Geert Wilders

Wilders was born on September 6, 1963 in Venlo in the Dutch province of Limburg, where he was raised a Roman Catholic. After his high school years, he worked for two years in Israel, near to the border with Jordan, also visiting other countries in the Middle East. He completed his military service in 1983. After working in the health insurance industry, he became a parliamentary assistant to Frits Bolkestein in 1990, in that time keeping up a heavy travel schedule, including a visit to Teheran, Iran. In 1997, he was elected for the VVD to the municipal council of Utrecht, the fourth largest city of the Netherlands. A year later, he was elected to the national parliament.^[1]

Wilders' wife is Hungarian. They married in 1992. His father was a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Océ.^[1]

In September 2004 he left the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD in Dutch), having been a member since 1989, to form his own political party, Groep Wilders, later renamed Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV or Party for Freedom). He left the liberal party, over a dispute within the VVD in late August 2004 about, among other things, his refusal to share the party's position that EU-accession negotiations must be started with Turkey. Geert Wilders has been in the Tweede Kamer since 1998.

It is stated in his party program that his party is committed to freedom of the individual; Wilders believes that the Netherlands has been held hostage by elitist (mostly social democrat and left-wing liberal) politicians for decades. He claims to want to give it "back to the people" and in this respect he can be seen as a populist.

His political views (and so the ones of the PVV as well) often overlap those of the murdered Pim Fortuyn and his List Pim Fortuyn. There are strong resemblances, certainly on socio-economic issues, to libertarianism. Wilders wants to lower taxes, decrease most welfare, raise highway speed limits and cut state regulations by making it mandatory to scrap two legal rules for every new one to be instated. On the crime issue he has supported a U.S.-style three strikes law with mandatory life sentences after three separate acts of violent crime.[2]

In polls released following the assassination of Theo van Gogh, it was estimated that Wilders' party could win as many as 29 (out of 150) seats in the Dutch parliament (Tweede Kamer). With the uproar over the killing of Van Gogh subsiding, this number declined to a low of one in October 2005. In February 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, it rose again to three seats.

A few weeks after the assassination, Geert Wilders stayed away from regular meetings in parliament for several weeks. Even though a member's presence is not mandatory, it is uncommon not to show up for weeks on end. Wilders has stated that he did this out of concern for his personal security. Having been assigned a new seating position in the parliamentary meeting hall (one further away from the public observation area), he has once again started to attend meetings.

Wilders is under constant security protection because of frequent threats to his life. On 10 November 2004, two suspected terrorists were captured after an hour-long siege of a building in The Hague. They had three grenades and have been accused of planning to murder Geert Wilders as well as then fellow MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The men in question were presumed members of what the Dutch intelligence agency, the AIVD, has termed the Hofstadgroep. In September 2007, a Dutch woman was sentenced a 1-year prison term for sending out more than 100 threatening emails to Wilders.^[2]

In recent interviews Geert Wilders more than once indicated that the Dutch constitution and European Convention on Human Rights should be changed or temporarily revoked if necessary to better protect the Dutch people from Islamic extremism. He is in favor of stripping criminals with dual nationality of their Dutch citizenship and deporting them to the country of their original nationality. This has led to considerable criticism.

In response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy Wilders published the specific set of cartoons on his website (February 1, 2006), purportedly in support of the Danish cartoonists and freedom of speech. Following his publication, Wilders stated he had received more than 40 death threats in just two days.

In November 2006, PVV won, in their first Parliamentary Election, 9 out of 150 available seats.

The Dutch newspaper Telegraaf reported in May 2007, that Geert Wilders had been shadowed by the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service for years, when he was foreign affairs spokesman for the VVD. During that time, Wilders regularly visited with the Israeli embassy in The Hague^[3]. Sources in the security service said that the service would have liked to eavesdrop on the conversations between Wilders and the Israeli personnel^[4]. The security service denied the allegations, saying it never shadowed or eavesdropped on Wilders^[5].

Referring to the increased presence of Muslims in the Netherlands, he said: "Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!"^[6] Later, he suggested that Muslims should 'tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands' because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would 'in these days be hunted down as a terrorist'. These statements caused strong reactions in Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.^[7]

On 8 August 2007, Wilders opined in a letter^[8] to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the Koran, which he called a "fascist book," should be outlawed in the Netherlands, like Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.^[9] He stated that "The book incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our legal order".^[10] On 15 August 2007, a representative of the Prosecutors' Office in Amsterdam declared that "dozens of reports" against Wilders had been filed, and that they were all being considered.^[11] Due to this position on Islam, the rapper Appa said he did not care if Wilders would be shot in the head. Wilders then charged him with threatening with death. The rapper Appa denied actual threatening, claiming he just wouldn't care and accusing Wilders of doing the same to Muslims.

Wilders is said to publish a movie on the Koran in early 2008. It is unclear who will broadcast the item, but Wilders will also put a copy on the internet site Youtube.^[12]

• "Dutch parliament page on Wilders". Background information about career (Dutch). Retrieved March 15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

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