Protesters Torch Telenor Franchise in Pakistan

asia.news.yahoo:

Protesters in Pakistan angry about the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a Norwegian newspaper have set fire to a shop selling products by Telenor , Norway’s largest telecoms company.

“On Sunday an outlet in Attock selling Telenor products was set on fire,” Telenor spokesman Espen Tuman Johnsen said. Attock is a city in northern Pakistan.

“There are some SMSs (mobile phone text messages) going around urging people to boycott Danish and Norwegian goods in general and some about Telenor in particular,” he said.

Muslims consider images of the Prophet to be blasphemous and the cartoons, first printed in Denmark, have angered people throughout the Islamic world. Street protests have mainly been aimed at Norway and Denmark and nine days ago protestors burnt down the two Scandianvian countries’ embassies in Syria.

Johnsen said the boycott campaign had had little impact on Telenor’s operations in Pakistan.

Telenor’s fully owned Pakistan subsidiary has around a 7 percent market share and about 1.2 million subscribers. Telenor has 11 Norwegian nationals working in Pakistan but said it had no plans to pull any of them out of the country.