Dutch MPs furious at Nekschot arrest
A cross-party majority coalition of MPs in the Dutch Lower House is calling for an emergency inquiry into the arrest of cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot.
Only the Christian Democrats (CDA) and the small Christian Unie party seem unperturbed by the unprecedented and heavy-handed police action against the satirist. Indeed, the CDA are largely responsible for it, and it is their Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin who will be held to account.
VVD leader Mark Rutte said:
It is time the CDA came to their senses, and publicly support one of the most important basic rights in our country, because it appears that the CDA is prepared to sacrifice freedom of speech at the altar of standards and values.
(The translation is questionable)
Nekschot’s arrest followed three years after a complaint by the Dutch-born convert to Islam, Abdul Jabbar van de Ven. On the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh, this babbling rug-butter said on Dutch TV how happy he felt, and how he hoped Allah would also arrange the death of Geert Wilders “for example by cancer”.
HP / de Tijd, the magazine which publishes a Nekschot cartoon every week, will today publish all 8 of those confiscated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. MWW will do the same, when we find out what they are.
