Geert Wilders Talks Sense on the Joanie de Rijke Case

Joanie de Rijke (above) is a Dutch journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban in the Sorobi district of Afghanistan last year. She was there to report on the deaths of ten French commandos, hacked to pieces by Taliban fighters.

She arranged to meet a Taliban commander, in order to 'hear their side of the story'. When the fighters came to the meeting, they simply kidnapped her. Despite this, she still refuses to admit she was taking unnecessary risks.

She was held for six days before the magazine she worked for paid a ransom to free her. She was raped by the commander during her ordeal, and she has now written a book called 'Held by the Taliban'.

Some feel that she is being overly lenient to her abductors, however. Here are some passages from her on the experience:

"I can't be angry with them, because they let me live."

"I couldn't be sure whether the ransom would be paid, which meant I didn't know what was going to happen to me. To break the constant tension, you have to talk to each other. The situation was very tense. The whole atmosphere was very tense. The commander, one moment he was friendly to me and the next moment he went mad because - I don't know - of some news he got, and then he threatened to kill me. So, there was always tension. And to break that tension, you had to talk and laugh a bit. It was a matter of surviving."

On the rape ordeal:

"It's not black and white. It was the commander who raped me. I wanted to give vent to my hatred, to chop his head off and kick it off the cliff. He was schizophrenic: the following day, he said he was sorry. In that sort of situation - no matter how awful - you develop a bond with those people. You have to, if you want to survive. You could say the hatred and that bond go side by side.

"Just let me make one thing clear: I hate him for what he did to me. I hate him because he raped me. I was very, very mad and I wanted to kill him right away. But the day after it happened, he more or less asked me to forgive him. That was very confusing for me. It was a very schizophrenic situation because he had mood swings. I just had to cope with that. Normally you can show that you are angry but I couldn't of course. I had to get on with them. I just couldn't say to this commander what I was really thinking because then he would have killed me right away."

Ms de Rijke says that she was nevertheless shown respect.

"These things can exist side by side. That doesn't mean that I'm suffering from Stockholm syndrome."

I can understand that she feels grateful she got away at all. I just feel she is directing that gratitude at the wrong people.

Geert Wilders is now being condemned for a statement he made about her case during a parliamentary debate:

'She showed understanding for this horrible deed and then was given tea and biscuits,' Wilders said in parliament. That is symbolic for the 'moral decline of our elite', he was quoted as saying. Politicians, civil servants, mangers and 'subsidy swallowers' have all lost their way and are suffering from Stockholm syndrome, he said.

But doesn't he have a point? The modern way is to conceal whilst pretending to reveal. No one seems interested in why what happened did happen, the worldview and belief system which drives such behaviour - a worldview which can be seen increasingly in many Western cities. We half-heartedly condemn whilst trying to understand, to reconcile our view of one happy world with just why they hate us so much, hold us in so much contempt.

As far as I'm aware (and I don't speak Dutch, so I may well have missed something) Miss de Rijke has condemned the man who raped her, as an individual.

What she has failed to do is think about why he behaved like that, why it is apparently so dangerous for a blonde Dutch woman to travel to certain parts of the world in the first place. An act such as this deserves no understanding, only condemnation.

But the elite were too busy shouting Wilders down to take a moment for introspection, despite the fact that he clearly condemned the despicable crimes against de Rijke:

GroenLinks leader Femke Halsema accused Wilders of having no ethical boundaries. 'You should be ashamed,' she said. 'Not one millimeter,' Wilders replied.

Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende said the statement was 'painful and tasteless'. De Rijke is 'once again the victim because she cannot defend herself,' the PM said.

De Rijke promptly defended herself and denounced the statement, insisting that if Wilders read her book he would see he is wrong.

Well, I've read some of her quotes translated into English, as displayed above, and I'm not sure he is.