arrested for planning to murder 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard, a cartoonist at Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published a series of Mohammed drawings in September 2005.

After the cartoons were reprinted, youths from the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, a right-wing anti-government Islamist party, protested in the Pakistan city of Karachi, and the Danish flag was burned.

Grouped outside the Karachi Press Club, the students held up banners reading “We strongly condemn the act of insulting the Prophet by the Denmark Press” and “Prime Minister of Denmark and the Pope should apologise to the Muslim community”.

Berlingske Tidende was one of the newspapers involved in the republication by newspapers in Denmark. It said:

We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper always will defend.

Newspapers in Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands also republished the drawing Wednesday as part of their coverage of the arrests.

Westergaard has previously said that he wanted his cartoon to say that some people exploited the prophet to legitimize terror. Said Westergaard in a statement posted on the newspaper’s website:

Of course I fear for my life after the Danish Security and Intelligence Service informed me of the concrete plans of certain people to kill me. However, I have turned fear into anger and indignation. It has made me angry that a perfectly normal everyday activity which I used to do by the thousand was abused to set off such madness.

He added:

I cannot possibly know for how long I have to live under police protection; I think, however, that the impact of the insane response to my cartoon will last for the rest of my life. It is sad indeed, but it has become a fact of my life.

CNN’s Paula Newton said the arrests reinforced growing fears in Europe that radical Islam was trying to suppress free speech.