Roberto Calderoli - Role in The "Cartoon Crisis"

Role in The "Cartoon Crisis"

During the international crisis sparked by the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, on February 8, 2006, he made statements favourable to usage of force against Muslims and asked for the intervention of Pope Benedict XVI to form a "coalition", referencing the battles of Lepanto and Vienna.

On 15 February 2006, he announced he would wear a T-shirt with the Muhammad cartoons. Later that evening, just after the news broadcast on state flagship television station Rai Uno, during a live interview he said: "I am wearing one of those T-shirts even now", and promptly unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a T-shirt with a caricature emblazoned on it. Though the press reported it to be one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, it was actually the cartoon published on the France Soir's front page in the February 1st 2006 issue, the very day the same newspaper published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. Actually, Calderoli did not show one of the cartoons that caused the international crisis.

The event was widely published in Libya (a former colony of Italy), and about 1,000 people gathered for a protest and began throwing rocks and bottles toward the Italian consulate in Benghazi which they set ablaze. In clashes with the police, at least eleven people died and twenty-five were wounded.

Subsequently, Berlusconi asked Calderoli to resign because his act was against the government's political line, but, in an interview given to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Calderoli declared that he would not resign. He eventually gave in to the massive pressure coming from all parties (and lack of support in his own), and resigned on 18 February 2006.