Death threat cartoonist Lars Vilks died in car crash

Published on : 04/10/2021 – 09:38

Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, an artistic freedom activist threatened with death for years, died on Sunday (October 3) in a car accident which also claimed the lives of his two bodyguards. Released unscathed in February 2015 in Copenhagen from an attack during a debate on Islamism and freedom of expression following the massacre of Charlie Hebdo, the 75-year-old cartoonist, whose last 14 largely under police protection, appeared like a real trompe-la-mort.

After having survived multiple threats and plans for an attack, his life ended in the collision with a truck of the unmarked police car in which he was driving with the two police officers responsible for protecting him, Sunday afternoon on a highway in southern Sweden.

It was through a roundabout story that the life of this free-thinker was going to change in 2007. Two years after the cartoons of Mohammed published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, and the fury of the Muslim world against them, Lars Vilks signs drawings in which he represents Muhammad as a “roundabout dog”.

This strange as well as provocative subject, intended for an exhibition on the theme of dogs, mixes the reference to the Danish newspaper and the vogue of placing decorative dogs in the middle of roundabouts in Sweden. Finally refused by the gallery for security reasons, the work is published in a local Swedish newspaper, then taken up in solidarity by several dailies in the kingdom.

Murder calls

In a re-edition – on a smaller scale – of the Danish affair, Vilks triggers strong high-level reactions in several Muslim countries, attracting worldwide fame, but also calls for murder. His assassination was thus planned by the American Colleen LaRose, alias “Jihad Jane”, who would have recruited Islamists for this purpose according to American justice, before being arrested in October 2009.

In May 2010, two young Swedish brothers of Kosovar origin tried to burn down his house with Molotov cocktails. He was not there. In June 2010, he took a whim during a debate at the Swedish University of Uppsala which turned into a fist fight.

In September 2011, hundreds of people were evacuated from a building in Gothenburg where the Contemporary Art Biennale was inaugurated: the police had strong reasons to believe that Lars Vilks would be attacked and arrested four people.

Known until now mainly for a fascinating construction of wood and stone facing the sea on the south coast of Sweden, this controversial figure ensured that he philosophically took his new life under protection. “I try to keep my cool. The good side of things is that the people who are after me are probably poorly equipped, they are amateurs”, he told AFP there is Eleven years.

Seek the limits

“I am not a fanatic racist, I have no political position. I am an artist who seeks the limits, who wants to find what we can do or not and where there can be a debate”, pleaded the artist with the thick glasses. “I think it’s very important, if we want to talk about freedom of expression and Islam and Muslims, to have a real position, to have something provocative and transgressive enough to start a debate”.

On the day of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Lars Vilks confided his sadness to the regional newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad. “We cannot give up freedom of expression. The attack in Paris is unfortunately significant of the times in which we live.”

A month later, on February 14, a young Danish man of Palestinian origin tried to burst into a debate on freedom of expression organized in Copenhagen in response to the killing of the satirical French newspaper.

Vilks, headliner of the meeting with the French ambassador, escaped unscathed, but a 55-year-old Danish director was killed. The attacker then managed to kill a Jewish guard outside the synagogue in Copenhagen, before being shot dead in a face-to-face with Danish police.

With AFP