Dutch news in brief, 7 October 2004

Minister rejects naturalising Anne Frank

Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner said on Thursday it would be undesirable to bestow Dutch citizenship on Anne Frank because doing so would conflict with the Constitution. Anne was a German Jew and her diary about hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam house has become world famous. After being betrayed to the Nazis, Anne, her family, and the others living with them were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps. In March of 1945, nine months after she was arrested, Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. She was fifteen years old. Dutch broadcaster KRO has led calls for her to be granted Dutch citizenship posthumously.

Psychiatric detainees face being locked up for life

Over the next four years, doctors will stop treating at least 350 patients placed in psychiatric TBS detention by the courts, usually for violent offences. The detainees could end up staying in the institution for the rest of their lives, a scientific agency has warned. The WODC — which is attached to the Justice Ministry — said in a report that there are 60 places in the Netherlands for untreatable psychiatric patients who have been sentenced to TBS treatment by the courts. By 2008, at least 425 such places will be required for patients who make no progress and are judged unfit to be released back into society.

Schools accused of refusing immigrants

Primary schools in the Dutch town of Tiel are systematically refusing to accept children from immigrant families, it was claimed Thursday. Anti-discrimination agency Meldpunt Discriminatie based its claim on letters schools sent to immigrant parents. Both sides took their case to the Equality Commission in Utrecht. A spokesperson for the three primary schools in Tiel denied the allegation of discrimination, but said sometimes the local school “on the corner” was full, so children had to go to one further away.

No ban on male circumcision

Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner said Thursday he sees no reason to make male circumcision illegal. Liberal VVD party MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali had asked the government to consider banning the circumcision of boys as female circumcision is already outlawed in the Netherlands, Radio Netherlands reported. But the minister said there was a clear difference: male circumcision involved removing the foreskin for religious, hygienic or medical reasons and is not a traumatic event. Female circumcision, on the other hand, is a form of genital mutilation with serious physical and psychological consequences and can therefore be classified as an abuse, according to the report on the radio station’s website.

Subject: Dutch news