Indonesia seeks to block YouTube over anti-Koran film

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia has asked Internet providers to block access to the YouTube web site for carrying a film made by a right-wing Dutch lawmaker which accuses the Koran of inciting violence.

Indonesia has banned broadcasts of the film by Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch anti-immigration Freedom Party, and radical Muslims called for the lawmaker’s death during protests outside the Dutch embassy in Jakarta. A Dutch flag flying outside a consulate in the Sumatran city of Medan was set ablaze.

Users subscribing to an Internet service provided by the country’s largest telecoms company, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, said they could still access YouTube.

In mainly Muslim Malaysia, a supermarket chain, Mydin Mohamed Holdings, labelled hundreds of Dutch-origin items on its shelves with red stickers to help buyers identify and avoid them, urging customers to vote with their wallets in protest.

Mydin, which buys up to 60 million ringgit ($19 million) worth of products each year from companies with ties to the Netherlands, has also put up posters near store checkout points to urge customers to boycott the items.

Milk producer Dutch Lady, which says it has been operating in Malaysia for more than 50 years, took out full-page advertisements in newspapers on Wednesday to denounce the film, and condemned the comments and statements in it.

Wilders launched his short video “Fitna” — an Arabic term sometimes translated as “strife” — on the Internet last week, drawing international condemnation.

The film intersperses images of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States with other Islamist bombings and quotations from the Koran, Islam’s holy book.

In February, Pakistan ordered its Internet service providers to block YouTube over material considered offensive to Islam.

A similar step was taken by Thailand last year after YouTube aired a 44-second film showing graffiti over the face of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Wilders’ film urges Muslims to tear out “hate-filled” verses from the Koran and starts and ends with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, accompanied by a ticking sound.