STRASBOURG (Agencies)
Islamophobia is gaining ground in the Netherlands, with Muslim minorities facing rising violence and discrimination, a pan-European anti-racism commission said in a report released Tuesday.
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found Islamophobia in the country to have "increased dramatically" since 2000, reporting that Muslims were "disproportionately targeted" by security policies and faced racist violence and discrimination.
Tensions have been fuelled by national and international events, such as the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the murder of outspoken columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim in 2004, the report said.
It found that the country's Muslims -- a community of one million people, or six percent of the population -- had faced "stereotyping, stigmatising", "outright racist political discourse" and "biased media portrayal."
The Moroccan and Turkish communities were especially hard hit, it said.
The ECRI studies and makes recommendations on the problems of racism and intolerance in the 47 states of the Council of Europe.
The Dutch government, in an annex to the report, replied that it had adopted anti-racism legislation, opened anti-discrimination offices around the country and taken steps to fight discrimination in the job market.
European Union ministers and Dutch Muslim groups have also expressed serious concern about plans by far-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders to make a potentially inflammatory film about the Quran.
Wilders, who has been under round-the-clock protection since the filmmaker Van Gogh was murdered for making a film critical of Islam in 2004, said this weekend his film would be aired in March. |
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Hirsi Ali backed Meanwhile, the Somali-born former Dutch deputy threatened with death for her role in the Van Gogh movie gained the support of a French Muslim minister and women's rights campaigner on Monday.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is threatened with death for her role in writing the script of Van Gogh's film "Submission", about the treatment of women in Islam. A note targeting her by name was found on Van Gogh's body.
Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara said she would ask President Nicolas Sarkozy to offer Hirsi Ali France's protection and help her cover the costs of her round-the-clock security protection.
"My country is a country of freedom, where freedom of expression is very important, so I would be very proud to be your advocate with the president," Amara told Hirsi Ali.
Before joining Sarkozy's government, Amara was a prominent campaigner for the rights of Muslim women in France's high-immigration "banlieues", as head of a group called Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive).
The 38-year-old Hirsi Ali, who has been living under police protection since the Van Gogh's murder, was in Paris to seek French citizenship, with the backing French intellectuals and artists.
On Thursday she heads to Brussels where around 60 European deputies are trying to obtain the signatures needed to secure funding for her protection. |
