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Anti-Islam Geert Wilders seeks coalition partners after Dutch election win

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Anti-Islam Geert Wilders seeks coalition partners after Dutch election win

Geert Wilders’s far-right, anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has won most seats in the Dutch parliamentary elections, with 98 percent of votes counted.

The PVV won 37 seats out of 150, well ahead of 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the partial results showed on Thursday.

“The Rutte era ends with a right-wing populist revolt that shakes [The Hague] to its foundations. The historic election victory that the PVV achieved on Wednesday exceeded all expectations,” Dutch centre-right daily NRC said.

The populist party now moves to form a coalition with at least two other parties to take the majority and appoint a prime minister.

A coalition of the VVD and the New Social Contract (NSC) party of centrist lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt would have 81 seats combined, making it the most obvious combination but which could still take months of difficult talks.

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“The voter has spoken,” Wilders said on TV on Wednesday evening as the outcome of the election became apparent. He made clear his intention to govern, saying “under no circumstances” should the will of the voters be ignored.

“I am confident we can reach an agreement,” Wilders said in his victory speech. “We want to govern and … we will govern.”

Opposition coalition

The extreme right-wing ideals of the PVV have raised an alarm among some Dutch opposition. None of the parties he could form a government with shares his anti-European Union ideas.

Despite the electoral triumph, a total victory through the necessary support for a broad enough coalition to form a stable government may prove elusive, but not impossible.

The leaders of the three other top parties had previously ruled out serving in a PVV-led coalition.

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Leader of the Green/Labour left-wing bloc, Frans Timmermans, seemed to refuse a coalition, saying: “Now is the time for us to defend democracy.”

The VVD said it was not ruling out a coalition with Wilders, however.

Yet, the VVD’s top candidate, Dilan Yesilgoz, who is aiming to become the first woman to head the government, insisted that she will not enter a government with Wilders as prime minister.

Pieter Omtzigt, whose NSC party was expected to win 20 seats according to the exit poll, appeared to soften his position as well, saying he was “available”, although coalition talks would “not be easy”.

Wilders has acknowledged the coalition challenge, saying “I call on the parties … Now we will have to look for agreements with each other.”

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He assured cheering supporters on Wednesday, “The PVV can no longer be ignored.”

Parties are set to meet each on their side on Thursday to discuss what to do next. On Friday, party leaders will meet to decide on an “explorer”, a political outsider who will hear from each party what possibilities they see and prefer in coalition talks.

Fear and concern

The election marked a sharp turn to the right for the country, making the PVV the first right-wing populist party to ever win parliamentary elections.

Wilders has often been compared with former US President Donald Trump in his political position, and his party’s anti-Islam, anti-EU platform ran on an anti-immigrant campaign with a hardline stance, including closing the borders and deporting undocumented immigrants.

“The Dutch hope that the people can get their country back and that we will ensure that the tsunami of asylum seekers and immigration is reduced,” Wilders said, stressing a position which struck a strong cord with many voters.

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Islamic and Moroccan organisations expressed concerns about Wilders’s victory. Muslims make up about 5 percent of the population in the Netherlands.

“The distress and fear are enormous,” Habib el-Kaddouri, who heads an organisation representing Dutch Moroccans, told Dutch news agency ANP. “We are afraid that he will portray us as second-class citizens.”

The PVV manifesto clearly states what future Wilders imagines for the Netherlands, declaring: “Asylum seekers feast on delightful free cruise-ship buffets while Dutch families have to cut back on groceries.”

It proposed a ban on Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques. Headscarves would be banned from government buildings.

A “binding referendum” would be held on a “Nexit” – the idea of the Netherlands leaving the EU.

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The PVV also called for an “immediate halt” to development aid and pursue a “Netherlands first” foreign policy.

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The CW’s Top Exec on Walker’s Uncertain Fate, Potential All American ‘Reboot’ and Superman & Lois’ ‘F–king Awesome’ Sendoff

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The CW’s Top Exec on Walker’s Uncertain Fate, Potential All American ‘Reboot’ and Superman & Lois’ ‘F–king Awesome’ Sendoff


CW Exec Talks Cancelled and Renewed Shows: ‘Walker,’ ‘All American’



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Justice Dept. makes arrests in North Korean identity theft scheme involving thousands of IT workers

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Justice Dept. makes arrests in North Korean identity theft scheme involving thousands of IT workers

The Justice Department announced Thursday multiple arrests in a series of complex stolen identity theft cases that officials say are part of a wide-ranging scheme that generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.

