jeugdjournaal - Dutch tolerance and contrasts

[gusl]

Yesterday I saw a bit of the jeugdjournaal, a sort of "news for kids".

One section showed a very boyish ~11yo girl, who does her hair and dress like a boy, and is very convincing as one. People always tell her to go to the boys' bathroom. Remarkably, her classmates think that she's ok. She doesn't get bullied at all, and has a "normal" social life.

I thought to myself "Oh, Holland, what a civilized place..."

-

Next scene: you see a ~13 year old schoolgirl, Aliya from Azerbaijan, from a family of refugees, and who speaks perfect Dutch. Unfortunately, her whole family is scheduled to be deported from the Netherlands in the middle of the schoolyear. Her friends were upset at the news, so they started collecting signatures to beg for the right to *at least* let her finish the schoolyear.

The show crew interviews minister Rita Verdonk, asking if she would accept the plea: "Aliya's classmates are very upset. Shouldn't she be allowed to at least finish the school-year? What would you tell her classmates?"
Verdonk - "I would explain to her classmates that this country has laws, and that unfortunately Aliya has to leave."

I thought to myself "fucked up!"
How can the same country be so inhumane when it comes to immigrants and refugees?

Comments

[dkmnow.livejournal.com]

"So long as laws are absolute, there can be no justice." --Star Trek: TNG

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

"Raging Rita" Verdonk:
And then I f*cked her
I'm hosting that freaking site, hey it's the Netherlands ;-P

[ankie.livejournal.com]

The country isn't, the minister is. We're stuck with a government that persists on staying on, even though we have had a few crises worthy of getting re-elections.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Well, there are enough people supporting her. It is a democracy, right?

[ankie.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I'm not sure how it all happened. The PvdA got more votes than VVD last elections, and still they ended up in the kabinet, with D66 who always said they wouldn't join such a coalition. I felt screwed after the elections, and I still do. Counting down the days....

[jbouwens.livejournal.com]

I disagree with that. Rita Verdonk executes government policy supported by the rest of the cabinet, which is approved by at least a simple majority in the directly elected second chamber.

She may be unqualified and inept (which I happen to think she is), but everything that's wrong and unfair with how "foreigners" are treated in the Netherlands today is not her fault.

Tolerance in the Netherlands towards foreigners is history. Treating a large chunk of the population as garbage is apparently acceptable collateral damage to dealing with whatever number of extremists are out there.

[jozefpronek.livejournal.com]

Your post reflects wonderfully the terrible dualities that grip Europe these days! Of course, not only Europe has that sort of schizophrenic behavior: it is not difficult to find it mostly everywhere. In Holland, it just appears to be more shocking, perhaps because we tend to have higher expectations of that country, than (say) of Portugal. Amsterdam is (still) supposed by many to be the beacon of tolerance and openness, and there is actually a lot of tolerance and openness there that you cannot find so easily in other places.

But that's the myth, and your posts reflect the reality underneath: police stupidity (like everywhere), idiotic bureaucracy at the University, callous people, greed combined with mediocrity at the insurance companies, etc.

My sister lived in Holland a few years ago (in The Hague, not in Amsterdam). I visited her for a few days once, and was struck by the incredible rigidity of some people there (I had a very unpleasant situation with a car rental). I assumed then that The Hague was the dreadful city, but Amsterdam was the nice, open one. There must be some truth in that caricature, but still...

In any case, the dreadful treatment of foreigners is of course not limited to Holland - I would say that a very large (by any measure) subset of Europe is exhibiting these days an extremely intolerant behavior.

In the end, Europe's wealth is strongly based on those millions of illegal immigrants who live in terrible conditions (especially in places like Paris of Barcelona) but are there because the world is such.

Santiago Gamboa has written a very tough and interesting novel on that subject.

Aliya

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for your attention to refugee kids. You are a good person.

Gustavo

[(Anonymous)]

Chapeau, monsieur. Put your hands up for Gustavo.

Re: Gustavo

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

who is this?