Gregorius Nekschot - MDI (Racism Monitoring Centre)

MDI (Racism Monitoring Centre)

Marco Hughes, former activist director of MDI (Meldpunt Discriminatie op Internet), a centre that monitors racism on the internet, has also fallen victim to Gregorius Nekschot, when his organization incarnated as a rat copulating with would-be Dutch fundamentalist terrorists (Hofstadgroep) in one of Nekschots cartoons in Misselijke grappen 1(pag 138). In a Turkish journal Hughes complained in 2006 that Dutch authorities turned a blind eye to racist internet sites, naming both an apparently no longer existing site for setting fire to mosques and a site in support of Ayaan Hirsi Ali publishing online shirts poking fun at the prophet. Hughs said Dutch authorities failed to take action about Muslim complaints. In a news release on their website MDI said it would take a special interest in monitoring developments in the case. A surge of 80 reports about cartoons and text on the website of the cartoonist at the beginning of 2005 was passed on by them to the public prosecutor. It was denied that they had filed a complaint in the name of Dutch convert Van de Ven, as was reported by others. The timing of the surge of complaints follows shortly the murder of Theo van Gogh in November 2004, perhaps providing a foundation for suggestions by Opheffer and Sylvain Ephimenco in Trouw (see press reactions) that prosecution of Van Gogh smells of a posthumous reckoning with the murdered filmmaker.

MDI is founder of international internet hate crime fighter INACH. INACH believes the Netherlands, 'once a liberal democracy where the rights of all were protected', should balance the fight against terrorism by enforcing and expanding anti-discrimination laws. INACH says that some members of parliament have the wrong priorities if they are worried more by infringement of free speech than protecting its citizens against a cartoonist 'who hates blacks and Muslims.' Niels van Tameren, the present day director of MDI would like the judge to decide whether this is a case of 'free speech or racism'.