30 September 2004

AMSTERTDAM — Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has demanded the government do more to combat violence in the home. Every year, 80 women, 50 children and 25 men die in the Netherlands as a result of domestic violence, she said.

Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born former Muslim, has made international headlines recently with her film Submission, an indictment of the treatment of women under Islam.

In a column in Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, she rounded on Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and demanded he re-organise the way the Dutch authorities deal with domestic violence.

She begins by noting the recent death of a 3-year-old girl, Savanna. The victim's mother and a man have been arrested by officers investigating the killing.

It has emerged that neighbours had repeatedly warned the child protection authorities and the police about hearing the little girl crying in pain. Numerous social workers were assigned to monitor and counsel the family.

"But it was all to no avail. The 3-year-old toddler was found dead in the boot of her mother's car," Hirsi Ali wrote.

The annual death toll from domestic violence was 80 women, 50 children and 25 men.

Hirsi Ali said Donner claimed combating the problem was a priority, so he must do two things urgently. In the first instance, she said an end had to come to the fragmentation of resources and personnel. She said currently there were too many agencies working separately on the issue.

She said one agency dedicated to fighting all forms of domestic violence should be created before the end of the government's term of office in 2007.

Secondly, she said, funding levels needed to be addressed because more was being spent on combating violence in public, than violence behind closed doors.

[Copyright Expatica News 2004]

Subject: Dutch news