DAILY TIMES:
* Reports Muslims being ‘disproportionately targeted’ by security policiesSTRASBOURG: Islamophobia is gaining ground in the Netherlands, with Muslim minorities facing rising violence and discrimination, a pan-European anti-racism commission said in a report released on Tuesday.
* ‘Jew’ being used as an insult
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found Islamophobia in the country to have “increased dramatically” since 2000, reporting that Muslims were “disproportionately targeted” by security policies and were facing racist violence and discrimination.
The ECRI studies and makes recommendations on the problems of racism and intolerance in the 47 states of the Council of Europe.
Tensions have been fuelled by national and international events, such as 9/11 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… >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
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