Furious Nigerians torch newspaper's office
Lagos - A Nigerian newspaper office was burned down on Wednesday by Muslim protesters angered by an article suggesting the Prophet Muhammad would have chosen a Miss World contestant to be his wife, said witnesses and the paper's manager.
The daily This Day's regional office in the religiously mixed northern city of Kaduna was completely destroyed in the attack, but no one is thought to have been hurt, they said.
"In the early hours of the morning a group of about 400 to 500 Islamic fundamentalists went to the office and burned it down completely," said Kaduna-based rights activist Shehu Sani.
"I think the correspondent and the security guard managed to get out," he said.
'Some people did not like part of the story'
Kaduna was the scene of clashes in 2000 between Muslims and Christians in which more than two thousand people were estimated to have died.The presence of about 90 international beauty queens in Nigeria, preparing during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan for a spectacle that many Muslims find offensive, has raised tensions in a country whose population is roughly 50 percent Muslim.
Following the attack, the crowd paraded This Day's office sign through the streets of Kaduna chanting slogans against the newspaper and against the United States, said Sani.
"At this afternoon's prayers the imams called for people to pray for the downfall of This Day. The vendors are not selling the newspaper anymore," he added.
This Day managing director Victor Ifijeh said: "The office was burned down this morning. We are checking with our correspondent in Kaduna."
"Some people did not like part of the story we filed on Saturday regarding the beauty pageant," he added, but said the reasons for the attack were not yet clear.
The anger at This Day seems to be particularly directed at one article rather than towards the beauty pageant itself.
On Saturday, in the preamble to a lengthy series of articles on the event, the paper's writer appeared to dismiss Muslim concerns.
"The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably has chosen a wife from one of them," said the paper.
The paper has subsequently printed two front page apologies for its comments.
The Miss World final will be on December 7 in the capital Abuja after the contestants have toured the country. State governments in the north of the country have said they will try to block broadcasts of the event.
Kaduna is one of a dozen states in predominantly Islamic northern Nigeria which have adopted Sharia law in the past two years. - Sapa-AFP
Published on the Web by IOL on 2002-11-20 18:01:38
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