Pakistan has approached Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to lodge a protest against a cartoon competition in Netherlands by an anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Haroon has written a letter to the OIC secretary general asking for a collective action to register a protest of OIC countries with the Dutch authorities, the Foreign Office spokesman said at the weekly press briefing.

The opposition’s leading Freedom Party of Geert Wilders is planning to hold the blasphemous competition in the party’s secure offices in Dutch Parliament. The spokesman said that Pakistan would work closely with all the OIC member states to raise the issue with the Dutch government.

He said that Pakistan has called on the Dutch ambassador and EU envoy, who represents 28 European countries, to register the protest. “We have conveyed our condemnation of this deliberate attempt to vilify Islam. Such incidents should not go unpunished,” he said.