A/HRC/43/48/Add.1 a decrease from 439 in 2015) and human rights monitors in the country, 74 including vandalism and harassment. Although research demonstrates that Muslims rarely report incidents of discrimination, 75 official statistics submitted to the Special Rapporteur show that 66 per cent (202) of these incidents in 2018 and 31 per cent (190) in 2017 were motivated by anti-Muslim attitudes. 60. The Special Rapporteur heard reports of Muslims being portrayed as terrorists in the media and that such portrayals were generating mistrust among these communities. Many claimed to believe, for example, that their communities are constantly under surveillance and prone to frequent harassment. Muslims’ beliefs and practices have received disproportionate public attention in recent decades, constituting a central theme for the Party for Freedom, which holds 13.3 per cent of lower house seats and whose leader deems Islam “the biggest problem in the Netherlands”. 76 In the run-up to the 2017 elections, he declared, “if we don’t do something right now, the Netherlands will soon be an Islamic country”, a statement accompanied by a provocative call for a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest and calls from fellow Party for Freedom politicians for all mosques to be closed. 77 Mr. Wilders was found guilty of insult and incitement to discrimination on racial grounds for his comment that he would “take care” of having “fewer Moroccans in the country”. He was acquitted of incitement to hatred and the Court imposed no punishment. Both Mr. Wilders and the Public Prosecutor appealed the judgment. 78 Forum for Democracy, a new party positioning itself as a moderate version of the Party for Freedom, became the largest party in the 2019 provincial elections. The parliamentary group leader for Forum for Democracy in the Senate, Paul Cliteur, has critiqued the architecture of mosques as “intentionally provocative” and highlighted difficulties in guaranteeing safety for citizens critical of Islam in his book Theoterrorism v. Freedom of Speech. 79 Members of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West political movement have periodically staged protests outside mosques, some of which have involved pork barbecues. 61. The growth of anti-Muslim sentiment in Dutch society was frequently linked by interviewees to the rise in terror incidents taking place across Europe and North America, including the murder in 2004 of film-maker Theo van Gogh by Dutch Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, allegedly for his film, Submission. Research has indicated that in more than 600,000 Dutch news items in 2016 and 2017, the adjectives most used to describe Muslims were “radical”, “extremist” and “terrorist”.80 62. A 2017 survey found that Dutch Muslims’ feelings of attachment to the country were the second lowest and that their trust in the police was the lowest in the 15 European Union countries surveyed.81 Nearly two thirds of teachers surveyed in another study said that they had witnessed incidents they regarded as discriminatory against Muslims in the classroom and 61 per cent reported that they had witnessed harassment of or hostile comments towards Muslims.82 63. Moreover, Dutch dual nationals reported that their freedom of movement was often limited by fears that travel to regions deemed to be security threats under the Acts on nationality and on temporary administrative counter-terrorism would lead to revocation of their Dutch citizenship. Muslim communities also raised concerns about the selectivity of a Government programme requiring compulsory language training and integration courses for foreign imams, which is not always required for other religious communities. 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 16 Meldpunt Internet Discriminatie received 67 reports of anti-Muslim online incidents (94 per cent of religious cases) in 2018 and 185 in 2016 (98 per cent), a significant decrease on the 472 reports received in 2015. See www.spior.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Rapport-Islamofobie-in-Zicht.pdf. Damhuis, “The biggest problem in the Netherlands”. See www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/plenaire_verslagen/kamer_in_het_kort/debat-over-een-doorturkije-gedicteerde-jihadpreek. See www.equalitylaw.eu/downloads/3968-the-netherlands-wilders-found-guilty-of-insulting-a-groupand-incitement-to-discrimination-on-grounds-of-race-pdf-138-kb. Damhuis, “The biggest problem in the Netherlands”. European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, “ECRI report on the Netherlands”. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey. Stremmelaar and Lucassen, Antisemitism and Immigration in Western Europe Today.

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