Here are a couple of more thoughtful articles on Fortuyn.
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washingtonpost.com
Key Dutch Rightist Is Shot Dead
Anti-Immigrant Stance Was Attracting Support
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 7, 2002; Page A01
PARIS, May 6 -- Pim Fortuyn, a maverick Dutch party leader whose anti-immigrant message won him a formidable political following, was shot dead tonight as he walked to his car outside Amsterdam.
Police arrested a man they said committed the crime, the first murder of a political leader in recent Dutch history. They released few details about the suspect, other than to say he was white, a native Dutchman and refusing to cooperate.
Fortuyn died 15 days after Europe's new racial politics delivered another shock, the second-place showing in French presidential balloting of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. President Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen in a runoff on Sunday, but not before racial issues took top billing on the French political stage.
Fortuyn, 54, rose to prominence on a wave of apprehension that many Europeans feel as immigrants, most of them Muslims from Africa and the Middle East, put down roots in societies that historically have been largely white and Christian. Anti-immigrant parties have recently gained ground in Denmark, Germany and Italy as well.
Campaigning for the Netherlands' scheduled May 15 parliamentary election was suspended tonight, and the Reuters news agency said the Dutch cabinet planned to meet Tuesday to consider whether to postpone the vote.
"In God's name, let's keep our calm," an emotional Prime Minister Wim Kok told his country in a televised address, expressing shock that such a thing could happen in "our peace-loving Netherlands."
Small numbers of Fortuyn supporters clashed with riot police outside the parliament building. Police reported scattered incidents in which young people of North African origin were celebrating the killing.
Fortuyn had recently formed a political party, List Pim Fortuyn. Some analysts predicted that it might win one-sixth of the seats in the coming election -- a good showing in a multi-party system -- and that Fortuyn might become a behind-the-scenes kingmaker in assembling a new government, or even prime minister.
Fortuyn became a leading figure in little more than a year by challenging a Dutch tradition of tolerance that by and large has welcomed immigrants. He gave voice to widespread fears that the country of 16 million was being overrun by the newcomers.
Ethnic minorities now make up more than 10 percent of the total population, and more than a third in the largest cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Most of the immigrants are from North Africa and Turkey.
Fortuyn opposed multiculturalism, saying immigrants must learn the Dutch language and integrate into Dutch society. He called for a halt to new arrivals until those already in the country had been fully assimilated.
In an interview with Reuters TV last week, he said that "everywhere in Europe, socialists and the extreme left have forbidden the discussion of the problems of the multicultural society. To identify the problem is to solve it."
Fortuyn, dapper and with a shaven head, was openly gay and in his campaign advocated tolerance of different sexual orientations.
He once called Islam a "backwards" culture because of its treatment of gays and women. That quote got him kicked out of his original party, Livable Netherlands. Then he started his own Livable Rotterdam party, which stunned political analysts by winning a third of the vote in local Rotterdam elections in March, taking 17 of 45 city council seats.
Born in 1948, Fortuyn studied sociology in the 1970s in Amsterdam, which had a thriving anti-capitalist counterculture. He became a college professor and called himself a Marxist. Later he shed that label and made a name as a columnist. In his campaign, he advocated continuing the government's broad role in managing the economy.
"He was a funny mixture," said a Dutch diplomat who knew Fortuyn. "He was a child of the '60s, a libertarian. He was open about his homosexuality. . . . He mobilized the angry white man of 45 or 50 years old. . . . What made him a right-winger was his criticism of Islam and immigration."
The diplomat said Fortuyn's message found a wider audience after last year's terrorist attacks in the United States and the arrest in the Netherlands of Muslims suspected of planning attacks in Europe.
Fortuyn told journalists several times in recent weeks that he had received written and telephoned death threats, which his spokesman confirmed tonight. In a televised debate a few days ago, he said he would not campaign in "no-go areas," crowded neighborhoods in Rotterdam where most residents are immigrants. He said the residents might beat him up.
Fortuyn reportedly called a friend today and told him he had received a threatening phone call and wondered whether to go home for the night or stay in a hotel.
Witnesses said Fortuyn was shot six times as he left a radio station in the town of Hilversum, a few miles southeast of Amsterdam, where he had just been interviewed. The gunman fled; paramedics treated Fortuyn at the scene but could not revive him.
In his home city, Rotterdam, supporters gathered at the city council chambers tonight to pay tribute. About 400 others went to Fortuyn's house in an impromptu show of mourning.
The deputy of Fortuyn's party, Joao Varela, could not hold back tears during a television interview. "He was like a father to me," he said. "He was very inspiring and could have made a difference for Holland."
