Homomonument

Homomonument, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

This photo was taken of the Homomonument in Amsterdam during the Liebration Day festival. The wreaths were left the evening before during the Remembrance Day commemoratiuon.

Sad to say that 38 year old man had to be sent to hospital after the party at the Homomonument on Wednesday because two Moroccans had beaten him up. This happens more often, but to happen on Liberation Day, right next to a monument which commemorates the suffering of gays throughout history and which celebrates their freedom now, this was quite a sickening occurence.

I don't want to say that this is a worrying trend, but it is clear that gays are less safe now than they were ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. A couple of years there was a lot of publicity about anti-gay violence and the politicians took it quite seriously.

Also, it seems to be clear that Moroccans have more difficulty in adapting to normal life in Holland, and certainbly the Moroccan youth has errned itself a very bad reputation. Tough for the good ones, but so often, in my experience, bad and intimidating behaviour in public most often comes from young Moroccans.

We had a local politican in Amsterdam, Ahmed Marcouch, of the Labour Party, who tried very hard to help young Moroccans integrate better, organising meetings between their groups and gay groups, for example, calling for stiff punishments for bad behaviour and so on and even using Islamic texts to show that violence and bad behaviour is unreligious. He lost his seat as head of the local council to another Moroccan, who was sen as being softer on his 'own' community. The good news is that Marcouch was later elected to the City Council and is now high (17th) on the list of the Labour Party in the upcoming Parliamentary elections on 9th June. Let us hope that he can continue his excellent work there, and on a national scale and that we can look forward to a more peaceful Liberation Day next year, inshaAllah.