The Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy governed, since the parliamentary
election of 1994, by a left-right coalition between the social-democratic
Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party), led by Prime Minister Wim Kok,
the right-wing liberal Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratij (VVD, People's
Party for Freedom and Democracy) and the centre-left Democraten 66 (D66,
Democrats 66), led by Hans van Mierlo, who is both deputy prime minister
and foreign minister.
In 1996 the economy continued its recovery. Gross domestic product continued
to grow, rising to 2.8 per cent (from 2.5 per cent in 1995); and exports
grew by 5 per cent. Unemployment fell to just over 6.3 per cent of the working
population, although it was much higher among minorities. Inflation fell
to about 2.8 per cent (from 3 per cent in 1995).
A Jewish community is known to have existed in what is now the Kingdom
of the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. At times it has been subject to
persecution and expulsion from various provinces.
In the early seventeenth century, the community was swelled by the arrival
of descendants of Sephardi Jews who had fled the Spanish Inquisition. While
the community was free to practise Judaism, Jews were restricted to certain
trades because-until the granting of emancipation in 1796-they were excluded
from the existing guilds.
In the 1930s several national-socialist parties emerged, some more antisemitic
than others. During the Nazi occupation of 1940-5, contrary to the perception
outside the country, social antisemitism increased. In the early post-war
years, indifference to the fate of Jews was widespread, despite the fact
that some 100,000 of the 140,000 Dutch Jews had perished in the Holocaust.
Although social antisemitism has by no means disappeared completely, it
remains publicly unacceptable.
In 1996 the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities, recent immigrants
and asylum-seekers continued to be a difficult domestic issue. The main
immigrant communities in the Netherlands are those from Surinam, the Dutch
Antilles, Aruba, Turkey and Morocco and their descendants born in the Netherlands.
While de facto discrimination against non-white minorities and immigrants,
particularly in housing and employment, continues to be a reality, governmental
efforts in recent years have resulted in a higher rate of job creation among
minorities than among the general population.
The far-right parties continued crudely to characterize "immigrants"
as the main beneficiaries of the country's welfare provisions, but there
was also some public suspicion of immigration on the part of the mainstream
parties, and the issue of "illegals" and asylum-seekers has become
an increasingly prominent feature of the Dutch political landscape.
The number of racially motivated incidents of violence reported to the Criminele
Inlichtingen Dienst (CID, Criminal Investigation Service) in 1996 showed
a significant decrease over recent years, particularly in those incidents
of a life-threatening nature. This apparent reversal of the previously rising
number of such incidents has been attributed to a waning interest in hard-core
racist politics and to a decrease in the number of far-right activists.
In March a young medical assistant of Moroccan Muslim origin was required
by her employer to remove her headscarf while seeing patients. She refused
and took the case to court, where the doctor was ordered to pay compensation.
The case attracted a good deal of publicity.
The July 1994 law requiring employers with at least thirty-five employees
to register those that are "non-Dutch" and to submit plans for
affirmative action programmes continued to run into serious implementation
problems in 1996. Only a small number of employers have complied with the
law, partly because they find compliance burdensome and partly because many
employers and employees alike object to the labelling of workers as "non-Dutch".
The Netherlands traditionally has adopted a liberal policy towards asylum-seekers
and its procedures take into account conditions in the applicant's country
of origin. Following tighter restrictions on the right to asylum that came
into force in January 1995, the number of asylum-seekers decreased significantly:
it fell to the projected figure of 21,000 in 1996 from 29,258 in 1995, and
the peak of 52,576 in 1994.
Further immigration measures were presented to parliament in November 1996.
They demand that those arriving to settle in the Netherlands (whether or
not they hold a Dutch passport) take a language and literacy assessment
and, if necessary, receive language tuition, as well as lessons in social
assimilation and career guidance. These measures were due to be examined
in parliament in 1997.
Most asylum-seekers (87 per cent) are permitted to apply for asylum status.
A sizeable number (about 40 per cent in 1996) of those applicants that are
eventually denied are permitted to stay in the country temporarily on humanitarian
grounds or until their country of origin is deemed safe. A re-migration
programme has been instituted in which rejected asylum-seekers from selected
countries (including the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Sri Lanka) are encouraged
through financial incentives to return voluntarily.
