The problem in Holland and Belgium is not just that many of these immigrants depend on welfare, they also tend to visit doctors and hospitals much more frequenly than native Dutch. Many Moroccan and Turkish men marry their niece, so inter-family marriages and even inbreeding abound which does have an adverse effect on the health of children. A lot of Moroccan men and women suffer from diabetes. Schizofrenia and the Down Syndrom also occur more frequently than is the case with native Dutch.
Ethnic crime in the Netherlands A relatively high number of Turkish and especially Moroccan immigrants are involved in crime – both in the Netherlands and Belgium. This has been going on for years now, as has clearly been shown in detailed studies conducted by criminologists such as Frank Bovenkerk, Cyrille Fijnaut, Gerben Bruinsma and Marion van San. A Dutch Parliamentary Investigation Committee concluded in 1995/96 that "there is a disturbingly high level of direct or indirect involvement in organized crime from the country of origin by Surinamese, Moroccan and Turkish communities in the Netherlands." And a 1998 Dutch criminological study claims: "The police concluded that at least one member of all the Moroccan families in the Gooi (a rich part of the country located southeast of Amsterdam, V.) was either directly active in the hashish business or indirectly profiting from it."
Things have not improved since. A recent study on Dutch Moroccans by NRC Handelsblad reporter Paul Andersson Toussaint even claims that 70 percent of the Moroccan youths in Amsterdam have a police record. He quotes reliable sources who claim that it is the Moroccan parents who are largely to blame for this. They invariably instruct their children to look down on native Dutch. These Moroccan kids now behave like little street gang bosses harassing young Dutch women, robbing elderly ladies or stealing scooter-mobiles. The overburdened police are often incapable of really tackling this problem, partly because many victims are scared and intimidated. Consequently, they fail to report these crimes to the police. These youths – usually males – simply terrorize the streets. If someone does report them to the police they quickly deny everything, claiming they are victims of "racism." "Is is rarely mentioned, but there are a lot of criminal Moroccan fathers here," Mourad Taimounti told Andersson Toussaint. Taimounti, one the many good Dutch Moroccans, is involved a local initiative to stop harassment by Moroccan youths. For some reason, he is not afraid of being accused of racism.
Turkish and Turkish Kurdish men are involved in quite a lot of criminal liquidations (gangland killings), honor crimes, drug crimes and extortions. Two of them – Senol Ayhan Tuna and Ozan Kuteybin Turfanda – were on trial during the spectacular Holleeder Trial in Amsterdam (2007/2008). Turkish crime is not new. It is more than ten years ago that Frank Bovenkerk en Yücel Yesilgöz, two leading Dutch criminologists, published a book on the Turkish mafia. Dutch politicians tended to ignore the huge problem of ethnic crime in the big cities. Bovenkerk en Yesilgöz write that Amsterdam mayor Ed van Thijn (Labor Party) simply vetoed a decision to deal effectively with Turkish drug crime and the many drug related killings. He did not want the police to conduct "razzias" against a major ethnic community in Amsterdam, the mayor lamely said. He naively assumed it was possible to solve the problem of crime by just drinking coffee with these Turkish criminals. Fear of being accused of "racism" has always been a major obstacle to deal effectively with serious organized crime within ethnic communities. (Especially liberal politicians are falling for this trap, and not just in Holland or Belgium.)
Concluding comments
Certainly not all Moroccan immigrants in Belgium and Holland are involved in crime or terrorism, of course. Two Dutch journalists, Janny Groen and Annieke Kranenberg, recently published the book "Opstand der gematigden" ("Revolt of the moderates"). They show that there are many moderate Muslims (Moroccans, Turks and others) in the Netherlands who do not agree with radical viewpoints. The term "revolt" is slighty exaggerated, though, because too many moderate Muslims in Holland still do not protest loudly enough but prefer to keep silent. There is also the issue of crime. Unfortunately, this issue cannot simply be solved by vocal condemnations of these practices alone. Much more is needed and expected from the Muslim community, notably from the Dutch Moroccans. Many Moroccan criminal youngsters rarely visit mosques, others join some kind of jihadist network. They do not listen to the voice of the moderates anymore but consider them traitors.
Talking about moderates, when I was in Algeria and Morocco I saw more Western dressed women than in some parts of Amsterdam and Brussels. I had a tv interview with "Miss Algeria" in Algiers in 1998 and she was wearing jeans. She knew, of course, that the terrorists and the fanatics were targeting her, yet she showed the courage to ignore them. Forcing too many women to look like ghosts or traditional Catholic nuns is an important issue that the moderates should not fail to address either. This – Holland and Belgium – is not a traditional Moroccan or Turkish society, nor should it ever become one.