Hans Dijkstal, leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, which lost many of its supporters to Fortuyn's new organization, said, "This is the absolute rock bottom for Dutch society and Dutch democracy."
Special correspondent Juliette Vasterman in Amsterdam contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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washingtonpost.com
Netherlands Mourns Slain Politician
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 9, 2002; 3:22 PM
ROTTERDAM, May 9 – This normally stoic nation let down its storied reserve today for a large and emotional outpouring for Pim Fortuyn, the slain political maverick known for his outspokenness and flamboyant lifestyle. His body lay in state today in an open white casket at this city's main cathedral.
Tens of thousands of people converged on this city today for the public viewing, and for a funeral procession tomorrow, in what police officers and others said was the largest such public display in recent memory. As the flower wreaths accumulated, at Fortuyn's home and at the Rotterdam city council, where he was a member, many likened the outpouring here to that in Britain following the 1997 death of Princess Diana.
Fortuyn was shot five times on Monday by a lone gunman, as he walked to his car in a parking lot of a media complex just after a radio interview in Hilvesum, just outside Amsterdam. Police have arrested Volkert van der Graaf, a 32-year-old environmental activist and animal rights campaigner, for the shooting, and he was ordered held in custody pending formal charges. Police say he was arrested holding a gun, and ammunition found later in his apartment matched the type used to kill Fortuyn. But they offered no motive for the killing.
In a sign that the established political parties may be getting nervous about the impact of Fortuyn's assassination on the May 15 elections, party leaders will be meeting on Saturday, the day after the funeral, to reassess their announced ban on campaigning for the remaining days before next Wednesday's voting.
The fear is that while the parties have stopped all campaigning – pulling television advertisements, stopping publication of poll numbers and canceling planned rallies – the events planned around Fortuyn's funeral, all nationally televised, could generate a sympathy vote next week that could benefit Fortuyn's nascent political party, called "Pim Fortuyn's List," or LPF in Dutch.
Analysts said there is even a chance his party, made up of political novices and so far without even a leader to replace its slain founder and mentor, could end up as the Netherlands' dominant party in parliament. Even before the slaying, his party appeared set to win at least 20 to 25 seats in the 150-seat parliament, making it one of the three largest parties.
"People who are voting for the party will be voting for Pim Fortuyn, even though he's no longer with us," said Kay van de Linde, a campaign consultant working for another upstart, the Livable Netherlands party, and a veteran of past campaigns in New York and Pennsylvania.
"We've seen that in the States – we've had a dead person elected to the senate," he said. "For Holland, this is a unique situation. We've never had this for 500 years. A lot of people are going to vote their emotions, and they're going to vote for the spirit of Pim Fortuyn."
He said the party leaders would be meeting Saturday to decide whether to continue their announced ban on all campaign activity, or if campaigning is to resume, what form it should take. With Sunday typically a day-off in Holland, that would still only Monday and Tuesday, and most agree that any return to campaigning – if it happens – should be "sober," perhaps limited to television interviews.
But the Fortuyn events are likely to continue, even after the weekend. He will be interred temporarily in a family vault in the small town of Driehuis-Westerveld, until a permanent burial site with a black and white marble tomb can be completed in Trieste, Italy. Fortuyn had a vacation home there and stipulated, in his will, that he wished to be buried there.
Thousands of his Dutch followers have said they wanted to place flowers at the family grave here in Holland, and the mayor of the town wants an orderly line to avoid a large crush – meaning there could be several more days of scenes of large numbers of people waiting in line to pay their respects to their slain icon.
Today the crowds were so large police set up portable toilets and passed out water, on what for Rotterdam was a scorching hot day. Traffic jams tied up the city, and police, some on horseback, were deployed in large numbers.
Many of those who came were clutching flower bouquets, and some carried photographs of Fortuyn, whose criticisms of immigrants who failed to assimilate, and his denunciations of Islam for discriminating against gays and women, led many to label him a "right-wing extremist."
"He's so special – he just says things," said Joyce Metselaar, 19, who said she immediately went to Fortuyn's house to lay flowers when she heard he was shot by an assassin on Monday. "He said what everybody else thought."
The presence of many blacks in the crowd, from West Africa, Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles, was testament, she and others said, that Fortuyn was not a racist, although many of his remarks have been interpreted that way.
"I thought he was a good person. He planned to do the right thing for this country," said Alex Morris, 47, originally from Cap Verde, in West Africa. "For me, I don't really think he was racist. He would try to change a lot of things, but I don't think he was racist."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
