ROTTERDAM, 16/03/07 - A project to instil love of nature of criminal Moroccan youngsters has prompted a fresh outburst of anger from Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders. "Have you gone bananas?" he asks in a letter to three ministers.
Sixteen 'deprived' Moroccan youths from Rotterdam have travelled to Morocco for a two-week course on the Atalanta butterfly. This lives part of the year in the Netherlands and part in Morocco and is a threatened species. By providing this information, the project hopes to instil understanding of both the multicultural society and nature.
The trip is largely subsidised by the foreign ministry. The money, around 50,000 euros, comes from the same fund of 20 million euros as that which funded a group of criminal Moroccan youths on development aid projects in Morocco. As disclosed by newspaper De Volkskrant known last week, a judge released a convicted robber to allow him to participate.
The butterfly trip is organised by the Rotterdam Environmental Centre (RMC). The participating youngsters have almost all "come up against the police and the courts," RMC director Emile Rinsum told newspaper De Telegraaf yesterday. "But not for serious things", he added.
Wilders asked Ministers Ernst Hirsch Ballin (Justice), Bert Koenders (Development Cooperation) and Ella Vogelaar (Integration) in a letter yesterday whether it was true that criminal youths had travelled to Morocco to learn more about the environment. "If so, have you gone bananas?" Wilders added. He also asked them to "ensure that such warped trips will never take place again at the taxpayer's expense and that all subsidies already paid are recovered."
In that debate, Wilders regularly uses words like "bizarre," "scandalous" and "ridiculous," which is not customary in the Dutch parliamentary tradition. His questions yesterday showed Wilders has no intention of moderating his tone.
Minister Koenders deplores Wilders' tone but can still find sympathy for his questions. "We want development funds to be spend well. I will investigate what exactly happened," he said on Radio 1.
