Gregorius Nekschot - Cartoons Described

Cartoons Described

The following cartoon was immediately after the arrest published in newspapers as being part of the eight that the prosecutor considered to be a crime:

• Now too a monument for the slavery of the white Dutch taxpayer, shows a chained white man, on a pedestal titled Kingdom of the Netherlands, carrying a very large black baby on his back. The cartoon appears to react to a debate about the meaning of a slavery monument for the descendants of slaves from Surinam and the Dutch Antilles. Another interpretation, is that the cartoon joins a recent debate in Parliament about the financial burden of the Dutch Caribbean islands.

On May 21, 2008 the morningpaper de Volkskrant confirmed the previous cartoon as being one of the eight cartoons liable to prosecution, and added two cartoons to the list on the authority of Nekschot himself:

• Ali sits comfortably on his pouffe. An elderly gentleman wearing a tie and fez informs us that nowhere in the Koran it reads that one is supposed to give something in return for thirty years of disability benefits, child support and housing subsidies. Nekschot later commented that his intention had been to show that religion stands in the way of complete participation of immigrants in society.

• Left wing Dutch unrelentingly optimistic, depicts a black youth wearing a baseball cap the wrong way round pointing two guns at the head of an elderly Dutch anarchist demanding cash money. The Dutchman looks at us and informs us: 'its only the second generation'. The cartoon comments on a general belief among many citizens that problems will evaporate with the generations. However, there has been a motion in parliament for special treatment of young people arriving from the island of Curaçao, by sending them back to the island when they embark on a criminal career.

Some facts behind these ideas may be supported by government statistics that actually analyze much information for different groups in society. An issue in defending the cartoonist in an opinion in NRCHandelsblad (May 20, 2008) was that Nekschot was not judged to attribute purely fictional negative qualities to his antagonists and they did not represent the group but only certain types within that group.

Publication of all eight cartoons in HP/De Tijd magazine in their May 23, 2008 issue titled 'Nekschot fires back' added the missing five:

• Muslim Democratic Party presents logo. A Muslim presents not a T-shirt but a burqa with the letters MDP and the silouette of a bearded person copulating with a goat. The insult that Muslims, many of whom arrived in the Netherlands from provincial areas, had sexual intercourse with animals was frequently used by Theo van Gogh as a provocative image. Nekschot's Misselijke Grappen includes a cartoon of the Christian prime minister having intercourse with a cow in some provincial area of The Netherlands.

• Ali el Wakkie performs Islamic charity. A bearded man in eskimo or perhaps father Christmas clothes is having intercourse with a polar bear and tells us it is his duty to help the bear with an obstipation problem.

• Mrs Ouroubourou, born Klapstra. An elderly and very much beaten-up woman, using a crutch, finds that the Dutch too should adjust and that receiving a few hits is educational. The woman who is apparently married to a Muslim refers to a view sometimes expressed, and published by Joris Luyendijk, that a good Muslim sometimes beats his wife.

• Why young Muslims identify with Palestinians. A young man with a baseball cap worn the wrong way round and with a Smiley on the front of his jacket explains with his hands in his pockets:'loitering..., no school..., no homework..., provoking police..., benefits...'

• The Christmas-Imam wishes you a blessed holiday and.... A bearded man with father Christmas clothes, without pants, finishes the sentence while having sexual intercourse with a goat: 'a happy 1426', a reference to the Islamic calendar.

Other cartoons stayed available on the cartoonists website and could thus be considered as not being part of the eight supposedly criminal ones. However, Nekschot reported that police had shown him older cartoons and that he felt they had acted for political reasons on a dossier they had prepared a while ago.