Emerson Vermaat is a Dutch investigative reporter specializing in crime and terrorism. Website: emersonvermaat.com.
Sources: Arie van der Zwan, Waar blijft de ombuiging in het immigratiebeleid?, in: Socialisme en Democratie, 2002, number 4, p. 43.
Elsevier, August 1, 2009, p. 14-17 ("Tweehonderd miljard"). "De niet-westerse immigratie heeft tot en met dit jaar aldus berekend een negatief saldo van 216,4 miljard euro opgeleverd."
Joost Niemöller, Waarom vreest de politiek migratiecijfers? In: de Volkskrant (Netherlands), August 1, 2009, p. 12. "Nooit kwamen er zoveel immigranten naar Nederland als vorig jaar, namelijk 140.000." The number of immigrants entering the Netherlands last year was 140,000. Quite a lot came from Africa, by the way.
Enquêtecommissie Opsporingsmethoden, Inzake Opsporing (The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 1996), p. 39-41 ("...enkele tientallen procenten van de volwassen Turkse mannen in Amsterdam..."), p. 423 ("...onrustbarend groot...").
Cyrille Fijnaut, Frank Bovenkerk, Gerben Bruinsma and Henk van de Bunt, Organised Crime in the Netherlands (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998), p. 84-87, 136. Page 87: Moroccan drug crime in "the Gooi."
Marion van San and Arjen Leerkes, Criminaliteit en criminalisering. Allochtone jongeren in België (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001), p. 49 ("Significante oververtegenwoordiging van Marokkaanse jongeren doet zich voor voor alle onderzochte delicttypen"), p. 102-115 130-143.
Marion van San, Van politiek correcte geesten mag criminaliteit onder allochtonen niet onderzocht worden, in: De Morgen (Belgium), December 20, 2001, p. 15. Paul Andersson Toussaint, Staatssecretaris of seriecrimineel. Het smalle pad van de Marokkaan (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker Publishers, 2009), p. 33, 39, 40, 47-49, 66, 67.
Paul Andersson Toussaint, Er zijn niet slechts een paar criminele Marokkanen, in: NRC Handelsblad (Netherlands), May 23, 2009, p. 4, 5 (Saturday supplement "Opinie en debat"). Quote from Mourad Taimounti.
Landelijk Parket, Requisitoir van het Openbaar Ministerie in de stafzaken tegen Maruf Mrzic, Willem Frederik Holleeder, and others part I and II (November 2007). The author partly followed this trial.
Frank Bovenkerk and Yücel Yesilgöz, De mafia van Turkije (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1998, p. 301, 302. Amsterdam mayor Ed van Thijn was drinking coffee with Turkish criminals.
Frank Bovenkerk, Misdaadprofielen (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2001), p. 122-159 ("the multicultural underworld").
De Standaard (Belgium), August 2, 2009, p. 13 ("Een tevreden gevangene wil niet ontsnappen"). "Buitenlanders maken 44 procent van de totale gevangenispopulatie uit."
Various Belgian media reports 23 July-11 August 2009 (Sekkaki gang).
De Morgen (Belgium), August 5, 2009, p. 3 ("Gemaskerde handlangers zwaaien met wapens in volle zittingszaal").
De Standaard, August 5, 2009, p. 1-7 ("Niet meer uit te leggen"). "Daarbij hieven ze het kind in de lucht en zetten een wapen tegen het hoofd."
El País, August 3, 2009, p. 6 ("Un americano en Al Qaeda"). Bryan Neal Viñas' mother is from Argentina, his father is from Peru. His parents are divorced. Originally a Roman Catholic, he converted to Islam in 2004 and was later recruited by Al-Qaeda. He traveled to Pakistan in September 2007.
De Morgen, July 2009, p. 4 ("Amerikaanse Al Qaedastrijder trainde met Belgische rekruten"). Viñas, Garsallaoui (also spelled: Garsalloui) and Malika El Aroud. De Standaard (online), April 17, 2009 ("Extremisten trainden in Afghanistan"). Garsalaoui recruited jihadists in Belgium.
Author's files on terrorist networks in Belgium.
De Standaard, July 29, 2009, p. 4, 5 ("Abdelkader Belliraj levenslang de cel in").
De Morgen, July 29, 2009, p. 4 ("Abdelkader Belliraj krijgt levenslang in Marokko").
General Intelligence and Security Service, Annual Report 2008 (The Hague: AIVD, 2009), p. 28, 29.
Janny Groen and Annieke Kranenberg, Opstand der gematigden. De groeiende weerbaarheid van Nederlandse moslims (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2009).
©2009 Emerson Vermaat. All rights reserved.
I honestly would never have guessed that meaning at all. Have they nowhere to go? What kind of crime are we talking here?
