THE
HAGUE, April 2, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – The Dutch ministries of
justice and interior have failed to live up to their responsibilities
and continue to turn a blind eye to mushrooming racist websites in the
Netherlands, a Dutch rights activist has charged.
Marco
Hughes, director of the Racism Monitoring Center (MDI), said
minorities in the European country continue to be showered with online
racist, frightening and hatred-inciting expressions.
"We
have filed 18 lawsuits over the past three years (against racist
websites), but the appropriate authorities did not move a
finger," he said in a press release, a copy of which was obtained
by IslamOnline.net on Saturday, April 2.
The
latest MDI legal action came on Friday, March 31, when Hughes resorted
anew to litigation in a bid to take the racist slurs offline.
He
named some of the offensive websites like Holland Hardcore, which
calls for setting fire to mosques and Islamic schools in the country
let alone countless racist slurs.
Other
minorities like Jews are not spared racist insults like "who are
more dangerous: Muslims or Jews?
The
site is also championing a "white revolution" to expel all
foreigners and abort non-white pregnant women on the grounds that they
cannot raise their children properly.
Muslim
Complaints
Hughes
said the center received a torrent of complaints in February from
Muslims after right-wing MP Geert Wilders posted cartoons lampooning
Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) on his homepage.
Last
September, Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten ran 12 caricatures
including portrayals of the Prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban and
another showing him as a knife-wielding nomad flanked by shrouded
women.
Supporters
of controversial Somali-born MP Ayaan Hirsi, who wrote the scripts of
two documentaries on the alleged mistreatment of women under Islam,
also published online shirts poking fun at the Prophet.
The
MDI asserted that authorities failed to take action about the Muslim
complaints.
Islamophobia
gained momentum in the Netherlands after the November 2004 killing of
director Theo van Gogh by a Dutch-Moroccan after directing the first
offensive film of Hirsi.
Europe’s
main rights and democracy watchdog, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), expressed concern in May last year at
the increasing Dutch intolerance towards the one-million Muslim
minority and the "climate of fear" under which the minority
was living.
Dereliction
of Duty
The
authorities inaction on racist websites also drew fire from the ruling
Christian Democrats (CDA) and the opposition Labour party.
CDA
Member Mirjam Sterk and Labour's Aleid Wolfsen have submitted an
interpellation over the failure to stand up to the worrying
phenomenon.
Other
MPs have blasted as unacceptable the justice ministry's argument that
it can not keep pace with the rapid Internet development.
The
Dutch parliament has adopted over the past few years a number of laws
to combat extremism and online hatred.
A
government report warned last year that the scale of racism and
extremism are worryingly increasing among right-wing
"skinhead" youths and posing major threats to Dutch national
security.
The
report warned that such radical right-wing youth groups are more
dangerous on society than Muslim extremists.
