polder pundit

Virtual bullet

A Dutch cartoonist who publishes his drawings under the nickname “Gregorius Nekschot” has been arrested early Tuesday morning by a team of 10 policemen. The police also confiscated his computer, his mobile phone and other material from his home. This was announced by Dutch comedian Hans Teeuwen in a late-night talk show yesterday evening. Nekschot’s lawyer and the office of the Dutch DA have confirmed this information.

Allegedly, one of the policemen told Nekschot that “this would mean the end of his anonymity.”

“Nekschot” (literally meaning “bullet shot in the neck”) is a marginally known cartoonist specialized in what some call questionable art, sometimes but far from exclusively aimed at islam. From the sketchy information available today, his arrest followed a complaint filed against him, probably in 2005, by a Dutch convert to islam who calls himself “Abdul-Jabbar van der Ven” (born as Jilles Lambertus Henricus van der Ven, a Dutchman from a catholic family). Subject of the complaint was a cartoon by Nekschot that Van der Ven considered insulting. 

More information should be available today and in the days to come, but what is known now is amazing and scary. Maybe new facts will answer some of the immediate questions that arise:

1. Is it normal in the Netherlands to be arrested without a court order?

A thief or criminal who is caught red-handed by the police can be arrested without court order, of course. A majority of Dutchmen actually wishes for this to happen more often. But a complaint filed three years ago (if 2005 is the exact year, this hasn’t been officially confirmed yet) hardly suggests the urgency or necessity of a police arrest. Normal procedure would be to send a court order, a convocation to appear, not ten policemen.

It seems that the DA (the Dutch “OM” or “public ministry” is not the exact equivalent of the American DA, but it does mean the public prosecution, depending from the Ministry of Interior, so in this context “DA” should do) justifies the arrest by arguing that it broadened the scope of its investigation: instead of examining the single complaint by Van der Ven, it is investigating if Nekschot “made a profession out of insulting people”, which is a more serious charge and allows for stronger police measures.

So be it. But even so, there is a huge disproportionality between the charges and a police raid at dawn. Raiding Mohammed Bouyeri’s home the morning he went out to shoot, stab and kill Theo van Gogh would have seemed proportional and justified. Unfortunately it didn’t happen. But raiding the home of a cartoonist, whose drawings appear in newspapers, in books and on internet, which should constitute enough evidence for the police to build a case if there is any, that seems very difficult to justify. Except in countries where the police doesn’t need justification.

Not mentioning the bitter fact that it is becoming more and more difficult for citizens to get the police to intervene in simple cases like car accidents or even burglary: try to call the police, they will rarely if ever show up.

How they were able to mobilize ten (10!) policemen is amazing in a country where you cannot count on even one (1!) to intervene if you get robbed.

2. Is it normal in the Netherlands to spend a day and a half in jail for publishing “hate cartoons”?

As we have seen above, there has been no court decision yet, so Nekschot’s incarceration happened in the context of the DA’s investigation to determine if he makes a living out of inciting hatred. How serious are those charges? Nekschot’s oeuvre is public so everybody can form an opinion for himself. It is of course up to Justice to decide if these drawings are insulting or if they fall under the freedom of expression, if the DA decides to prosecute.

But there are two points that have to be considered here:

Firstly, Nekschot has been publishing his cartoons for years, on his website http://www.gregoriusnekschot.nl and elsewhere. If the DA justifies the raid and Nekschot’s arrest by saying that they went beyond Van der Ven’s single complaint, and wanted to investigate if Nekschot has a history of insulting and incites hatred on a professional basis, again, the material is publicly accessible and has been so for years. What is the added value of (1) raiding his home and (2) holding and interrogating him for 36 hours? What other material, not printed in books and newspapers and published on internet did the DA and the police hope to discover? And why would they need it? And how could unpublished material (on his hard disk for instance) constitute proof anyway, unless you want to introduce the concept of “thought crime”?

Secondly, talking about inciting hatred: during the last decade there has been an increasing number of cases where islamic leaders in the Netherlands have been –literally– preaching hatred. Hatred against christians, hatred against “infidels”, hatred against apostates. More and more cases have been documented, there are clips on youtube.com, and recently a school kids visiting a mosque (“multicultural awareness programme”) were called “dogs” by the local imam.

