No Dutch broadcaster has been willing to show Geert Wilders' anti-Muslim
film
Dutch Establishment Threatens to Prosecute Wilders and Claim Damages
From the desk of Thomas Landen on Wed, 2008-03-12 18:07
Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who is making a 10-minute movie about
Islam entitled Fitna
(Arabic for “ordeal”), has felt compelled to cancel the March 28 press
conference where he
intended to show his film. The Nieuwspoort press center in The Hague,
which is run by a board
of journalists, publishers and government press officers, demanded that
Wilders pay 400,000
euros for extra safety measures. “Apparently, you have to be a millionaire
to organize such an
event,” Mr Wilders said. “Even if I had the money I am not going to spend
it on a press
conference.”
No Dutch broadcaster, public or private, has been willing to show the
film. There are
indications that Fitna will also be banned on Youtube, which removed a
clip featuring Mr
Wilders two week ago, on so-called “ethical grounds”.
Dutch international companies, fearing a boycott of their products by
Muslims, have announced
that they intend to hold Mr Wilders responsible for a loss of profits and
markets in the event
of a boycott. They have asked Gerard Spong, one of the top lawyers in the
Netherlands, to see
whether a court case claiming damages from Wilders will be possible. Mr
Spong and several other
lawyers have already lodged some fifty formal complaints against the
politician for “incitement
to racial hatred and discrimination of Muslims” because Mr Wilders
expressed the opinion that
the Koran is “a fascist book which should be banned in the Netherlands.”
Last November, when Wilders announced he was going to make a movie
expressing his view on Islam
and the Koran, Doekle Terpstra, a member of the board of directors of the
Anglo-Dutch
multinational Unilever, told the Dutch media that “Geert Wilders is evil,
and evil has to be
stopped.” The Unilever director, anticipating a worldwide Muslim boycott
of Unilever products
(brands such as Axe, Ben and Jerry’s, Best Foods, Brooke Bond, Colman’s,
Cif, Dove, Glidat
Strauss, Heartbrand, Hellmann’s, Imperial Margarine, Knorr, Lipton,
Pepsodent, Sunsilk, Unox,
Vaseline, etc.), called upon the Dutch to “rise in order to stop Wilders
from preaching his
evil message.”
Mr Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, has been living under police
protection for
almost four years. Muslim fanatics have threatened to assassinate him for
his outspoken
criticism of Islam. The politician has no fixed residence and has to live
in army barracks or
other heavily secured premises.
Radical Muslims have threatened to indiscriminately kill Dutch citizens or
retaliate against
the Netherlands with a terror attack if Mr Wilders’ movie is released.
This week, Dutch people
with the surname “Wilders” received death threats. Though not related to
the politician, three
Wilderses received anonymous letters ordering them to prevent their
namesake from releasing his
movie. If they fail, the letter states, “the first deadly victim will be
you, one of your
children or grandchildren.”
Last week Henk Hofland, the nestor of Dutch journalism, proposed on Dutch
television that the
Dutch authorities lift Geert Wilders’ police protection. “Let him feel
what it is like for
those whose lives he endangers,” Hofland, the former editor of NRC
Handelsblad, the leading
newspaper in the Netherlands, opined. Mr Hofland, who was given the title
“Dutch journalist of
the century” by his colleagues in 1999, asserted that, if Dutch citizens
get murdered in
retaliation for Wilders’ opinions on Islam, not the assassins are to be
blamed, but the
politician. Apparently, to Hofland and his ilk being critical of Islam is
worse than
slaughtering innocent people in the name of Islam.
Hofland’s declaration did not lead to widespread indignation, which
indicates that Mr Hofland
is not the only Dutchman willing to deliver Mr Wilders and other critics
of Islam to those who
want to murder them. All this could have been predicted. In fact, it was.
Last month I
questioned the wisdom of Geert Wilders here, asking whether he was on a
suicide mission:
If the Wilders movie results in (fatal) attacks on Dutch citizens and
Dutch interests
abroad, it might lead to an anti-Wilders backlash. The Dutch are not
Danes. […] Like the
Spanish after the Madrid bombings they might paint their hands white and
surrender. Rather than
banning the Koran, they might ban every criticism of Islam. In 1940, the
Dutch surrendered to
the Nazis after barely five days when Hitler bombed Rotterdam. The British
never surrendered,
despite the blitz. Perhaps Geert Wilders thinks that his compatriots are
braver today than they
were 68 years ago.
Given the predictable Dutch reaction of turning against those who endanger
their cosy,
hedonistic existence, perhaps Mr Wilders does not think his compatriots
braver today than
before. Perhaps he is on a suicide mission, and fully realizes it. In an
interview last week,
Wilders, who is married but has no children, said that he is prepared to
die for his opinions.
He is not endangering the lives of others, as Mr Hofland implies; it are
his Islamist enemies
who are threatening others with death.
Maybe it is Mr Wilders’ preparedness to fight and die that bothers and
enrages the Dutch
business and media establishment. If so, many of them will be relieved
when Mr Wilders gets
killed by his enemies. They might be quite happy that having got rid of
Pim Fortuyn and Theo
van Gogh, they are now rid of Geert Wilders, too, so that Unilever can
continue doing business
in the Arab worlds while Henk Hofland and his admiring fellow journalists
can continue
advocating free speech for everyone except those who are critical of
bullies who threaten kill
anyone who does not agree with them.
All this, as said, should have been common knowledge. The Dutch showed
what stuff they were
made of two years ago, when they made life impossible for Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
an elected member of
their parliament, just like Mr Wilders. Her neighbours sued to get her
removed from the
apartment where she was living under police protection. The court of
appeal ordered Ms Hirsi
Ali to leave her house within four months, invoking… the European treaty
for Human Rights. As
the judges said:
The court considers in its ruling that the neighbours have been put
into a situation that
has contributed to them feeling less safe in their own house. That feeling
is extended to the
communal living spaces of the apartment complex, but also to their own
apartments. The court
argues that this is a severe violation of one’s private life (as per
Article 8 of the European
Treaty for Human Rights).
Ms Hirsi Ali was booted out of her own house by virtue of the European
Treaty for Human Rights
because Muslim fanatics threatened her, thereby causing her neighbours to
“feel less safe in
their own house.” Soon, Mr Wilders, whatever one thinks about his
opinions, his motives or the
wisdom of his decisions, will be booted out – also in the name of grand
principles such as
human rights – because he makes others feel less safe. That is his crime:
While the majority of
the Dutch are willing to submit, he is not.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3084
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