Arab anger continues over film

Press, 16 April 1980, Page 9

Arab anger continues over film

NZPA-Reuter Bahrain . The United Arab Emirates and tiie 42-nation Islamic Conference Organisation have denounced a Britishmade film about the execution of a Saudi Arabian princess. .•••_.

Gulf newspapers yesterday condemned the film aq part of a Zionist conspiracy, and demanded that the British Government control- the British media. “Death of a Princess” is a dramatised reconstruction of events leading to the 1977 execution by firing squad of Princess Misha and her commoner lover, who was beheaded.

The programme caused controversy when it was

shown in Britain last week. Dutch television will decide today if it will be screened in the Netherlands tomorrow, and the noncommercial United States Public Broadcasting System has said it will be offered to stations bn its network .on May. 12. ' ;. The official Saudi Press Agency said yesterday that the Information Minister (Mr Mohammed Abdo Yamani) had received a telegram from the U.A.E. Foreign Minister (Sheikh Ahmed Bin Ahmed) denouncing the film and calling for “measures sufficient to counteract this slanderous attack.” The Islamic Conference organisation, in a statement

reported in Saudi Arabia, said • this was not the first time ! Muslims had been exposed to ; “this conspiracy woven and •_ supervised by Israel,” and it ! called for “intensive efforts l in the framework of a information cami paign to present the true picture of the religion of Islam.” ; Saudi Arabia formally : asked the Dutch Government ■ to stop the film being shown i and Qatar and Bahrain denounced it in telegrams to the. Saudi Information Minister. Mr Chedli Klibi, eecretarygeneral of the 22-member Arab League, told NZPAReuter as he ended a sixnation Gulf tour: "It is sad, especially when we are about

to restart the Euro-Arab dialogue with a group of people we regard as friends of the Arabs, that the new atmosphere should be disturbed by a film insulting Islam.” The Saudi Arabian newspaper, "Al Jezira,” said the British Government could not hide behind “the veil of democracy and freedom with which it has been trying to justify its silence about the shamelessness of its media.” The Qatari newspaper, “Al Arab,” called the film “at the very least part of a dangerous Zionist crusade” from the media which had been “behind all the disasters faced by the Arab world in the past and the present.”