The Dutch public prosecutor's office has issued a press release announcing eight people who made 'discriminating and inciting' comments on Facebook in January 2015 will have to pay fines between €350 and €450 ($400 and $500). If they don't pay up they will have to appear in front of a police judge according to the announcement.
The comments in question were made on the Facebook page 'Steun de PVV' ('Support the PVV'). The PVV is the Dutch anti-immigration Party for Freedom best known for its leader Geert Wilders. The Facebook page in question posted a link to a newspaper article dated January 1st 2015 about the firebombing of a mosque in Sweden. Several questionable comments were made on this posting which led to a complaint to the authorities.
The administrator of the page did not receive a fine because he acted quickly in removing the comments. He did save a screenshot though and posted it to the page this morning with the names of the commenters blurred out.
Here are some of the comments translated to English (style and grammar errors mostly kept intact from the original) .
- Burn down all mosques en masse
- So it failed again and yet another mosque didn't burn down. You should do a better job, guys!
- Why not here?
- Nice job
- Put the torch to it and down with these pigsties, maybe steal a fat tank from the army and blow up these pig sties or whatever yes
- Those are some ugly buildings but throwing it (ed.: the firebomb) through the window is probably a better idea?????
- "Good intentions from Swede put into practice right away"!
- They should do that more often burn down everything
- Starting tomorrow... countrywide firebombing day against mosques...
- They should do that here too but during their prayers clean up the mess
Note: it is unclear at this time which of these comments (if any) actually earned their authors a fine.
Under Dutch law, incitement to commit crimes/violence and incitement to discrimination is punishable with fines or prison sentences. Looking at what comes by on Facebook every day, it sure appears the Dutch authorities have tapped a nearly limitless revenue source if they ever decide to prosecute all of it.
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