Calls to boycott Danish products over blasphemous cartoons have intensified in Ramadan. The printing of blasphemous cartoons that mocked Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in one of the Danish dailies and the reprinting of the same early this year has angered many Muslims across the world. The campaign to boycott Danish products in Saudi Arabia took a new turn when some of the leading private hospitals and a group of pharmaceutical companies in the Kingdom and elsewhere in the Gulf decided to avoid the import of medicines and other pharmaceutical goods from Denmark and other European countries that reprinted the controversial cartoons. Dr. Osama Deep, Purchasing Manager, Material Management Group, said Ramadan is the best time to intensify the call to boycott the Danish products by all the Muslim countries. He said the impact of the campaign was so huge that since the beginning of the boycott, imports of pharmaceutical products from Denmark have dropped by at least 25 percent. However, the Danish Embassy in Riyadh neither confirmed nor denied the slump in imports of pharmaceutical products in the Kingdom. “I would have to evaluate the impact before divulging any information,” an official from the Commerce Section of the Embassy said. Deep, however, said that not all companies in the healthcare sector are actively participating in the campaign “and there is lot to be done in this regard.” Ramadan is a good occasion to mobilize people's sentiments to get involved and effectively boycott all Danish products, until the paper that first printed the cartoons apologizes to Muslims, he said. He said at the launch of the campaign, there were some problems finding medicines that could replace the ones coming from Denmark. However, the healthcare providers were successful in importing medicines from Egypt, Jordan and India that supplied equally good medications, he said. Mutasim Ali Reza, head of the Healthcare Committee at the Jeddah Chambers of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), said the Chamber in its next meeting will discuss the boycott of Danish products. “We will discuss it among the private healthcare providers and importers of medicines and try to get their feedback on the issue,” Ali Reza told Saudi Gazette over the phone. The owner of a leading group of hospitals said, requesting anonymity, that his group has already stopped purchasing medicines and all other pharmaceutical products from Denmark. He blamed the local media for not creating enough awareness among the population of the need to boycott Danish products. “The media should highlight the impact of the campaign and how it affects the Danish economy. We are not against the people of Denmark. What we want is the newspapers that printed and reprinted the controversial cartoon to issue an apology and stop insulting our Prophet (peace be upon him),” he said. Earlier, the decision by leading grocery stores to boycott Danish dairy products affected SR1.3 billion worth of exports to Saudi Arabia. All leading superstores in the Kingdom removed from their shelves the dairy products that they imported from Denmark. __
