A three minute Broadcast featuring a virtual museum of cartoons of Mohammad scheduled for yesterday afternoon mysteriously failed to air, with the Dutch state broadcaster citing a ‘misunderstanding’.
The Dutch establishment has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders from airing his collection of Mohammad in public, most recently banning him from hosting an exhibition of the art works in the Dutch parliament.
By airing the cartoons on television, Wilders thought he had finally found a way around the entrenched “appeasing, and multiculturalist” attitudes in his home nation. Dutch law guarantees every political party in parliament to broadcast a series of short three minute television programmes at regular intervals on the state broadcaster, NPO.
Whether the NPO would attempt to stop him broadcasting the cartoons was the first question Breitbart London asked Mr. Wilders in an exclusive interview he granted last week. Despite the strong opposition to his plan from the establishment, Mr. Wilders was convinced they wouldn’t go as far as breaking the law to prevent the programme going live. He told Breitbart London:
“Dutch television cannot stop us from showing the cartoons. Every party that is present in parliament has time to show themselves on national TV, and by law they cannot be prevented from broadcasting. Anyone can oppose the programme, but only afterwards but not before”.
Regardless, it seems that where there is a will, there is a way. When the appointed time came yesterday afternoon, Mr. Wilders and thousands of others were shocked to find a completely different programme being aired. Wilders immediately took to Twitter to denounce the act, writing in Dutch that the change was an act of Sabotage and the film would air even if he had to go to the studios and do it himself.
Minutes later, the chairman of NPO Henk Hagoort told Wilders that the programme was not aired due to a ‘misunderstanding’, and it would “definitely” be broadcast later this week. Unconvinced, the Freedom Party put out a strongly worded press release in retaliation, stating:
“Today, it looks like the Dutch public television sabotaged the political broadcast by the Party for Freedom… It is an absolute disgrace, if the public television censored a broadcast by a political party. Freedom of speech has been violated. This is scandalous in a democratic country!”
Breitbart London has reached out to the Dutch state broadcaster for comment.
Determined not to be silenced, Wilders put the film on Youtube anyway. You can watch them with English subtitles below:
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