The two principal far-right parties-Centrum-Democraten (CD, Centre Democrats)
and the more extreme Nationale Volkspartij/Centrumpartij '86 (NVP/CP'86
or CP'86, National People's Party/Centre Party '86), which changed its name
from Centrumpartij'86 in 1994 (see below) direct their racist propaganda
at non-white immigrants and eschew overtly antisemitic statements and propaganda.
Individual party activists, however, do not always follow suit. According
to Rinke van den Brink, an expert on the far right, in an article in Vrij
Nederland (25 November 1996), the total membership-largely a floating
one-of all the far-right groups in the Netherlands was not greater than
1,500, including no more than 150 activists.
Founded in 1984, CD is led by Hans Janmaat. As a splinter from the Centrumpartij
(see below), it has sought to capitalize on the effects of recession, unemployment
and welfare cuts, and claims that foreigners are the principal beneficiaries
of welfare provision. The party campaigns on the slogans "Full Is Full"
and "Netherlands for the Dutch", and its 1994 election manifesto
proposed labour camps for asylum-seekers and the repatriation of unemployed
immigrants. The party has been continually beset by internecine disputes,
in part due to Janmaat's reportedly authoritarian behavi-our-in May he expelled
four Rotterdam councillors for being too closely related with CP'86-as well
as to more or less continual court battles.
Until May, CP'86 was led by Henk Ruitenberg. The party has for some years
been CD's more radical rival for the anti-immigrant vote, campaigning on
the slogan "Our Own People First". It was founded in 1986, with
some fifty members or less, following the demise of the Centrumpartij (CP,
Centre Party). Most of the CP membership (which, until 1984, had included
Janmaat, who held the CP's only parliamentary seat from 1982) had by that
point drifted towards the CD or away from extremist politics. CP'86 has
been closely linked to the German Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands
(NPD), as well as more loosely with the Belgian Vlaams Blok (VB) and the
British Blood and Honour music scene (see Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom).
The party suffered a severe blow in 1995 when an Amsterdam court found the
organization and five of its leaders-including the whole of the editorial
board of the party's newspaper-guilty of spreading racial hatred. Probably
as a result, the group was increasingly plagued by factional in-fighting
between a militant, hard-core wing-led by elected town councillors Martijn
Freling and Stewart Mordaunt, from Rotterdam and The Hague respectively,
advocates of the repatriation of non-white Dutch citizens-and veteran party
leaders, who favour a more "moderate" approach. These internal
tensions led to the failure of attempts by "moderates" early in
the year at reconciliation with the CD, and to Ruitenberg's resignation
in May, when he was replaced by the more openly extremist Willem Beaux.
A split was finally provoked in October when Freling and Mordaunt were expelled.
In November they reconstituted a formulation of the original CP'86 party
with Morduant as chairman and Freling as party secretary, and reaffirmed
its ideology. This CP'86 advocates the expulsion of all foreigners-in the
first instance Surinamese, Moroccans and Turks-and the disbanding of democratic
parties. Mordaunt (who is also a member of the British National Party (BNP),
see United Kingdom) is an anti-semite. The "founding" meetings
included about seventy neo-Nazis in armbands and swastikas, many of whom
are linked to the Aktiefront Nationaal Socialisten (see below). Among the
speakers were Joop Glimmerveen (see below) and Mordaunt. Glimmerveen's remarks
at these meetings contained threats against a female Surinamese-born MP
of GroenLinks (Green Left) and the editor-in-chief of the Haagse Courrant
(Hague Courier). Mordaunt called for an "end to the Jewish domination
of Dutch political parties" and the "destruction of democratic
politics". Both CP'86 and NVP/CP'86 said they would sue each other
for the right to retain the name CP'86. In November almost the whole of
the lower chamber of parliament urged the government to start a criminal
investigation into the CP'86 for incitement to racial hatred.
As part of some attempts early in the year by the CD and NVP/CP'86 at closer
co-operation, two demonstrations were organized jointly and were, in fact,
the first strictly legal far-right demonstrations in the Netherlands since
1945; both events attracted much larger anti-fascist demonstrations, and
together they prompted the Dutch association of mayors to meet in April
to discuss the banning of such gatherings in the future. In February, in
Zwolle, some 130 right-wing demonstrators gathered to denounce multiculturalism
under slogans such as "Our Own People First". The police did not
interfere, as the mayor had allowed the demonstration on the grounds of
the participants' constitutional right to freedom of expression. Both Hans
Janmaat and two prominent NVP/CP'86 members have since been charged in Zwolle
with offensive behaviour; their trial will probably take place in March
1997.
