The Dutch government has held crisis talks over the possible fallout of a planned film by far-right MP Geert Wilders that attacks Islam as an ‘inspiration for murder,’ media reports said Friday. Wilders, the head of the far-right Freedom Party, announced in November that he planned to release a 10-minute film this month that will show that Islam’s holy book, the Koran, ‘is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror’.The reports said the government had compiled a secret document on how best to deal with reactions to the film. The Hague fears a repeat of the Danish cartoon riots when thousands took to the streets in Muslim countries to protest cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that appeared in a Danish newspaper. The protests left some hundred people dead, Danish embassies were attacked and Danish goods were boycotted.
According to the De Volkskrant newspaper and RTL-news, the government has already prepared for a possible evacuation of Dutch embassies and citizens from the Middle East. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Bart Rijs told AFP Friday that there were no special emergency measures for Wilders’ film. ‘We always have scenarios for possible calamities at our embassies, consulates and other Dutch representations abroad. They are regularly updated,’ he said. ‘There is no reason to believe the Dutch government is now implementing an emergency scenario and there is no reason now to evacuate anybody,’ Rijs stressed.
Wilders, whose party holds nine of the 150 seats in parliament, insists he will go ahead with his movie despite the uproar. ‘Now that everybody is already in a state (over the film) I see it as a confirmation that I should go ahead. I would not be worth a button if I were to capitulate now,’ he told the HP/De Tijd magazine.
Wilders is known for his harsh anti-Islam stance and has been under round-the-clock protection since the November 2004 murder of outspoken Dutch columnist Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim. He has received a number of death threats.