Hawzah News Agency- The complaint, confirmed by an attorney for the groups after reporting by Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, centers on a tweet posted last week by the leader of the Party for Freedom, or PVV. The image in the tweet showed a face split into two halves: one half featured a blonde woman with blue eyes and a friendly expression labeled “PVV”; the other half showed a woman wearing a headscarf with a stern, angry expression labeled “PvdA''. Wilders captioned the image: “The choice is yours on Oct. 29” — referring to the upcoming Tweede Kamer elections.
“This number of reports is a clear signal from society'', a spokesperson for discriminatie.nl said last week, calling the post “polarizing, stigmatizing, and discriminatory''. The spokesperson told RTL that many complainants believed the post deliberately portrayed Muslims in a negative light, and that words like “tasteless'', “hateful'', and “racist” appeared frequently in the reports.
Attorneys Adem Çatbaş and Haroon Raza filed the current complaint on behalf of K9, a coalition of nine regional mosque federations, along with Collectief Jonge Moslims, Muslim Rights Watch, S.P.E.A.K, Meldpunt Islamofobie and the Federatie Islamitische Organisaties. The groups said in their filing that they represent the majority of Muslims in the Netherlands.
The groups pointed to other statements Wilders made on social media in the days after the tweet, including one declaring that Islam does not belong in the Netherlands, another calling for the protection of “our own people'', and a statement saying “our daughters must be able to walk safely in the street''. “The association between the criminal foreigner and the aggressive Muslim woman arises with this tweet'', the complaint said.
Wilders has faced legal action over group insult before.
Source: NL TIMES
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