Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who is believed to have been the intended target of one of the Copenhagen shootings in February, says police have told him he can never return to his home in southern Sweden.
The Local Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who gained international notoriety for a cartoon portraying the Prophet Muhammad as a dog, emerged unscathed from a deadly attack in a Copenhagen last month, the latest in a string of death threats against him.
Vilks was speaking at a debate on Islam and freedom of expression when a gunman fired a volley of shots into the Krudttønden cultural centre, leaving a 55-year-old man dead and three police officers wounded. The 68-year-old artist has also survived a foiled assassination plot and other attacks since his drawing of the Muslim spiritual leader was published in a local Swedish paper in 2007 with an editorial on the importance of freedom of expression.
Vilks, who has been in hiding since the attacks in Denmark, says he has been moved between three different locations and was told by Swedish police this week that he could not go back to his house in Höganäs in southern Sweden.
After being briefly allowed to collect some belongings several weeks ago, police supervised as a removal company packed up the rest of his possessions on Tuesday afternoon.
“Police did not want me to be there, they watched as everything I had there was moved. I had to make some quick decisions about the stuff I wanted to keep,” he told The Local’s team in Stockholm on Wednesday.
“I am still living in hiding. No one really knows what they [the police] are planning and discussing. They haven’t found a solution. They want to put me in a place where it is safe to keep me for a long time. My last house was very close to the road and you could reach it too quickly or get away. You would have needed a whole army there,” he added.
The 68-year-old cartoonist, who whipped up an outcry across the Muslim world with his 2007 sketch of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog, was already living under police protection before the shootings in Copenhagen in February. Vilks was among those attending the event at a cultural centre that was attacked.
He returned to the city earlier this month to receive a prize from the Danish Free Press Society, but has otherwise rarely been seen in public and several talks and discussions he was due to attend have been cancelled.
Asked about whether he felt his own rights were being restricted as he sought to promote freedom of expression, he said: “I am getting used to it because the most important thing for me is that I have the possibility to do my work and I do have a mini studio [where I am living] where I can do paintings and drawings.”
He said he was disappointed that “no one dares” to exhibit his current sketches and paintings, but pleased that he could make them available online. The Danish Free Press Society is currently selling his controversial Muhammad piece.
Five men have now been arrested in connection with the twin Copenhagen shootings at a cultural centre and Jewish building that left two people dead.
Lars Vilks has been under attack since his first Mohammed cartoons were published in 2007:
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Poor dogs are made to bear the brunt of muslim idiocy.
I admire this man so much! And like the others I invite him to stay at my home and share my spare bedroom studio. Is anyone now in doubt that this is the reasom we must 1) fight even harder to keep ,our freedoms and rights 2) continue to show we are not afraid and dont care abour how Muslims feel about us “insulting Islam” and draw mohammed every darn day of the year!! And 3) shows exactly why Islam is such an evil cult ( and should be outlawed) and 4) what will happen in the US if we continue to allow Muslim immigration and creeping Islamization….
I am equally offended as Muslims by the depiction of Mohammed’s head on a dog. Dog’s are loving, loyal animals and they don’t deserve to be depicted with the head of a child molesting tyrant. I am going to encourage the dogs of the world to hunt down Lars Vilks and take a dump on his lawn.
That picture should be hung in the Louvre.
Swedes loves to import intolerance while criticizing Japan for its anti immigration /multiculturalism policies this is just stupid
Let Sweden bear the costs as they have brought this upon themselves and are not willing to solve the problem in an appropriate way, i.e., to march all of the savages into the sea! The insanity of a political elite bringing this filth into a nation to the detriment of their ordinary folk is truly the ‘treason of the clerks.’ The Swedes must wake up and get rid of their self styled elites who have done this to them as well. But the lesson is one that we in the US need to take note because Obama has been importing thousands of “Muslim refuges” with the intent of using them and his amnesty of illegal aliens to set up a perpetual one party dictatorship. This treason against ordinary citizens will also need to be handled at the beginning of the next presidency with ALL of the cost being passed to those who have supported Obama.
how do you catch a muslim terrorist answer with the right bait if they utilized this man’s rep and used a convincing ruse without endangering his physical being they could round up any number of zealots is how I would run this show
This American AGREES with Lars Vilks.
PLEASE DO, by ALL means, “Insult”, Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the the Qur’an, in the SAME manner that Muslims feel that THEY have the Impunity to Defame, Malign, Insult, and even Physically Attack, ANY Religion OTHER than Islam.
This is reminiscent of the 1989 violent reaction, and “Fatwa”, of Muslims to Salman Rusdie’s “Satanic Versus”, when many Muslims accused Rushdie of “blasphemy”, with numerous killings, and bombings which resulted from Muslim anger over the novel, with Muslims ranting that “no one should be free to ‘insult and malign Muslims’ by disparaging the ‘honor of the Prophet” Muhammad’, in which although the succeeding government of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami no longer supported the killing of Rushdie, the Fatwa STILL remains in place.
This IS the ONLY way that Islam and Muslims react to ANY depiction of Islam as ANYTHING other than the well documented, and well worn out, Islamic LIE that it is the “Religion of Peace”.
Yep, they keep telling us that most muslims are peaceful and are against what terrorist are doing, so one has to wonder why it is that world wide they can riot, kill, burn, bomb etc when their so called prophet is insulted, yet the so called peaceful muslims do nothing or they might say a few words against the gang raping of our girls and the slaughter of many thousands a month of non muslims or muslims of a different cult, where we see little girls in their pretty blood stained dresses who have had their little heads hacked off after they have been gang raped and other horrible things done to them with their parents being forced to watch before they are also subjected to the same horrors, and they say that Allah is a god, and mohammad was a prophet of allah!!!! hells teeth, what muslims do is from the pits of hell, it is pure evil, how could anyone do this, and why if there are any good muslims out there do they do nothing to stop it, instead they vote in their millions for leaders who are evil so they are party to it all..
It is their constant horrific actions that brings hatred upon themselves, not us..
I wish you could come to the states.. I would happily give you room and board for the rest of your life at no cost.
No, we are far from rich. Just a small 2 bedroom home, but because of your strength and resolve, i would help you in any way I could.
Brightest blessings,
Margaret Pritchett
Good on you Margaret I agree, it is men like this that we need, put him in politics and we would have one good politician at last. A man of integrity, and determination.. gee, I did not think that any of them were left.
Modoghead?
Lars: come to the United States, and hold a Muslim drawing cartoon contest. Charge $50.00 per entry, and you shall make enough money to provide for yourself for life, and pay for any security you might need. My idea for a Mohammed cartoon is, portraying Mohamded, as Moe Howard, flanked by Larry and Curly.
GREAT!
With the traitorous Obama in control, I am not sure how safe the US would be for him.