AMSTERDAM, Dec 15 (AFP) - Right-wing extremism is on the increase in the Netherlands and the murder of a prominent Dutch film maker has prompted a wave of violence against Muslims, a new report revealed Wednesday.
Theo van Gogh, who had made a film about Islam, was killed on November 2 allegedly by an Islamic extremist, prompting increasing anti-foreigner sentiment in the Netherlands.
The killing was followed by "a wave of racialist and extreme right-wing violence," said the report issued by the Anne Frank Foundation, named for the Jewish girl who wrote a diary of her ordeal in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
New levels of violence coincided with an increase in extreme right-wing activity during the 2003-2004 period especially among young people, it said.
Mohammed Bouyeri, the man arrested on suspicion of van Gogh's murder, is a Dutchman of Moroccan origin. The killing was followed by 174 racialist incidents "unprecedented in the Netherlands," the report continued.
Most occurred in the weeks immediately following the murder. In 60 percent of cases victims were Muslims and in 20 percent indigenous Dutch.
About two-thirds of the attacks, many of them arson attacks, were on buildings, including 47 on mosques and 13 on churches.
The majority -- some 66 percent -- occurred outside the 10 biggest cities of this densely populated small country of some 16 millions, although these major cities domicile the largest numbers of foreigners, as many as 50 percent of the population of some districts.
Investigations had revealed extreme right-wing responsibility in 15 percent of the attacks. "The implication of the extreme right in this violence is growing strongly," the report said.
The tendency had already been detected during 2003 and 2004 before the van Gogh killing, said the document, which was based on data provided by police, agencies tackling discrimination and direct investigation by the research team at Leiden University.
There are four marginal Dutch extreme right-wing political parties, none with seats in Parliament, as well as various "traditional" skinhead groups.
Now there is a new trend involving young people likewise part of a gang culture with their own distinguishing garb, most prominently a so-called Lonsdale badge much favoured by neo-Nazis.
The "Lonsdales," as the report calls them, number only between 300 and 1,500 throughout the country, with a hard core of several dozen young people.
"The rise of this generation is in parallel with the rise of Pim Fortuyn", the report said.
Fortuyn was the flamboyant extreme right-wing populist leader who campaigned on an anti-immigration ticket and who was shot to death in the town of Hilversum in 2002, just 10 days before general elections with his far-right party set to make sweeping gains.
The report said the "Lonsdales" sought confrontation with foreigners and devised acts of violence against reception centres for asylum-seekers and against Islamic symbols.
Some were suspected of involvement in anti-Islamic attacks after the van Gogh killing.
"The problem of this extreme right-wing and racialist culture among young people has never hitherto reached the proportions in the Netherlands that it has today," the report warned.
Van Gogh, a distant relative of 19th-century painter Vincent van Gogh, was cycling to his production firm to add the finishing touches to his last movie when he was shot and stabbed in broad daylight.
Police arrested Bouyeri, a 26-year-old of Moroccan descent with alleged extremist sympathies.
Van Gogh's last movie dealt with the killing of Fortuyn, like van Gogh an outspoken critic of Islam.
12/15/2004 18:03 GMT - AFP