Another political murder

摘要

The first time the Dutch hoped it was a freak incident. But a second political murder in the Netherlands in the space of two years has left this country, which has long prided itself on its tolerant, liberal values, in deep shock. Dutch people fear that they may now live in a place where violence has become a way of settling differences of opinion-especially over rocky relations with a growing Muslim minority. An outspoken and provocative film director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered in Amsterdam on the morning of November 2nd. A 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan apparently emptied a magazine of bullets into his victim, knifed him as he lay dying.and left a note stabbed into his body. He was arrested after a shoot-out with police. Ironically, Mr Van Gogh was killed as he was cycling to the studio to finish editing a film about the previous political murder, of the flamboyant anti-immigrant populist Pirn Fortuyn in May 2002. Fortuyn, whom Mr Van Gogh admired, was killed by an animal-rights activist of ethnic-Dutch origin. At the time the fact that the killer was neither Muslim nor an immigrant was greeted with relief by politicians and public alike.