The conspiracy involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are dispatched by the government to live abroad and who rely on the stolen identities of Americans to obtain remote employment at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive corporate data and lucrative paychecks. The companies did not realize the workers were overseas.

NORTH KOREA’S MENACING NUCLEAR THREAT IS TOO DANGEROUS TO IGNORE. US MUST LEAD BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT

The fraud scheme is a way for heavily sanctioned North Korea, which is cut off from the U.S. financial system, to take advantage of a “toxic brew” of converging factors, including a high-tech labor shortage in the U.S. and the proliferation of remote telework, Marshall Miller, the Justice Department’s principal associate deputy attorney general, said in an interview.

The seal for the Justice Department is photographed in Washington, Nov. 18, 2022. The Justice Department has announced three arrests in a complex stolen identity scheme that officials say generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.  (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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The Justice Department says the cases are part of a broader strategy to not only prosecute individuals who enable the fraud but also to build partnerships with other countries and to warn private-sector companies of the need to be vigilant — and not duped — about the actual identities of the people they’re hiring.

FBI and Justice Department officials launched an initiative in March centered on the fraud scheme and last year announced the seizure of more than a dozen website domains used by North Korean IT workers.

“More and more often, compliance programs at American companies and organizations are on the front lines of protecting our national security,” Miller said. “Corporate compliance and national security are now intertwined like never before.”

The Justice Department said in court documents in one case that more than 300 companies — including a high-end retail chain and a “premier Silicon Valley technology company” — have been affected and that more than $6.8 million in revenue has been generated for the workers, who are based outside of the U.S., including in China and Russia.

Those arrested include an Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, who prosecutors say facilitated the scheme by helping the workers obtain and validate stolen identities, receiving and hosting laptops from U.S. companies who thought they were sending the devices to legitimate employees and helping the workers connect remotely to companies.

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According to the indictment, Chapman ran more than one “laptop farm” where U.S. companies sent computers and paychecks to IT workers they did not realize were overseas.

At Chapman’s laptop farms, she allegedly connected overseas IT workers who logged in remotely to company networks so it appeared the logins were coming from the United States. She also is alleged to have received paychecks for the overseas IT workers at her home, forging the beneficiaries’ signatures for transfer abroad and enriching herself by charging monthly fees.

Other defendants include a Ukrainian man, Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors say created fake accounts at job search platforms that he then sold to overseas workers who went on to apply for jobs at U.S. companies. He was was arrested in Poland last week, and the Justice Department said it had seized his company’s online domain.

A Vietnamese national, Minh Phuong Vong, was arrested in Maryland on charges of fraudulently obtaining a job at a U.S. company that was actually performed by remote workers who posed as him and were based overseas.

It was not immediately clear if any of the three had lawyers.

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Separately, the State Department said it was offering a reward for information about certain North Korean IT workers who officials say were assisted by Chapman.

And the FBI, which conducted the investigations, issued a public service announcement that warned companies about the scheme, encouraging them to implement identity verification standards through the hiring process and to educate human resources staff and hiring managers about the threat.

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Taiwan grapples with divisive history as new president prepares for power

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Taiwan grapples with divisive history as new president prepares for power

Taipei, Taiwan – Even as Taiwan prepares for the inauguration of its eighth president next week, it continues to struggle over the legacy of the island’s first president, Chiang Kai-shek.

To some, Chiang was the “generalissimo” who liberated the Taiwanese from the Japanese colonisers. To many others, he was the oppressor-in-chief who declared martial law and ushered in the period of White Terror that would last until 1992.

For decades, these duelling narratives have divided Taiwan’s society and a recent push for transitional justice only seems to have deepened the fault lines. Now, the division is raising concern about whether it might affect Taiwan’s ability to mount a unified defence against China, which has become increasingly assertive in its claim over the self-ruled island.

“There is a concern when push comes to shove if the civilians work well with the military to defend Taiwan,” said historian Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang of the University of Missouri in the United States.

On February 28, 1947, Chiang’s newly-arrived Kuomintang (KMT) troops suppressed an uprising by Taiwan natives, killing as many as 28,000 people in what became known as the February 28 Incident. In the four-decade-long martial law era that followed, thousands more perished.

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This traumatic history met its official reckoning in 2018, when the Taiwan government set up its Transitional Justice Commission modelled after truth and reconciliation initiatives in Africa, Latin America and North America to redress historical human rights abuses and other atrocities.