On 30 March, about eighty CD and NVP/CP'86 members, including some ten neo-Nazis
from Germany, gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of the so-called "Battle
of Kedichem"-in which anti-fascists attacked and set fire to a building
in Kedichem, a village near Leerdam, in which leaders of the two groups
were meeting in an attempt to resolve their differences; among those injured
was Willy Schuurman, now Janmaat's wife, whose broken leg had to be amputated.
This year, some 300 riot police were present but the demonstration attracted
a much larger number of anti-fascists.
The Nederlands Blok (NB, Dutch Bloc) is a small and insignificant CD-splinter
grouping, modelled on the Belgian VB, which campaigns primarily in Utrecht.
The NB is led by Wim Vreeswijk, a former CD activist who joined the party
in 1993.
The Nederlands Volks Unie (NVU, Dutch People's Union) was founded as a political
party in 1971 by Joop Glimmerveen, and its original membership included
a number of former Nazis. During the 1970s the party was virulently racist
and became increasingly militant as younger neo-Nazis joined its ranks.
Following attempts to ban the NVU in the Dutch courts during 1980, some
members formed the Centrumpartij, the forerunner of CD and NVP/CP'86. Since
then, the party's size and influence on the far right has dwindled considerably,
although recent rumours of a revival have circulated. Glimmerveen, now aged
sixty-eight and one of the few Holocaust-deniers on the Dutch far right,
still frequently attends NVP/CP'86 demonstrations and was even detained
for questioning in November, following his remarks at the founding meeting
of the CP'86 (see above).
In the most recent electoral test of the strength of the far-right parties,
the March 1995 provincial elections, of the four parties that participated-the
CD, the NVP/CP'86, the NB and the Patriotisch Democratisch Appèl
(Patriotic Democratic Appeal), a small splinter grouping from the liberal
right-wing mainstream parties that advocates a harshly xenophobic line but
in all other respects supports a mainstream liberal agenda-only the CD received
enough votes to qualify for representation and finished with two seats (compared
with their previous three) out of a total in the provincial legislatures
of 756. Far-right parties as a whole fared particularly badly in urban areas,
and the results continued the downturn in their electoral fortunes since
the high point in the March 1994 municipal elections, when far-right candidates
secured a total of eighty-seven (out of 2,442) seats (seventy-seven CD,
nine NVP/CP'86 and one NB), an increase of seventy-one on the previous election
in 1990, and a success not since repeated in any election. As a result of
the 1994 election, there are still three CD members-including Janmaat himself-in
the lower chamber of parliament; in general they take part in debates only
when minorities are discussed and are treated scornfully by the other members
when they take the floor.
The incorporation into local councils of eighty-seven far-right members
has been, in the event, somewhat anticlimactic for several reasons, not
least of which is the fact that the far-right parties are more or less continually
racked by internal factional struggles: in Amsterdam, councillors from the
mainstream parties voted to exclude their far-right colleagues from committees
after a CD councillor claimed that there was a link between the city's "new"
citizens and AIDS; in several districts, far-right councillors frequently
have failed to turn up for meetings; some elected councillors never took
up their seats; and a number of elected councillors were exposed in the
media as the perpetrators of violent or other crimes.
There are several extra-parliamentary groupings that have remained marginalized
and largely inactive in the course of 1996. The largest group is the Aktiefront
Nationaal Socialisten (ANS, Action Front of National Socialists) led by
Eite Homan of Groningen. The group's members number well under 100. The
Fundamentalistische Arbeiders Partij (FAP, Fundamentalist Workers Party)
was founded in 1995 by three well-known far-right activists: Eite Homan,
leader of the ANS; Constant Kusters, a former CP'86 officer who in May was
sentenced to five months' imprisonment by an Arnhem court for threatening
and violent behaviour; and Daniel Hermsen, a former section leader of the
NB. A much smaller organization is the Jongeren Front Nederland '94 (JFN'94,
Netherlands Youth Front '94), a neo-Nazi youth organization. Founded in
1994 by Constant Kusters after he was expelled from CP'86, its quarterly
magazine JFN'94 nieuws has been linked to the ANS and FAP (see PUBLICATIONS
AND MEDIA).
