2023-08-18 20:36:05
Updated on 08/18/23 at 10:36 p.m.
A copy of the Koran was trampled and torn in the Netherlands on Friday during a far-right demonstration outside the Turkish embassy in The Hague, angering dozens of counter-protesters. The Dutch authorities had condemned this action beforehand, while ensuring that they did not have the legal means to prohibit it.
The police had blocked the street access to the center of The Hague, where the Embassy of Türkiye, to around fifty counter-demonstrators, who fell back on the other side of the canal alongside the representation of Ankara in the Netherlands. When Wagensveld tore up the pages, some of these counter-protesters threw stones in his direction. Leaving Wagensveld, the counter-demonstrators chanted “Allah Akbar” and tried to catch up with him, before being stopped by about twenty policemen armed with sticks and shields.
“Primitive and pathetic”
The Minister of Justice, Dilan Yezilgöz, quoted Friday morning by the Dutch press agency ANP, had described as “quite primitive and pathetic” the act of destroying or burning a book. But “it is allowed in our country, you have this freedom”, she however added. According to Yezilgöz, a possible terrorist attack in retaliation for the destruction of the Koran is a threat that must be taken into account.
At the end of January, Wagensveld was filmed leading the same type of demonstration, in front of the Dutch Parliament. At the end of July, two men set fire to a copy of the Koran in front of the Parliament in Stockholm. Similar actions also took place this year at the Denmark. These incidents have caused condemnation and unrest in several Muslim countries. In response, Sweden decided on Thursday to raise its level of terrorist alert.
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