Months after a fiery victory speech, Dutch police have announced they will be prosecuting democratically-elected house of representatives member Geert Wilders for asking his voters whether they wanted to see fewer Moroccans or not in the Northern European country.
This is not the first time Wilders has been in trouble for making comments considered unspeakable by the Dutch government, having narrowly avoided prosecution in 2011 after calling for a ban on the Koran. Now a full nine months after he made a speech during the March local elections, in which his Freedom party performed well, the authorities have decided to prosecute him again on exactly the same charges.
After Wilder’s comments in March there were protests against his comments by the Moroccan community and its allies, and the Dutch police received over 6,400 complaints. He will be charged with “insulting a specific group based on race and inciting discrimination and hatred”.
Standing on a stage in the Dutch capital, Wilders called to his supporters: “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?”. As they responded: “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” he replied “We’ll take care of that”, reports the Independent. Despite clearly ruffling some feathers, Wilders is unrepentant saying he was only representing “what millions of people think”.
Of what he perceives as a waste of police and court time being used to persecute him, Wilders says: “It is a travesty that I have to defend myself in court for this. The Public Prosecutor would do better to devote his time to prosecuting jihadis instead of me”.
Defending the prosecution, a police spokesman said “Politicians can go far in what they say, that is part of freedom of speech, but the freedom is limited by the ban on discrimination”.
As well as Islam, Wilders is also a vocal critic of the way Western governments deal with radical Islam, especially policy that take passports from suspected terrorists but allows them to walk free. In the wake of the recent Canada Parliament Hill shooting, Wilders told Breitbart: “Let them leave.
“Let them leave, or detain them. I find it incomprehensible that Western governments stop people who want to leave to fight for jihad in Syria or Iraq… nothing is being done to make our own countries safe”.
The desperate struggle to shut down individuals who speak out against the pace of Islamisation of the West by governments is not limited to the Dutch, and Wilders. Breitbart London has reported on a series of protest ‘strolls’ presently taking place across Germany, and most notably in Dresden where 15,000 marched against Islamisation of Europe this Monday.
In response the German government has called the movement, which self describes as an apolitical group of Europeans Against Islamisation, “pinstripe nazis”, and one left-wing minister in the ruling coalition even called for other citizens to stand against it.
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