Louis Bontes

A proposal by VNL to scrap the ban on group defamation, hate speech and discrimination from the Penal Code was rejected by a majority in Dutch parliament on Thursday. A large majority of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, found the proposal not well thought out as it opens the door to discrimination directed at vulnerable groups such as Jews, Muslims, women, LGBT and disabled people, NU.nl reports.

Parliamentarians Louis Bontes and Joram van Klaveren are concerned about a visit controversial imam Tarik Chadlioui paid to a mosque in Boskoop last week. During his visit to the Arrahman mosque, he spoke to a group of children

Minister Ard van der Steur of Security and Justice faced a fierce debate in parliament on Tuesday on the Brussels bombings, especially from the opposition side. To the irritation of the opposition Van der Steur could not clarify what went wrong with the exchange of information regarding the Brussels bombers, the El Bakraoui brothers. The debate was cut short and will be taken up again next week, when the Justice Minister has more answers.

A verbal protester against plans for an asylum center in Sliedrecht got a visit from the police on Monday, warning him to be careful of what he says on Twitter. Mark Jongeneel was at work when a police officer showed up at his door. "He told me to watch my words if I tweet about plans for an asylum center", he said

Three Dutch parliamentarians appear on a Russian list of people from the European Union that are no longer allowed to enter the country.

The Tweede Kamer, lower house of parliament, will investigate whether it is possible to stop Parliament Members who split off from their own faction from starting a new faction, NU reports. This is due to the dissatisfaction in the Kamer with the possibilities that parliamentarians have to split off and then continue independently or team up with another loner to form a new faction.

A project management official at the Dutch National Cyber Security Center has been suspended after tweeting that the terror group ISIS did not exist, and was instead a Zionist plot to stain the image of Islam. "ISIS has nothing to do with Islam,” Yasmina Haifi wrote. “It is a preconceived plan of Zionists who want to deliberately make Islam look bad."

The Jewish community's lobbying group, CIDI, is critical of PVV-leader Geert Wilders, saying that he is doing what he insisted he never would, to be in the same boat as right wing extremist groups in the run-up to the European Parliamentary elections later this month.

Joram van Klaveren, an ex-MP for the PVV who left at the end of March, did so due to the social pressure that arose after party-leader Geert Wilders' anti-Moroccan speech became too much for him, the Volkskrant reports.

Bontes told the Volkskrant that he has not been voted out of the PVV group in the house anonymously. One of the PVV MPs abstained from voting. 

Geert Wilders told the press on Tuesday morning, right after the voting, that the decision was an anonymous decision. Bontes describes the situation: “After Wilders had spoken, all MPs were given some time to speak. Then the voting took place, although one of the MPs asked for a written voting. That person abstained from the oral voting. However, the 13 voters against me were for me enough proof that I was no longer welcome.”