IMMIGRATION LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Immigration Law and Human Rights



Immigration Law and Human Rights

Referring to the increased population of Muslims in the Netherlands, Wilders has said: Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!

Later, Wilders suggested that Muslims should 'tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands' because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would 'in these days be hunted down as a terrorist'. These statements caused strong reactions in Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.

On 8 August 2007, Wilders opined in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran, which he called a fascist book, should be outlawed in the Netherlands, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. He stated that: The book incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our legal order.

On 15 August 2007, a representative of the Prosecutors' Office in Amsterdam declared that dozens of reports against Wilders had been filed, and that they were all being considered. Due to this position on Islam, the rapper Appa said he did not care if Wilders would be shot in the head. Wilders then charged him with threatening with death. The rapper Appa denied actual threatening, repeating that he simply wouldn't care (if it happened), and also accusing Wilders of having the same attitude towards Muslims.

ARTICLE 19 considers that the decision of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (the Secretary of State) to ban Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, from travelling to the UK on the basis that his statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK is in contravention with international and European human rights law on freedom of expression and should be reversed.

In a letter to Mr Wilders dated 10 February 2009, the UK Border Agency on behalf of the Secretary of State states that his presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society. Mr Wilders, who will face prosecution in the Netherlands for inciting hatred following the decision of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal last month, was due to attend a screening of his controversial film Fitna in the House of Lords.

ARTICLE 19 argues that the decision of the Secretary of State was unjustified and should be reversed for the following reasons: First, in our opinion, the restriction on Mr Wilders' entry does not meet standards contained in international and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) law on permissible restrictions to freedom of expression. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that restrictions on freedom of expression on national security grounds can only ...