Sudanese President wants Danish aid, but no Danes or Danish products

PRESIDENT Omar al-Bashir wants no Danes on Sudanese soil, nor any Danish products on the shelves.

But, when he embarked an anti-Danish rant this week over the re-publication of the Motoons, he said nothing about returning the generous aid package this ghastly, authoritarian Islamic republic receives from Denmark.

According to Worldwide Religious News, Sudan received $26 million in Danish aid in 2006, and a $100 million humanitarian and reconstruction package is planned between now and 2009.

Danish exports to Sudan are, on the other hand, minimal, consisting mainly of dairy products. In 2006, they amounted to $23 million, a drop of 26 per cent over the previous year.

Bashir, who came to power in an Islamist military coup in 1989, and has since imposed Muslim Sharia law on the country’s predominantly Arab north, said that he would bar Danes from Sudan.

And he told tens of thousands of people at a government-backed rally that the Muslim world should boycott Denmark because of the reprinted cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

We urge all Muslims around the world to boycott Danish commodities, goods, companies, institutions, organisations and personalities.

Bashir vowed

Not a single Danish foot will from now on desecrate the land of Sudan.

It was not clear whether Bashir plans to act on his rhetoric and force out the hundreds of Danes who work in Sudan, most in aid organisations, with a dozen in the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Sudan. Danish aid groups that operate there include the Danish Refugee Council and the Danish Red Cross, which runs large projects to alleviate suffering in the western Darfur region.

Danish diplomats in Khartoum said they had not been notified of a new trade boycott and that Sudanese authorities had not notified them about expelling Danes.

Sudan was one of the nations where large protests were held against Denmark in 2006 when the cartoons depicting Mohammed and Islam were first published. In riots that followed around the Muslim world, dozens of people were killed and several Danish embassies were attacked, while Danish goods were boycotted.

The Khartoum protesters were organised by a group known as The Popular Front for the Defence of Faith and Religion, which backs the ruling National Congress party.

Bashir also called for a ‘holy war’ to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem. He warned of ‘other measures’ against Denmark apart from boycotting Danish products and institutions, but did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Germany’s interior minister, quoted in Die Zeit, has called for the cartoons to be reprinted throughout Europe. Wolfgang Schaeuble said:

I have respect for the fact that Danish newspapers have now all printed the Mohammed caricatures - Actually, all European newspapers should now print these caricatures, with the explanation: ‘We also find them lousy, but the exercise of press freedom is no reason to practice violence.’

Sudan recently hit the headlines over the arrest of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, who was briefly jailed there after allowing pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed. See our report here.