STRASBOURG (AFP)--- Anti-Semitic insults and expressions had "tended
to become a feature of everyday life in Holland, a pan-European anti-racism commission said in a report released Tuesday.
According to the Strasbourg-based European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), these insults “reflect in part a similar trend in Holocaust denial, notably among the younger generations."
The report said that the word "Jew" is increasingly used as an insult
and different aspects of the Holocaust are reportedly questioned in everyday
situations, including in schools.
The ECRI studies and makes recommendations on the problems of racism and
intolerance in the 47 states of the Council of Europe.
The report mentioned that Islamophobia is gaining ground in Holland, with Muslim minorities facing rising violence and discrimination, a pan-European anti-racism commission said in a report released Tuesday.
ECRI found Islamophobia in the country to have "increased dramatically" since 2000, reporting that Muslims were "disproportionately targeted" by security policies and faced racist violence and discrimination.
Tensions have been fuelled by national and international events, such as
the September 11 2001 attacks in the United States and the murder of outspoken
columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim in 2004, the report
said.
"The tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other
issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic
deterioration," it said, warning of a "worrying polarisation between majority
and minority communities."
It found that the country's Muslims -- a community of one million people,
or six percent of the population -- had faced "stereotyping, stigmatising",
"outright racist political discourse" and "biased media portrayal."
The Moroccan and Turkish communities were especially hard hit, it said.
Community tensions had also led to a rise in anti-Semitism, the report
found.
The Dutch government, in an annex to the report, replied that it had
adopted anti-racism legislation, opened anti-discrimination offices around the
country and taken steps to fight discrimination in the job market.
But a Dutch minister said Friday the government wants schools, public bodies and public transport companies to forbid clothing that covers the face -- although it would not explicitly ban the Islamic burqa.
European Union ministers and Dutch Muslim groups have also expressed
serious concern about plans by extreme-right-right Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders to make a potentially inflammatory film about the Koran.
Wilders, who has been under round-the-clock protection since the filmmaker
Van Gogh was murdered for making a film critical of Islam in 2004, said this
weekend his film would be aired in March.