Categorie: English

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NTR wants 50 Shades of Blackface on children’s television!

Last year Doorbraak activist Jennifer van Leijen initiated a campaign to stop the Dutch government from subsidizing blackface (Zwarte Piet or Black Pete) on children’s television. Thousand people already signed. Van Leijen regularly writes updates. Here’s the fifth one. (You can also still read the first, second, third and fourth update.) It has been reported that the NTR television company

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Letter to the municipal council about mayor Van Zanen and the racist blackface parade in Utrecht

In an earlier article I reported what the stance of the mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Zanen, is towards an annual racist parade with Black Petes in which he takes part: he has no opinion on the subject. Van Zanen also stated that the positions of various human rights bodies who have unanimously condemned the blackfacing component within the parade,

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University of Utrecht, where human rights are purely academic and not functional

Studenten geven de rector van de universiteit een petitie tegen Zwarte Piet.

The University of Utrecht has its own academic section for human rights research and expertise: it is called the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and they host various workshops, lectures, and seminars. In 2016, this human rights section hosted the AHRI conference. You might expect that an academic institution that believes in human rights would believe in applying them

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What happens when the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights permits discrimination…

The Netherlands Institute of Human Rights is an institution which exists to expose, monitor and protect human rights, promoting compliance (including equal treatment) into practice, policies and legislation, and seeking to increase the awareness of human rights in the Netherlands. However, to be able to increase awareness of human rights, you need to first understand what human rights are. In

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Anti-discrimination bureau doesn’t want to criticise Utrecht mayor for taking part in yearly blackface parade

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How are complaints handled about the mayor of Utrecht taking part in a blackface parade? What happens when a complaint about this mayor was made to the anti-discrimination bureau Art. 1 Midden Nederland? And what happened when the complaint was made directly to the Utrecht city council? The complaint about the mayor, made to the anti-discrimination bureau The parade called

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We can’t turn the tides by promoting a change of attitude on the individual level

Many of my academic friends on Facebook have shared the blogpost “How to get rid of your academic fake-self?”, and I can see why. I as well sympathise with its message. Honestly, I wish more of my colleagues would be like its author. Their view of what academic work is really about, and what a university worthy of its name

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Antifascism must acquire a broader and deeper meaning than merely ‘opposition to fascism’

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I was on vacation last week, when the awful news from Charlottesville reached me. A lot of sensible things have been said and written on these events, and on the need for a militant, broad, and international(ist) antifascist movement. It is often (and rightly) argued that such a movement also requires a stronger, physical presence on the streets – especially

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Mariët van Bommel: “Stop the violence in Sudan! Open the borders!”

Yesterday, the Darfur Union and Doorbraak organised a demonstration against the violence in Sudan and the EU policy of migration control. Mariët van Bommel from Doorbraak held the second speech. Here are the video and the text of her talk. Hello, I am Mariët van Bommel and I work at Doorbraak. Doorbraak is a revolutionary left wing organization and we

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Arms trade, EU border security and Sudan

Op het Plein.

Yesterday, the Darfur Union and Doorbraak organised a demonstration against the violence in Sudan and the EU policy of migration control. The first speech came from Mark Akkerman of Stop Wapenhandel, an independent research and campaign organisation against arms trade and arms industry. Here are the video and text of his talk. Imagine having to flee from or via Sudan,

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