Wintonsweek BBC Traduces Heroic Hirsi Ali; Ignores Cowardly Dutch Treatment. You’d Expect Righteous BBC Indignation At Blatant Injustice. But No, BBC Finds A “Lie”. In Holland, Property Values Beat Western Ones The BBC used to be an organisation that stood for important democratic and liberal (in the traditional sense) values. At least we are led to believe that this was so. But a shameful report on BBCTV’s NewsNight last week showed up this overblown, bureaucratic, and state-funded monopoly as a craven, credulous, corrupt organisation that has lost touch with honesty, balance and integrity. NewsNight reporter Steve Smith, a miserable little careerist anxious to please his bosses rather than reflect the truth, was allowed a couple of minutes to tell us about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In my opinion, this woman is a hero. Hirsi Ali moved to Holland from Africa in 1992 and speaks Dutch. She became an MP for the centre-right VVD party. Hirsi Ali renounced her Muslim faith, and that was her first “mistake”. Fundamentalist Muslims believe that apostasy is a crime punishable by death. You would think that this was just about acceptable in some rotten Middle Eastern dictatorship, but apparently in Holland it is something to shrug your shoulders about. It’s not as important as protecting the value of your apartment. Hirsi Ali did some other things which inconvenienced the Dutch. She wrote the script for Theo Van Gogh’s movie “Submission”, which ridiculed Islamist attitudes towards women. She did this in Holland, a country where liberty and free speech were supposedly entrenched and respected. You will recall Van Gogh was brutally murdered in cold blood for his pains by a Muslim who then mutilated his body. The death threats against Hirsi Ali mounted. She was forced to go into hiding and was given police protection. This is no isolated case in Holland, with the police saying 121 death treats were made against politicians last year. In a civilised society which cared about freedom of speech and a healthy democracy, you would think this would have generated an unstoppable tsunami of support for the likes of Hirsi Ali and against those who would deny free speech with death threats; but not in Holland. Hirsi Ali has finally been forced to leave her protected apartment close to the Dutch Parliament because her fellow residents were more concerned with the price of their property than joining the fight to stand behind those threatened with death. Her fellow residents took her to court, citing the interference with their lives that her security problems bought them, and she was evicted. Would you believe it, they based their suit on the European Convention on Human Rights. And the pusillanimous Dutch authorities have finally managed to pull the plug on Hirsi Ali by using a technicality in the immigration laws to withdraw her Dutch citizenship which forces her to leave the country. No doubt you would think that the BBC would have entered the affair, guns blazing. Their reporters would have been outraged and indignant at the treatment of this amazingly brave woman. They would have denounced the cowardly Dutch citizens who shrug their shoulders at the first sign of adversity and insist on giving in to the radical Islamists. The Dutch government would have been pilloried for seeking such a wimpish way out of the crisis. But no. The BBC reported that Ms Hirsi Ali told a lie in her visa application. In his report, Smith zeroed in on this minor lie and belittled her amazing achievements. Smith implied that she deserved all she got because of what to the rest of us would have been a very minor little porkie about her age and origin. So much for the BBC’s devotion to the truth. This always seems to take a back seat to the need never to offend Muslims with the truth, because it might damage revenues to its News “24” money munching programme in the Middle East. Its reporting on the Iraq war was based on similar corrupt considerations. But what about the Dutch? We are always told about how civilised and friendly the Dutch are. How liberal and forgiving and nice. But a factoid in the Wall Street Journal, which devoted its weekly NEWS IN DEPTH to Hirsi Ali’s story on May 17, hit me right between the eyes. “Who did what and why during World War II are still touchy questions here (The Hague). Holland deported 78 per cent of its Jews – the highest proportion in Western Europe,” the article’s author Andrew Higgins said. Says it all, doesn’t it. Neil Winton – May 20, 2006 |
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