Netherlands: Increase in ethnic clashes in schools

Immigrant and ethnic Dutch students are fighting in school more and more often. According to data from the education inspection, almost 40% of secondary schools had ethnic conflicts last year, an increase of 10% in two years.

There were ethnic conflicts between students in almost 250 secondary schools. Fights, discrimination and problems with extreme-right 'Lonsdale youth' happen the most in vocational and technical schools.

There's a marked increase of such violence in university preparatory schools (havo and vwo), where 30% of the schools deal with ethnic clashes, twice as many as a year earlier.

Extreme-right researcher, Dr. Jaap van Donselaar, says that tensions have increased already since the murder of Pim Fortuyn. According to him it's mostly not extreme-right or radical Muslim youthm but rather groups who clash due to culture differences, which happens when they meet out in town or in the school yard.

In Uithoorn, for example, Londsdale and immigrant youth set up a fight in school during carnival. In a school in Heerlen Londsdale youth were ambushed by immigrants, and in Rotterdam a white students was abused because he associated with immigrant students.

Religious extremism seems to play a much smaller role in secondary schools. Barely 3% of the schools say they have to deal with it.

Van Donselaar says that the actual numbers are much higher and that such incidents are often not reported. Many schools are afraid of getting a bad name.

Source: AD (Dutch)