Linda Herrera and Arjan de Haan – A court case and an election: Letter from The Hague
This letter has been written by Arjan de Haan and Linda Herrera, both working at the International Institute of Social Studies.
A court case and an election: Letter from The Hague
11 March 2010
The Hague, the international city of Peace and Justice and home of the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), has of late been in the international spotlight because of a high profile criminal trial and a local election. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Radovan Karadzic is currently standing trial charged with war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. He is most famously known for allegedly ordering the massacre of some 8000 Bosnian Muslim men, one episode in a wave of ethnic cleansing atrocities that took place during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995). On March 3rd 2010 in the municipal elections of The Hague Geert Wilders’ party the PVV (Party for Freedom) ran on relentless anti-Islam and partly anti-immigration platform. The PVV gained 16.8 % of the votes making it the second largest party in The Hague after the PvdA.
The two authors of this letter, colleagues working at the ISS in the field of international development studies, have both witnessed anti-immigrant and racists displays in regions of the global South where we work, and of late in our local neighborhoods here in the Hague. The campaign flyers from PVV which circulated in our streets essentially promised to keep harassing and otherizing Dutch Muslims by means such as banning the headscarf in public functions, closing down Islamic schools, promising zero-tolerance vis-à-vis ‘street-terror’ (referring to street behavior of Moroccan male youth). It denigrated the rival PvdA leaders for pursuing dialogue with the local Muslim community with the words, “you can offer as many goats as you like, and you can ritually sacrifice our country as often as you can.”
Over the last ten years, Dutch society has undergone radical changes, and we witness with alarm how already marginalized groups get crushed under the weight of hateful language and intolerant public practices in Dit Mooie Land (This Beautiful Country), as the book of Kader Abdolah is called, and de ‘mooie stad achter de duinen’ (‘beautiful city behind the dunes’), as the refrain about The Hague goes. The Hague at this moment is a microcosm for Europe, which is attempting a reconciliation of crimes and mistakes of Europe’s recent past, but at the same time is possibly reproducing the conditions that make such crimes possible in the first place.
There are at the same time strong voices of assertion of rights of citizens in this country, like the increasing number of representatives of ethnic minority groups. We believe it is our duty to condemn the forces that perpetuate racial and cultural divisions and support these counter voices in the interest of democracy in the Netherlands, in Europe, and in our world.
