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"Dutch MPs in protest over ‘fugitive’ lives
EVERY evening, plainclothes police officers escort two members of the Dutch parliament to armoured cars and take them to hiding places for the night. One of them, Geert Wilders, has been camping out in a cell in a high-security prison where his life, he said, has become “like a bad B-movie”. His colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has grown increasingly miserable sleeping at a military base.
Both are in hiding after they received a deluge of death threats since they strongly criticised the behaviour of militant Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands.
After two previous political assassinations, Dutch officials are taking the threats seriously, treating the safety of the two politicians both as a matter of personal protection and as an issue of national security. Several politicians have said that in the country’s present polarised mood, public violence could erupt if either of the two were killed.
But the two legislators themselves have disturbed the officials’ plans, choosing to reveal their whereabouts to protest at the conditions under which they live. Neither has had a permanent home since November, when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and knifed to death on an Amsterdam street. A 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan, Muhammad Bouyeri, has been charged with the murder.
The decision by Wilders and Hirsi Ali to reveal their secret lives, one in a jail cell, the other on a naval base, has raised a question that is troubling many Dutch: is it acceptable for legislators in a Western democracy to be forced to go into hiding, to live like fugitives on the run in their own land?
Abram de Swaan, a prominent sociologist, said: “Of course this is an outrage. It’s not bearable. The government must come up with better solutions, like putting them in protected homes. That’s the way it happens in other countries.”
The NRC Handelsblad, a leading daily newspaper, ran an editorial recently headlined “Unacceptable”. A situation in which legislators are “hampered in carrying out their tasks puts democracy in question and makes terror successful,” it said, adding that the official bureaucracy evidently “does not know how to deal with the new reality” in which Muslim terrorism may also threaten Dutch politicians.
Officials point out that the government is prosecuting several men for death threats and has adopted tough laws against terrorism suspects, including voiding their Dutch nationality…"
scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=274542005
EVERY evening, plainclothes police officers escort two members of the Dutch parliament to armoured cars and take them to hiding places for the night. One of them, Geert Wilders, has been camping out in a cell in a high-security prison where his life, he said, has become “like a bad B-movie”. His colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has grown increasingly miserable sleeping at a military base.
Both are in hiding after they received a deluge of death threats since they strongly criticised the behaviour of militant Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands.
After two previous political assassinations, Dutch officials are taking the threats seriously, treating the safety of the two politicians both as a matter of personal protection and as an issue of national security. Several politicians have said that in the country’s present polarised mood, public violence could erupt if either of the two were killed.
But the two legislators themselves have disturbed the officials’ plans, choosing to reveal their whereabouts to protest at the conditions under which they live. Neither has had a permanent home since November, when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and knifed to death on an Amsterdam street. A 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan, Muhammad Bouyeri, has been charged with the murder.
The decision by Wilders and Hirsi Ali to reveal their secret lives, one in a jail cell, the other on a naval base, has raised a question that is troubling many Dutch: is it acceptable for legislators in a Western democracy to be forced to go into hiding, to live like fugitives on the run in their own land?
Abram de Swaan, a prominent sociologist, said: “Of course this is an outrage. It’s not bearable. The government must come up with better solutions, like putting them in protected homes. That’s the way it happens in other countries.”
The NRC Handelsblad, a leading daily newspaper, ran an editorial recently headlined “Unacceptable”. A situation in which legislators are “hampered in carrying out their tasks puts democracy in question and makes terror successful,” it said, adding that the official bureaucracy evidently “does not know how to deal with the new reality” in which Muslim terrorism may also threaten Dutch politicians.
Officials point out that the government is prosecuting several men for death threats and has adopted tough laws against terrorism suspects, including voiding their Dutch nationality…"
scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=274542005