The board of Finnish culture magazine Kaltio decided Friday to sack its editor, Jussi Vilkuna, after he refused to remove a cartoon featuring a masked prophet Muhammad from the magazine's website.
Harri Kynnös, the chairman, told the Finnish News Agency (STT) that letting Mr Vilkuna go after eight years as editor of Kaltio had been a difficult one.
Mr Vilkuna said the board's decision illustrated that it had not grasped the nature of a culture magazine.
"The task of a culture magazine is to arouse debate on important issues. What a grand way to interpret freedom of speech," Mr Vilkuna added ironically.
In the cartoon, the prophet Muhammad is depicted debating the meaning of free speech with a cartoonist.
On Thursday, Tapiola, Sampo and Pohjola withdrew their advertisements from the Kaltio website. Olavi Nieminen, the chief lawyer of Pohjola, a non-life insurance firm owned by OKO Bank, said the posting of the cartoon had been irresponsible and a wrong way to defend free speech.
Kaltio has about 2,000 print subscribers in Finland.
See also Editor of Finnish magazine fired for new Mohammed cartoons , Finnish culture magazine posts Muhammad cartoon and bottom of this page
I received this from a Finnish reader in the comments section:
The three companies in question are all big and powerful insurance and banking corporations. What is not written in the English version of the news is that this traitor Harri Kynnös commented that "we think this is socially such a serious matter that a thing showing such a strong opinion shouldn't have been made public at all"
I'M SICK OF THIS!!! First it's our PM apologizing for a marginal far right group publishing the Danish cartoons on their website, now it's the editor-in-chief of a cultural magazine sacked for publishing a commentary on the issue on the web, no, not even in the magazine itself.
What's happening here is a lot more horrible than what's going on in Denmark.
Some hours ago, the pictures were still visible at www.kaltio.fi. Now, the page is but blank.
Is this the Finland which was according to Reporters Withour Borders one of the countries that shared with Denmark the no. 1 position in the freedom of press in the world?
Your reader from Finland
Added: I found the drawings via Brussels Journal. You can get them here in Finnish or English.
