PVV

PVV leader Geert Wilders decided to cancel a planned visit to an election event in the Terneuzen town hall on Wednesday after Terneuzen mayor Jan Lonink said that he was not pleased by the visit.

Geert Wilders and the PVV sparked outrage and anger from politicians and various organizations with an anti-Islam campaign video broadcast on NPO on Thursday. A number of politicians and organizations announced that they will be pressing charges of incitement to hatred and violence against the PVV leader as well as the broadcaster. 

Chief Public Prosecutor Bart Nieuwenhuizen calls on politicians to stop pressing charges against one another in order to get attention. These "fake, tampering and show declarations" cost the judiciary a lot of time, he wrote in his column on Omroep West.

The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, wants to get rid of the European Commission's task force against spreading fake news, the so-called EUvsDisinfo. This follows the task force naming a number of Dutch news services as spreaders of fake news, Het Parool reports.

The Dutch news services involved are NPO Radio 1, the Gelderlander, GeenStijl and The Post Online. According to the task force, pro-Russian propaganda gained the upper hand in a few reports from these organizations.

Vliegramp MH17, the foundation that represents the relatives of people who died in the MH17 disaster, is furious at PVV leader Geert Wilders for wearing a Russian-Dutch friendship pin on his suit during a visit to Duma in Russia on Tuesday. The next of kin want an apology from Wilders, the foundation said in a tweet.

Wilders tweeted a picture of the pin. "I proudly wear it here. A Russian-Dutch friendship pin", the PVV leader said. 

The Public Prosecutor dropped the charges PVV leader Geert Wilders pressed against Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Prosecutor announced on Thursday. Wilders accused Rutte of discriminating against the Dutch people by giving asylum seekers, among others, more benefits than the Dutch.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte "underestimated" the impact Halbe Zijlstra's lie about being at a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin would have, he said in a parliamentary debate following the Foreign Affairs Minister's resignation on Tuesday. He understands Zijlstra's decision to step down, Rutte added, RTL Nieuws reports.

Minister Halbe Zijlstra of Foreign Affairs admitted that he lied about meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2006. While speaking at a VVD conference in 2016, Zijlstra said that he heard Putin speaking about 'Great Russia' in 2006. Now he says that he wasn't there himself, but an anonymous source. He wanted to protect the identity of his source by saying he was there himself, he told the Volkskrant.

Dutch broadcaster NOS recently decided to stop using the Dutch word "blank" to describe white or Caucasian people, instead opting to call them "wit" or white in English. This decision resulted in an uproar on social media, and even parliamentary questions posed by right-wing populist party PVV.

Colloquially, the word “blanke” is an adjective that goes beyond “white” to give a connotation of “purity” or “untainted”.

The Mauritshuis museum decided to remove a bust of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, governor of the Dutch colony in Brasil from 1637 to 1644, from the museums foyer. The decision stemmed from "the growing public debate about we deal with slavery in the Netherlands (and in museums)", the Mauritshuis explained, according to the Volkskrant. The removal of the bust sparked a storm of outrage and criticism from people feeling that the Netherlands' history is being destroyed.

New United States ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra apologized for falsely claiming in 2015 that politicians were set on fire in the Netherlands by Islamic fundamentalists and that there are no-go zones in the country in an interview with the Telegraaf on Saturday. Dutch parliamentarians find it good that he finally retracted these false statements. "Better late than never", PvdA MP Lilianne Ploumen said to the Telegraaf.