Netherlands: Racist attacks
01 May 1992
On March 24, Dutch parliament had an 6-hour debate on the Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD) which included a discussion on the nature of recent racist attacks. Most MPs criticized the recent BVD report, especially in the stress it laid on the threat of Muslim fundamentalism while virtually ignoring racist violence. The minister of the interior Mrs Dales however defended the apparent imbalance by claiming that BVD investigations had shown that no extreme right party or organization was involved in the recent wave of attacks against the houses and businesses of immigrants. The perpetrators according to Mrs. Dales were now thought to be fringe group youths, who used varying names and primitive devices in their attacks.
In a reaction to this, the Hague police publicly dissociated itself from this analysis. "The attacks in our town do show a pattern of connections. We are investigating in right-wing circles because of the choice of the objects and the way in which the attacks are claimed or announced. The minister's statements are completely on her account" a police spokesman said
The BVD gathers information on asylum seekers from the Aliens Department and is routinely provided with the names and other basic data of certain agreed categories of refugees seeking asylum. The BVD order the complete files on the persons they are interested in which occurred in some 130 cases in the last eight months. This resulted in about twenty BVD attempts to seek further information or collaboration from asylum seekers themselves. Mrs. Dales stressed that information on vulnerable individuals such as Iraqi or Kurdish refugees would never be provided to the security services of their home countries, but when for instance a member of the Hezbollah seeks refuge here, we have to ask for information from Israeli or U.S intelligence.