Dutch MP to change anti-Islam film to prevent lawsuits

THE HAGUE: Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders, whose anti-Islamic film has provoked uproar and global condemnation, will amend the movie to prevent lawsuits, the ANP news agency said Monday. The changes are mainly aimed at pre-empting legal action over possible copyright infringements but Wilders will not alter the essence of the film and its anti-Islam message, the news agency said. The ANP said Wilders will remove a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed by Kurt Westergaard after the Danish cartoonist complained that Wilders used his image showing the prophet with a bomb without permission to reproduce it. I won t accept my cartoon being taken out of its original context and used in a completely different one, Westergaard told AFP last week. Wilders told ANP that he planned to substitute Westergaard s cartoon with another caricature. The deputy will also remove a photo of a Dutch rapper who was wrongly identified as the Muslim radical who shot and stabbed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004.He will also credit a Dutch journalist for the use of sound bites from an interview he had with Van Gogh shortly before he died. In the Netherlands legal complaints about the film are mounting and the general tone is that it is discriminatory and incites hatred. Mohamed Rabbae, the chairman of the Dutch National Association of Moroccans (LBM) said Monday he would file a complaint as he felt the movie incites hatred against Muslims. Dutch law forbids incitement to hatred on the basis of race, religion or ideology, gender and sexual preference. The maximum sentence for such crimes is two years in prison and a fine. The 17-minute film, Fitna, was released on the Internet on Thursday and has provoked widespread condemnation, with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon calling it offensively anti-Islamic. -AFP