If for some questionable reason the DA deems it the right thing to do to send in a police squad, to do a house search and to arrest a cartoonist, then it should apply the same zeal against the minority (hopefully) of islamic leaders who spout their venom on a regular basis, over a long period of time and on a professional basis.

3. Is Nekschot really insulting and inciting hatred?

As said before, this is up to Justice to settle, but everybody is entitled to his or her opinion. Personally we think most of Nekschot’s drawings (which we only discovered today) are rather tasteless, although some made us smile (wryly). In other words, we will not buy the book and we won’t subscribe to his newsletter. Period, that’s it. We certainly do not feel more negative or less positive about certain ethnic or religious minorities. Seeing a cartoon where Mohammed sodomizes Anne Frank makes us wish we hadn’t, but it doesn’t change our feelings about either. The only thing it incites us to do is, again, to abstain from buying Nekschot’s books. Maybe it incites others to buy it, good for them.

As for the “insulting” part, well, it’s hard to pretend Nekschot’s drawings are uncontroversial innocent works of art. It is imaginable that some people feel indeed insulted by some of the cartoons. In which case they would be wise not to look at them. Just as reactionary (or simply long-toed) christians did not watch “Life of Brian” or “The Last Temptation of Christ”. All these artworks can be considered insulting. But criminally insulting? The Western battle for freedom of expression is also the battle for the freedom of expression of ideas we do not like, including ideas we feel insulted by.

Subsidiary question: Are the imams who call non-muslim children “dogs”, who wish a tongue cancer onto Ayaan Hirsi Ali and all other kind of documented niceties, are these people insulting and inciting hatred? We cannot measure with two standards. The cases of both Nekschot and islamic extremists should be examined with the same zeal and integrity, and depending on the findings, they should be prosecuted or not, and then tried (or not) with identical impartiality.

If that should result in Nekschot’s conviction and the imams’ exculpation, so be it. Whether people would personally agree or not is less important than the public perception of impartial and equal application of the law.

Right now, the public perception in Holland is rather the contrary: there is a growing irritation at the behaviour of certain muslims and Islamic leaders, and the perceived inaction of the government and the administration in dealing with it. At the same time, by acting excessively over a series of drawings, the same administration is chasing voters in the arms of the two recently founded Dutch populist parties.

4. Political agenda?

It is always tempting to think of hidden political agendas, and before you know it you are talking about conspiracy theories. As long as there is no more detailed information available, it would seem wise to stay prudent.

At the same time it is true that some high-profile members and cabinet ministers of Holland’s biggest political party, the CDA (christian centre), have been advocating censorship of “Fitna”, a movie critical of islam, launched by Geert Wilders (founder of one of those populist parties). Has this antidemocratic attitude seeped down to lower levels? Were the police and the DA trying to please their political masters?

Finally, the gravest question of all:

5. Anonymity?

As stated before, Gregorius Nekschot is a nickname. The artist has carefully hidden his real identity because he didn’t want to end up like Theo van Gogh, to put it bluntly. Although his drawings seem to mocking christians too, as well as jews, whites, blacks, politicians, ideologies, you name it, it appears that most of the members these groups will just shrug at those cartoons. Whereas criticizing islam somehow seems to get you into all kind of trouble. There are ten, maybe twenty people under permanent protection in the Netherlands (the security services keep the actual number secret), none of them because they mocked the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nekschot has no protection; he sought his safety in (relative) anonymity.

Yesterday evening Teeuwen, who had a brief telephone conversation with Nekschot after the release of the latter, stated on TV that one of the policemen of the arrest team told Nekschot: “This means the end of your anonymity.”

Teeuwen called this “rather intimidating”, but it is more than that. It means that the police (and possibly the DA) were perfectly aware that Nekschot’s arrest would mean that his real identity becomes public (and it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that). But what the policeman was really saying is: “this means the end of your safety.” That’s not intimidation; it’s an implicit threat.

 

A virtual bullet in the neck for Nekschot.