BEST EDITO OF THE WEEK - The Netherlands must make a strange impression nowadays - again. News about the Dutch member of parliament and former Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali whose Dutch passport is supposed to be never 'provided' - according to minister Verdonk of immigration - can easily be interpreted in line with the murder of Theo van Gogh (the controversial Dutch journalist, filmmaker) november 2004 and Pim Fortuyn, the immense popular bold queer could-be prime minister dilettant who was killed one week before elections in May 2002. Headlines in prominent international newspapers like London Times and Washington Post stress this image: 'A Critic of Muslim Intolerance Faces Loss of Dutch Citizenship'. The idea comes forward of a cowardly, intolerant society, unable to cope with controversial opinions, willing to deny the problems they uncover.
It is true, this three persons have in common a profoundly outspoken critic on the threat of intolerant Islam. It is true that they have all three lost their voice now: two because they have been killed and Miss Hirsi Ali by being forced out of parliament. Two will unfortunately never speak again. Miss Hirsi Ali will, for sure, in her new position at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think-tank in the United States. The way how they lost their voice, on the contrary, doesn't give them much in common and makes a general analyses about The Netherlands much more difficult. Fortuyn was killed by an extreme left ethnical Dutch animal rights activist who believed he was a threat to society. Van Gogh was killed by a Dutch native ethnical Moroccan Islam fundamentalist who believed Van Gogh was an insult to Allah. Hirsi Ali now is caught in the quite restrictive immigration laws established by the progressive-liberal 'purple' administrations eight years ago, which deny someone the Dutch passport when achieved on a false name.
Although everybody knew part of her Dutch name 'Ali' wasn't here real Somali name, asked about the consequences of this fact by an extreme right Vlaams Blok sympathising party member of parliament, the minister, Rita Verdonk, had little choice but to apply the law. It is ironical, but this is the first time that public opinion and probably even many members of parliament, like Hirsi Ali, are confronted by this particular element of Dutch immigration laws. The difficulty is not that people can loose their passport when they have lied about their identity. The difficulty is that their passport is supposed never to be provided at all, which means it is automaticly denied and it doesn't come to a political or bureaucratic or juridical decision to take ones passport back.
This situation escalated because Mrs Verdonk is currently conducting a personal campaign to win her party's leadership (VVD). Her zero tolerance approach (on every single issue) has given her a lot of popularity even recently when a 17 years old Kosovar girl was denied the right to finish her school-exams and was sent out of the country. And even when Verdonk denied the popular soccerplayer Kalou the Dutch nationality which he needed, to be able to join the world soccer championships, although this was legally possible.
Being so harsh, strict and bureaucratic in these recent cases she saw no other way to save her image than to declare that after three days of 'research', and without any seemingly doubt, Hirsi Ali's passport was supposed to be non-existent. She could have stretched out this procedure over six weeks, if she wanted so, to search for solutions and to research the challenging questions how much space there is actually for 'extraordinary circumstances' in this case and what to do with a parliament that has probably been working with an unlawful lack of representation of one person. Minister Verdonk didn't use this option. Blind with ambition to win the leadership of her party and to save her image as a strict politician she even refrained to discuss her conclusions with the Prime Minister.
Except for the mentioned one-person party the whole parliament was shocked. Shocked about their reckless minister but also -in the end- about the resoluteness of their own law. During a fourteen hour exceptionally precise and serious debate, followed live on television by a record high eighteen percent of the population until far past midnight, a request is now addressed to the minister to find space to interprete the law more generously -which would off course also apply to all similar cases- and also to investigate possibilities to change the law in such a way that this can never happen again. It was impressive -and embarrassing at the same time- to see all parties fighting together, shoulder to shoulder, for the right of a single -very respected and very talented- collegue, knowing so many unknown persons already faced the same fate.
Rik Tuithof - Member of Newropeans
Amsterdam (Netherlands){moscomment}