In October, Searchlight reported that there were about 250 neo-Nazi
skinheads in Holland. Companies that sell the music of neo-Nazi bands are
Nordisc in Leeuwarden and Viking Sounds in Goes. Another group are the 10,000
or so "gabbers", followers of "gabber house music",
who are distinguishable from skinheads by their dress, although they have
the same hairstyles. An estimated 600-1,000 "gabbers" adhere to
racist ideology.
The Dutch branch of the US-based Nation of Islam (NOI, see United States
of America) was foun-ded in 1995 by Muhammad Abdul Kareem (baptized as Henri
Fernand, known as Henkie Tof), who claims 4,000 followers. Kareem, for the
most part, repeats the views of NOI leader Louis Farrakhan, and calls for
the establishment of an independent black republic in the Bijlmer area of
Amsterdam. One of Kareem's main activities, through his Islamic Relief Foundation,
is the collection of food from Muslim merchants, which is distributed to
drug addicts and the homeless in Amsterdam every Friday.
There were reports by Jewish organizations throughout the year of the receipt of antisemitic post or phone calls and the daubing of swastikas and racist graffiti (not necessarily against Jews) on walls and buildings, including the Chevra Kadisha (Funeral Centre) in Amsterdam. Graves were desecrated in the Jewish cemeteries in Zuidlaren and Winschoten, both in the northern part of the country, although it was not clear that this sprang from antisemitic motives; in the case of Winschoten, graves in the non-Jewish part of the cemetery were also desecrated. In a racially motivated incident in May a Jewish boy was attacked by a gang of youths in Amstelveen near Amsterdam, a neighbourhood with a large Jewish population.
By the end of 1996, there had still been no response to the complaint-filed
by the Centrum Informatie en Documentatie over Israël (CIDI, Centre
for Information and Documentation about Israel) in January with the Arnhem
magistrates' court-about antisemitic passages in JFN'94 nieuws. The August
1995 issue blamed Europe's problems on "the Jewish conspiracy";
in the December 1995 issue, Yigal Amir was nominated as annual hero for
ridding the world of the "Jewish swine Rabin". JFN'94 nieuws is
the publication of JFN'94, and is linked with both the ANS and the FAP;
its chief editor apparently is Constant Kusters, a founder of the FAP (see
PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS). The Arnhem court said that it was still
investigating the matter.
Dutch racist and antisemitic material continues to be available on the Internet.
There are at present no legal instruments for challenging its right to be
available. Only those sites that originate in the Netherlands and are considered
to be an incitement to racial hatred come under the Dutch penal code. CP'86
has its own home page on the Internet. Another site offering news of the
activities of the Dutch far right is that of the Aryan News Agency, which
this year posted an interview with Tibor Mudde, party secretary of CP'86.
For the last few months of the year, readers of these pages have been invited
to supply to the far-right group Onderzoek Documentatie en Informatie Netwerk
(ODIN, Investigation Documentation and Information Network) the names, addresses
and telephone numbers of anti-fascist organizations.
There was no evidence in 1996 of the Christian anti-Jewish newsletter Evan, produced by Jenny Goeree in recent years. Copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were apparently offered for sale in a mosque in Tilburg, a medium-sized town in the south of the country. The anti-discrimination centre in Tilburg had the material removed.
The principal source of Holocaust-denial material in the Netherlands
in recent years has been the Antwerp-based institute Vrij Historisch Onderzoek
(VHO, Free Historical Research), run by the Belgian Siegfried Verbeke (see
Belgium). Since 1992 the VHO has issued a number of pamphlets in its so-called
Revisionistische Bibliotheek (Revisionist Library) series; these include:
Leuchter Report; The Six Million Holocaust: 48 Questions and Answers;
Rudolf Expertise; The Vicissitudes of Germar Rudolf; and The Crematoria
of Auschwitz and Birkenau (the last three titles are Verbeke's own translations
into Dutch). This year, however, Verbeke's activities in the Netherlands
were virtually non-existent, almost certainly because of the failure of
his appeal against a 1995 conviction for incitement to racial hatred (see
LEGAL MATTERS).
For the fifth year in a row, the mainstream daily De Telegraaf received
Holocaust-denial material in the post.
