The dreaded Mohammad cartoons have chalked up another victim– the job of a Swedish government minister that apparently lied about preemtively axing a web site soliciting further such drawings.
Sweden’s foreign minister resigned Tuesday, accused of lying about shutting down a far-right Web site that solicited cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds told a news conference she could not stay in the government in the “current situation.” Prime Minister Goran Persson said Freivalds would be temporarily replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Bo Ringholm.
Freivalds has been criticized for her role in shutting down the Web site of a far-right party that was planning to publish caricatures of Muhammad like those that led to deadly protests by Muslims worldwide.
The site was closed Feb. 9 after a Foreign Ministry official contacted the Web hosting company, which critics said was an intrusion on the freedom of speech.
Freivalds had told Swedish media she did not order the ministry official to contact the company. A later report from the ministry said she was involved in the decision.
Good. Not knowing what cartoons the web site may have received and actually published, there was no legitimate reason, in my view, to justify prior restraint in this case. That the minister lied about the matter only supports the opinion that this was wrong, a strange case of governmental forcefulness boldly applied for the cause of cowardly timidity.