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‘CDA quoted far right organisation’

17 August 2007 - In April, the CDA asked questions about signs at Schiphol Airport no longer providing information in Dutch. The party quoted the organisation Taalverdediging [Language Defence], which is said to be one of the few far right organisations to have easy access to MPs.

See also: political parties

Maarten Haverkamp, one of the MPs who asked the questions, told News from Amsterdam that he did not know about Taalverdediging’s reputation at the time. He simply used its newsletter as a source and has not been in contact with the organisation since. The newsletter did not contain any far right statements.

Shortly after having asked the questions, he was approached by someone who drew his attention to information about Taalverdediging at Wikipedia.

Haverkamp does not rule out that he will again use Taalverdediging material in the future. “To be honest, I don’t know. In any case, we would not boycott an organisation without first discussing the matter thoroughly with them”.

According to anti-fascist research group Kafka, Taalverdediging is a far right organisation. A month ago, Taalverdediging’s J.H. denied this. “All those organisations only want to discredit us. We have only one motive, which is to protect the Dutch language”, he told NRC Handelsblad (19 July).

In a response, a Kafka spokesperson says he is surprised at this statement. Kafka has documentation showing that H. himself was active for CP’86, a party that was banned in 1998 for inciting discrimination. His membership number would have been 262. H. submitted a CP’86 list of candidates for the Parliamentary elections in 1994. Last April, he spoke at a meeting organised by ‘nationalist action group’ Voorpost.

The CDA is not the only party to have quoted Taalverdediging in Parliament. As early as November 2002, SGP’s Bas van der Vlies raised the issue of the use of English at Schiphol Airport, quoting Taalverdediging. In May 2002, D66 asked whether Taalverdediging was correct in saying that France and Germany would not introduce a bachelor/master structure in higher education. The minister denied this.

Illustration: Maarten Haverkamp (photo CDA/Wikipedia). Haverkamp’s website, Kafka on Taalverdediging, De Fabel on connections with pro-apartheid activism, Wikipedia (all in Dutch)

 

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