In January Th. G. Baalman was sentenced by a magistrates' court in Amsterdam
to a conditional prison term of one month with a two-year probationary period
and a fine of Fl. 750. In 1995 Baalman had published antisemitic remarks-including
the statement that the "good" Jews had all perished in the Holocaust
and the "bad" Jews had survived because of their cunning and corruption-in
De Triangel , a free local paper in Graveland. The publisher of De
Triangel was fined Fl. 1,000.
In May the Belgian Holocaust-denier Siegfried Verbeke's appeal against his
1995 conviction for incitement to racial hatred was heard. Verbeke received
a six-month conditional prison sentence with a two-year probationary period,
and a Fl. 5,000 fine or fifty days in jail. The case against him was initiated
in 1992 by CIDI, the Anne Frank Stichting (Anne Frank Foundation) and the
Landelijk Buro Racismebestrijding (LBR, National Bureau against Racial Discrimination).
Also in May, CIDI and B'nai B'rith Netherlands filed a complaint against
the left-wing magazine Ravage , which is produced fortnightly and
circulated countrywide by an organization of the same name. The complaint
followed the publication in May of an article entitled "Reflections
on Commemoration". The article, which compared the influence of B'nai
B'rith with that of the Ku Klux Klan, likened the organization to Freemasons.
It also charged that B'nai B'rith has an influence on neo-Nazi ideology
and stated that it is "a Jewish elite which via the neo-Nazis works
against the interests of the Jewish citizen". Investigations into the
case continue.
In 1996 awareness of the dangers of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism
was evident in the number of demonstrations and campaigns organized at both
local and national levels by the many Dutch anti-racist organizations, the
most important national organizations being the Anne Frank Stichting, the
LBR, the Anti Discriminatie Overleg (ADO, Dialogue on Anti-Discrimination),
the Anti Racisme Informatie Centrum (ARIC, Anti-Racist Information Centre)
in Rotterdam, Fascisme Onderzoek Kollektief (FOK, Fascism Research Collective),
Nederland Bekent Kleur (The Netherlands Shows Its Colours), Comité
21 Maart (21 March Committee) and School Against Racism.
The third week of March was designated as the annual anti-racism week, culminating
in a national demonstration on 21 March. For the fourth year in succession,
Pop Against Racism sponsored the "Racism Beat It" music festival
in August. The national cultural organization for children and young people,
Kunstbende, organized the "Trek een Bek tegen Racisme" (Pull a
Face Against Racism) campaign in which young people were invited to make
anti-racist posters in the form of a self-portrait.
Following on from all the 1995 events marking the fiftieth anniversary of
the liberation of Holland from Nazi occupation, commemorations continued
in 1996. Several more memorials were unveiled, often dedicated to the local
Jewish residents who perished at the hands of the Nazis. The Netherlands
Auschwitz Committee held its annual Auschwitz commemoration in Amsterdam
on the last Sunday of January as usual. Traditionally an anti-fascist event,
the gathering has also increasingly become in recent years a tribute to
the Jews who perished in the camps. On 9 November, for only the fifth year
in succession, the anniversary of Kristallnacht was marked by an
anti-racist demonstration in Amsterdam organized by Nederland Bekent Kleur
and a group called Jewish Resistance.
Numerous cultural events or works on Jewish subjects took place or appeared
in 1996. Former synagogues have been restored, with their Jewish characteristics
preserved, and turned into cultural centres, for example in Weesp, Ter Borg,
Buuren and the Uilenburger Synagogue in Amsterdam. At the end of November
the second International Yiddish Festival was held in Amsterdam.
The few antisemitic incidents that did occur in the Netherlands in 1996
were condem-ned by the law and by public opinion. Neither of the organizations
that monitor antisemitic incidentsCIDI and Stichtung Bestrijding Antisemitisme
(STIBA, Foundation for Combating Antisemitism)issued a report in 1996. Although
antisemitism may not have disappeared completely, it remains publicly unacceptable
throughout Dutch society.
Furthermore, the influence of the far right in mainstream political life
is negligible. Groups are plagued with internal dissent and have lost electoral
ground since the 1994 municipal elections. It seems incongruous, therefore,
that this is matched with an increasing vigilance towards these groups and
more court verdicts against their leaders. On the other hand, concern to
protect minorities from everyday threats on the streets is prevalent in
the Netherlands.
© JPR 1997