In a move meant to retaliate against the publication of cartoons of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper last year, the Indonesian radio station Radikal carried out its long-proclaimed drawing and coloring contest on Sunday, where high-school students did cartoon sketches of Danish royalty and kindergarten youngsters colored them in.
More than 70 kindergarten and high-school children competed in the contest, where they could draw historic royal figures ranging from Denmark’s current monarch, Queen Margrethe II, to King Gorm the Old. Whoever they drew, the subjects were given bodies of pigs, according to the request of Imam Mubarok, the contest’s chief organizer.
Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country. Muslims consider pigs unclean and are not supposed to eat pork. The Radikal radio station is aired in Kediri in East Java province. The contest offered total prize money of 5 million rupiah ($550) and winning sketches would be sent to Denmark and the Danish embassy in Jakarta, Mubarok said.
The publication of cartoons lampooning Mohammad by Jyllands-Posten last year sparked angry and violent protests in Muslim countries, leaving 50 people dead. Danish diplomats left Indonesia briefly in February after Muslims radicals tried to storm the embassy building in protest against the cartoons. Many Muslims consider it blasphemous to depict Mohammed.
