Attack kills Dutch filmmaker

By Glenn Frankel
The Washington Post

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was fatally shot.

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LONDON — A Dutch filmmaker who outraged members of the Muslim community with works attacking the treatment of women in Islamic society was gunned down and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street yesterday morning.

Witnesses said a gunman opened fire on Theo van Gogh, 47, as the filmmaker bicycled down Linnaeus Street in the eastern part of the city, then chased him on foot, shot him again and stabbed him. Some reports said the killer slit van Gogh's throat with a knife as the victim lay on the pavement.

The slain filmmaker was the great-grandson of the brother of famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who was also named Theo.

After a shootout in which one policeman and a bystander were slightly wounded, police wounded and captured the alleged assailant, whom they identified only as a 26-year-old man of dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality. Chief prosecutor Leo de Wit confirmed that the killer had left a note on van Gogh's body. The contents of the note were not disclosed.

	FRED ERNST / AP A demonstrator with "Theo" written on her forehead cries at a protest in Amsterdam in honor of Theo van Gogh.

Friends and associates said van Gogh had received anonymous death threats after Dutch television aired his controversial short film "Submission" in August. The film featured four women who claimed to have been abused by their Muslim husbands and who wore see-through robes showing their breasts, with texts from the Quran scrawled on their bodies.

It was the second political killing to shake this socially tolerant European country in recent years. Pim Fortuyn, an outspoken politician critical of open immigration and Islam, was gunned down in May 2002 by an environmental activist who labeled Fortuyn a "danger" to society.

Yesterday's killing set off a new round of soul-searching and dismay among many people in the Netherlands. "There is a climate that sees people resorting to violence — that is worrying," Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at a news conference in Amsterdam.

He called van Gogh "a champion of the freedom of speech" and warned against polarization and intolerance in Dutch society.

"On a day like this we are reminded of the murder of Fortuyn," he added. "We cannot allow bullets to rule our society because then dialogue is impossible."

Amsterdam residents held a memorial gathering last evening at Dam square in the city center. "We will show loud and clear that freedom of speech is important to us," declared Job Cohen, Amsterdam's mayor. He said van Gogh would not have wanted a silent vigil. "We do not want silence," he said, "we want noise."

Among those who planned to attend were Muslim groups who condemned the killing as barbaric. "People are rather shocked and embarrassed," said Yassin Hartog, coordinator of the Islam and Citizenship Foundation, a group that promotes peaceful dialogue. "Everybody wants to make sure we all stick together, Muslims and non-Muslims. Tonight's meeting is for everyone who is outraged at this event."

Hartog, a convert to Islam, said van Gogh's film had deeply insulted many Muslims but that he had been invited to address a meeting of the Moroccan community in Amsterdam.

"He was very outspoken, but he was not a racist," Hartog said. "He was attempting to show in his own way where religious views and liberal views clashed."

Van Gogh made "Submission" in collaboration with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch politician and former Somali refugee who said she had fled an arranged marriage and physical abuse in her native country. Ali, who has renounced Islam, has been under police protection since the film was aired because of threats against her life.

Van Gogh also wrote a book titled "Allah Knows Better" that criticized Islamic extremism and claimed Muslim clerics hated women.

Nearly 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands, about 5.5 percent of the population, and recent opinion polls suggest that many Dutch citizens feel threatened by their presence.

The government has pressed for Dutch language tests and citizenship classes and has announced plans to repatriate up to 26,000 immigrants — some of them longtime residents — whose applications for political asylum have been rejected.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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