People attend the commemoration of the February 28 Incident in Taipei [Violet Law/Al Jazeera]

When the commission concluded in May 2022, however, advocates and observers said they had seen little truth and hardly any reconciliation.

Almost from the first days of the commission, the meting-out of transitional justice became politicised across the blue-versus-green demarcation that has long defined Taiwan’s sociopolitical landscape, with blue representing KMT supporters and green the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

A recently published anthology entitled Ethics of Historical Memory: From Transitional Justice to Overcoming the Past explains how the way Taiwanese remember the past shapes how they think about transitional justice. And as that recollection is determined by which camp they support, each champions their own version of Taiwan’s history.

“That’s why transitional justice seems so stagnant now,” explained Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu, research professor at the legal research institute Academia Sinica who contributed to and edited the book. “Whatever truth it uncovers would be mired in the blue-green narrative.”

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A non-partisan view, Hsu said, is to credit the DPP with codifying transitional justice and Lee Teng-hui, the first democratically elected KMT president, with breaking the taboo on broaching the February 28 Incident.

The past shaping the future

In February, Betty Wei attended the commemoration for the February 28 incident for the first time and listened intently to the oral history collected from the survivors. Wei, 30, said she wanted to learn more about what happened because her secondary school textbook had brushed over what many consider a watershed event in a few cryptic lines, and many of her contemporaries showed little interest.

“In recent years the voices pushing for transitional justice have grown muted,” Wei told Al Jazeera. “A lot of people in my generation think the scores are for previous generations to settle.”

Statues of former Taiwan leader Chiang Kai-shek lined up in a park. Two of the statues in front show him seated. They are painted red. Some behind are standing. They are white or bronze.
The Transitional Justice Committee recommended the relocation of Chiang Kai-shek statues from public areas, but many remain [File: Ritchie B Tongo/EPA]

In Taiwan, the past is never past, and rather it is fodder for new fights.

As the DPP gears up for an unprecedented third consecutive term, the unfinished business of removing the island’s remaining statues of Chiang has resurfaced as the latest front in what Yang, the historian, described to Al Jazeera as “this memory war”.

More than half of the initial 1,500 monuments have been taken down over the past two years, with the remaining statues mostly on military installations.

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Yang argues that is because the top brass rose through the ranks under martial law and many still regard Chiang as their leader, warts and all. For them, toppling the statues would be an attack on their history.

The statues embody “the historical legacy the military wants to keep alive,” Yang said. “That’s a source of tension between the military and the DPP government.”

On the eve of William Lai Ching-te taking his oath as the island’s next president, Taiwanese will for the first time mark the “White Terror Memorial Day” on May 19, the day when martial law was declared in 1949.

While it is clear Taiwanese have promised to never forget, whom and how to forgive has become far murkier.

As the former chairman of the Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation, the first NGO advocating for the cause, Cheng-Yi Huang lauded the government’s move to take over the KMT’s private archives in recent years but lamented there had been too little truth-seeking so far.

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For example, under the February 28 Incident Disposition and Compensation Act, Huang said many have chosen to stay silent about their complicity because only victims get compensation.

However, Taiwan’s tumultuous history means the line between victim and victimiser is rarely clear-cut.

Chiang Kai-shek pictured in 1955. He is wearing a military uniform with a long cape. Others in uniforms are walking behind him. They are leaving a temple.
Chiang Kai-shek (centre) in 1955. Known as ‘Generalissimo’, he led a brutal military dictatorship that only ended in 1992 [Fred Waters/AP Photo]

By digging into military archives, Yang has shed light on how Chinese were kidnapped and pressed into service by the KMT in the last years of the Chinese Civil War. Those who tried to flee were tortured and even murdered. And the native Taiwanese who rose up to resist KMT’s suppression were persecuted as communists.

“Under martial law, the military was seen as an arm of the dictatorship, but they were also victims of the dictator’s regime,” Yang told Al Jazeera. “The transitional justice movement has missed the opportunity to reconcile Taiwanese society with the military.”

To Hsu, Beijing’s belligerence demands Taiwanese of all stripes find a common cause.

“As we’re facing the threat from the Chinese Communist Party, it’s imperative that we unite in forging a collective future,” said Hsu, to a standing-room-only book talk during the Taipei International Book Exhibition in late February.

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“And how we remember our past will shape this future of ours.”

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