UK seeks ‘swift resolution’ to Sudan teddy row
November 30, 2007 (LONDON) — Britain was to press on with talks Friday with Sudan to resolve a spat over the jailing of a British teacher for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed, in a perceived insult to Islam’s founder.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he was “extremely disappointed” with the decision by a Khartoum court to jail 54-year-old teacher Gillian Gibbons for 15 days and deport her, saying the move stemmed from an “innocent misunderstanding”.
The Foreign Office said there will be further contacts between the two countries overnight and on Friday “in the search for a swift resolution of this issue.”
Cultural and religious leaders in Britain and leading newspapers condemned the decision, while the United States described the ruling as outrageous.
“We are extremely disappointed that the charges against Gillian Gibbons were not dismissed,” Miliband said in a statement.
He twice summoned the Sudanese ambassador to London, once before and after the ruling, expressing in the second meeting “in the strongest terms our (Britain’s) concern at the continued detention of Gillian Gibbons.”
Miliband later spoke with the acting Sudanese foreign minister.
Gibbons, a mother of two, was arrested earlier this week after letting her pupils call a teddy bear “Mohammed” as part of a class project.
Mohammed is a popular name in Sudan but Islam forbids any physical representation of the Prophet Mohammed.
The maximum sentence for the charges brought aganst her was six months in jail, 40 lashes and a fine.
Her sentence, pronounced on Thursday, will run from her arrest on Sunday, her lawyer said, making no mention of an appeal.
Before her sentence was announced, a Sudanese embassy spokesman said it was “unlikely” she would be convicted, and added that it was possible President Omar al-Bashir could intervene.
The British press Friday lambasted Sudan, a former British colony and called for tit-for-tat measures.
The Daily Telegraph called for “at least the recalling of our ambassador to Khartoum and the imposition of sanctions of leading members” of the Sudanese regime.
The Independent said there “is bound to be some diplomatic fall-out — though it will be limited because little further deterioration in relations between our two countries is possible.”
The case has also triggered growing expressions of outrage in Britain, and concern from British Muslim groups.
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella group of the country’s Muslim organisations, said Gibbons “should never have been arrested in the first place, let alone convicted of any crime.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the world’s most senior Anglican, chimed in, describing the Sudanese decision as a “primitivist and crude application of the law” and an “absurdly disproportionate response to what is at best a minor cultural faux pas.”
The teddy bear case comes against a background of diplomatic tension between Sudan and the West over the crisis in Darfur — but Miliband stressed before the conviction was announced that the affair should not be seen as part of a “political dispute.”
(AFP)