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Swedish museum hit by flap over 'racist' cake

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 18 (UPI) -- A Swedish museum caught in a firestorm over a cake in the shape of a naked black woman was evacuated because of a bomb threat.

The threat was called in to the Moderna Museet in Stockholm at 4 p.m. Tuesday, just after Queen Silvia of Sweden and Jenni Haukio, wife of Finland's prime minister, has left the museum, The Local reported. No bomb was found.

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"The person who rang spoke English and said that there was a bomb and that it wasn't a joke. He said the museum was a racist one," Lotta Guffhe, a spokeswoman for the Stockholm police, told the newspaper Aftonbladet.

Artist Makode Aj Linde, who made the cake for World Art Day last Sunday, said it was a commentary on female genital mutilation, which is practiced in some African countries. The body of the cake was a violent red color while it was iced to look like an African woman.

But the National Afro-Swedish Association said news pictures of Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cutting the cake looked like she was at a party. The group said pictures of Linde, who screamed every time someone cut the cake, with his arms, covered in black makeup, sticking out of the cake, showed a "racist spectacle."

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"In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden," Kitimbwa Sabuni, a spokesman, told The Local.

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