Wilders’ Judges

Update (with further corrections): H. Numan asked me to include his translation of remarks by the same editor of Het Parool:

Nonsense

The court of Amsterdam — which condemned Wilders without a trial — is a danger for justice. I will demonstrate this to you.

The court — I quote from the newspapers — presents three arguments to justify why they hung Wilders on the highest available tree. (You are correct to assume Wilders will be sentenced in a show trial.) The three arguments:

1. A courtroom is a public forum, therefore the trial forms part of the public debate.

This is sheer nonsense. A courtroom is not a forum (place for public debate). To the contrary: in a forum all participants are equal. Not so in a courtroom, for judges decide with enormous consequences about people who are suspected of something. They judge whether it be right or wrong, as they do clearly in this case. If a courtroom is a public forum, why do we need a parliament? What are all those parliamentarians doing there? Why can’t journalists simply interview judges?

2. Judges are supposed to stand firmly within society. Therefore, they have a right to say something.

Bulls**t! By definition judges stand within society. In what else do they stand? Manure? One certainly would be inclined to think so! No, they are there to judge. Who ‘wants to add to the debate’ in a courtroom once again ignores parliament. That is dangerous, as we can read in the Wall Street Journal, which shredded this court to little bits.

3. An effective legal system participates in the efforts of the government policy for an integrated society. The court has a task: to protect minorities.

Again, nonsense. We all participate to a successful integration policy. Even Wilders, and even if he criticizes this policy. Not only the judges sits on the seat of the prosecutor, the judge, for the third time, plays for politician. It is true minorities should be protected by the court, but perhaps the best protection of all would be a very different integration policy.

Below is a translation by H. Numan from yesterday’s Het Parool:

The Judges
by Theodor Holman

The judges who already found Wilders guilty, without a trial, want to use their courtroom as forum for the public debate.

The Judges: Mr. Tom Schalken, Mr. J.P Splint, and Mr F.A. Hartsuiker. It’s quite interesting to do a google on their names.

Mr. Schalken appears to be a columnist for NRC Handelsblad, and wrote this column: “The office of public prosecution is a rotting corpse”. This is a judge who, in the Wilders case, outmaneuvered the public prosecutor. This column is nothing but a massive attack on the Public Prosecution Office.

He ends his column with a call to the minister of Justice to force the Office of the Public Prosecution to consider whether it has any value at all.

Mr. Schalken has a distinct motive to humiliate Public Prosecutor.

- - - - - - - - -

“There [the Public Prosecution Office] one sees people who find it more exciting to tour the conference circuit in a chauffeur-driven limousine (…) rather than prosecute someone for drunk driving in the court room.” “The Public Prosecutor wears shoes several sizes too large” […] “Never showed any firm control” […] These are massive and very serious allegations. Read this column, and it is even for a blind man obvious Mr. Schalken wants to teach the Public Prosecution Office a severe lesson by means of Wilders.

Judge Splint is proponent of the multicultural society. He is chairman of the ‘Folkloristic Dance Theatre’. They hate Wilders in those circles because he wants to stop subsidizing them.

Mr. Hartsuiker is someone with limited intelligence about freedom of speech:

On the Internet, one of his judgements floats around in which he gives his opinion about the Internet: “The dark side is that anyone, without any hindrance or control, can make texts public by which others are unnecessarily grieved or hurt, while by making this public no respectful goals or causes are served. Exceeding the limits of the acceptable should be punished.” This bloke wants censorship on the Internet.

Will Wilders get a fair trial? These judges say their courtroom is a forum. But they do not debate with journalists about their judgements. They even acknowledge, as written in newspaper articles, that they want to influence politics. It is not possible to fire them.

Are we talking about justice here?

A note from H. Numan:

Mr = Meester. Anyone with a degree in law has the right to call himself ‘meester’ rather than ‘drs’ (doctorandus). Dutch title, has nothing to do with the English ‘mister’.