Wilders

A Dutch court has ruled that Geert Wilders can be prosecuted for calling the Koran a ‘fascist book’ because this amounts to inciting hatred.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A right-wing lawmaker should be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred with anti-Islamic statements that include calling the Quran a “fascist book,” a Dutch court ruled Wednesday.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made headlines around the world in March 2008 with his film “Fitna,” which juxtaposed Quranic verses against a background of violent film clips and images of terrorism by Islamic radicals.

In 2007, Wilders called for a ban on the Quran “the same way we ban ‘Mein Kampf.'” He said both Adolf Hitler’s work and the Muslim holy book contain passages that contradict Western values.

The Amsterdam Appeals Court called Wilders’ statements in his film, newspaper articles and media interviews “one-sided generalizations … which can amount to inciting hatred.”

I wonder whether describing those who call the Koran a ‘fascist book’, fascists, is in itself an incitement to hatred? Or does it only work one way? After all, when you fire Katyushas into Sderot that is nothing. When you pay the rocketeers in their own kind that is a war crime.

It will be interesting to compare the fate of Wilders to Jose Maria Sison. Sison operates the Communist Party of the Philippines out of the Netherlands. Whereas Wilders stands accused of saying something, Sison had recently been accused of using the country which granted him asylum to plot hundreds of murders. The Wikipedia entry lists the crimes of which Sison has been accused. They included:

• ” orchestrating the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing during the Liberal Party Convention to force Marcos to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and sign Proclamation Number 1081 initiating the advent of Martial Law in the Philippines. This accusation comes from former CPP members such as Víctor Corpuz, Alex Magno and others.”
• initiating “the Second Great Rectification movement, a ‘cultural revolution’ which sought to reestablish the Party’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist(MLM) political line, which the revisionist factions would later turn into a bloody internal purge of fellow comrades in the CPP/NPA”
• orchestrating the show trials of his various opponents

Sison was released by the Dutch court which believed the prosecution failed to provide enough evidence to prove he was directly linked to the murders in question. The relatives of Communist Party purge victims, many of them former Communists or Leftists themselves, have continued to press the Dutch authorities to continue the investigation. However, Sison has considerable political backing and has been defended by Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General. The Left knows how to take care of its own, even when most of the victims are leftists themselves. He remains at large even though “Since August 2002, he has been classified as a ‘person supporting terrorism’ by the U.S. and the European Union.” Since then, however The European Union’s second highest court ruled to delist and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets.”

The War on Terror is over. It’s payback time for those who ever thought it should have begun. Just today:

Family members of people killed on September 11, 2001, and in other terror attacks say they are outraged by President Obama’s draft order calling for the suspension of war crimes trials of prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.

“To me it’s beyond comprehension that they would take the side of the terrorists,” said Peter Gadiel, whose son, James, was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. “Many of these people have been released and been right back killing, right back at their terrorist work again.”

Obama’s request on the first full day of his presidency came as a draft order was being prepared ordering the closing of the Guantanamo prison within a year. A judge responded by halting the case against a Canadian detainee accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, issuing a 120-day continuance in the case.

Maybe Sison will soon have new neighbors. “The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, last week called for his own country, Austria, and other European countries to take in Guantánamo detainees as refugees.”

The Left knows how to pluck out the thorns in its side. The Sison saga provides a glimpse into how the hard left enforces consensus and how it defends those who impose consensus. Geert Wilders basic problem is that he is spitting in the face of the professed consensus of “progressives”. And like all other “deniers”,  Wilders will pay.

You don’t need to agree with Wilders or like him to ask yourself: ‘if they can do this to Wilders, can they do this to me? Am I safe?’

Maybe we were never safe; and maybe the best thing about the Wilders case is how it destroys the complacent assumption that fairness is automatic. The struggle to keep justice untainted by politics is never-ending. The Duke Lacrosse case should remind us that justice can served; but that it requires effort. Freedom is real, but it has a price. Sison’s men once had a nemesis called James Rowe.

By February 1989, Colonel Rowe had acquired intelligence information which indicated that the communists were planning a major terrorist act. He warned Washington that a high-profile figure was about to be hit and that he himself was second or third on the assassination list. At around 7:00 in the morning of April 21, 1989, as he was being driven to work at the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group headquarters in an unarmored limousine, Colonel Rowe’s vehicle was hit by gunfire from a .45 caliber pistol and an M16 rifle near the corner of Tomas Morato Street and Timog Avenue in Quezon City. Twenty-one shots hit the vehicle; one round entered through a slightly open window and struck Colonel Rowe in the head, killing him instantly. Rowe’s driver, Joaquin Vinuya, was wounded. The New People’s Army claimed responsibility for his assassination. Two Filipinos were convicted for Rowe’s assassination—Juanito T. Itaas as principal and Donato B. Continente as an accomplice. They were however, released under a government amnesty program in 1995. He was buried May 2, 1989 in Section 48 of Arlington National Cemetery.

This is the real pay to play.

Those who want to sign a petition of support for Wilders may do so here. Contributions to his defense fund can be made via this link, but the blurb is in Dutch.