Dutch Establishment Threatens to Prosecute Wilders

…and claim damages

From the desk of Thomas Landen

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 http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3660. “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 http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3748, 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 http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2591 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 http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3342 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.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3084

2008-03-12