Who are you calling terrorists, Mr Brown?

After Britain used anti-terror laws to freeze Icelandic assets, the people of a proud island nation hit back...

October 24, 2008

Standing in front of her net curtains, a half-eaten pancake on one side and a bottle of washing-up liquid on the other, no one could possibly confuse the bespectacled Icelandic lady with Osama bin Laden. But just to ram the point home, she brandishes a handmade sign: "I'm not a terrorist!"

After Gordon Brown used anti-terror laws to freeze the assets of an Icelandic bank, the Land of the Midnight Sun is fighting back. Given Iceland does not have an army, the uprising is less Viking warrior and more citizen's revolt. Yesterday, more than 35,000 people – a ninth of the population – signed an online petition to let the world know that Icelanders are not terrorists. "Gordon Brown unjustifiably used the Anti-Terrorism Act against the people of Iceland for his own short-term political gain," the petition says. "This has turned a grave situation into a national disaster... hour by hour and day by day the actions of the British Government are indiscriminately obliterating Icelandic interests."

Accompanying the petition is a series of portraits of Icelanders holding up their own protestations of innocence. There is the family posing in front of their skiing photos in matching brown and cream knitted jumpers, reassuring "Darling Brown. We are not terrorists but terribly nice and friendly". And there's the blonde toddler. "What did you call me?" she asks, midway through devouring a bowl of ice cream.

Then there are the off-the-wall defences ("I'm too handsome to be a terrorist," beams the blond-haired, blue-eyed footballer) and the ironic admissions of guilt. With Islamic terrorists so yesterday, one craggy-faced fisherman has stamped "Icelandic Terrorist" on to his orange overalls.

Mr Brown is clearly public enemy No 1 in Iceland, despite being hailed around the world for saving the planet during the worldwide economic crisis. Many people blame his freezing of Landsbanki's assets for triggering a wider collapse that did for the country's largest bank, Kaupthing. Without Mr Brown's meddling, Icelanders say, Kaupthing would have survived, and the nation would not be going cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for a $6bn bailout.

And there is clearly a market for helping Icelanders to vent their anger. They were proud of hailing from the land of cod, geysers and Björk, a country the UN deemed "best to live in". Now they have seen the krona lose half its value, and the nation financially isolated.

A photographer, Thorkell Thorkelsson, has turned his Reykjavik studio into a protest chamber, inviting people to pose with weapons to show how "dangerous" Iceland is. One man turned up with a gun made from Lego bricks; another had a snowball, and Hulda Edelvy, a pensioner, brandished a staple remover and pliers.

"It is so unfair, and so ridiculous; using a terrorist law against Iceland is like using a terrorist law against the Vatican," Mr Thorkelsson told Reuters. "The difference is there are more weapons in the Vatican."

As well as highlighting the surreal nature of the British move, there is also a therapeutic motive behind the project, said the co-organiser of his exhibition, Heba Soffia Bjornsdottir. "Getting over this will take some time," she says. "They really hurt us; they stabbed us in the back."

* Talks involving Treasury officials and their Icelandic counterparts aimed at recovering £4bn in deposits held by UK customers have broken up without agreement. The funds in the failed Icelandic bank Icesave are at risk after its parent company Landsbanki folded.