Institutional racism becomes theme at Dutch election

A Dutch Black anti-racism activist, who has raised concerns by calling for the "decolonisation" of education and language use in the Netherlands, is running in the country's next general election. Sylvana Simons, a former television presenter who is arguably the country's best-known Black activist, leads a party that wants to put racial inequality front and centre on the political stage in the Netherlands' upcoming election.

In a nation long considered to be a beacon of free-thinking tolerance, institutional racism has become a theme for the general election amid an increasingly polarised national discourse touching on issues including the divisive character Black Pete, racial profiling and the legacy of slavery dating back to the Dutch colonial era. The Black Lives Matter movement injected fresh impetus into the debate last year.

"It was good to see that so many people said 'enough is enough' and they came out and spoke out," Simons said of Black Lives Matter rallies in the Netherlands last year.

"And I do also hope that they will use that same voice when we have our general elections," she said.

Simons doesn't discuss her own experiences of racism but believes it is a systemic problem in the Netherlands, where there are widespread reports of bias against people of colour in the employment and housing markets as well as ethnic profiling by police. "If your reality is that of a young Black person in this country, what you'll find is that from the moment you enter school, you enter the system. There is bias and prejudice. People have lower expectations of you. People judge you differently," Simons said.

Right-wing parties reject claims of racism and instead claim that the country's traditional culture needs protection from what they call "left-wing elites." Revelations about the use of dual nationality data by tax officials trying to identify child benefit fraudsters has also helped push inequality issues into the mainstream.

A highly critical report issued by a parliamentary inquiry into the child benefits scandal led Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his government to resign in January, though the move was largely symbolic as the election date was already set. The country's Data Protection Authority said last year that the tax office's use of dual nationality data was "unlawful and discriminatory." The parliamentary inquiry into the scandal that plunged thousands of families, many of them of Moroccan, Turkish and Surinamese descent, deep into debt.

Azan Aydin and her husband Aytac, who are of Turkish descent but were both born and raised in the Netherlands, said they went through a decade of battling tax authorities after they were wrongly accused of fraud and ordered to repay some 52,000 euros. The experience has destroyed their trust in the Dutch government to the extent that they may not even vote.

Simons has been vilified by social media trolls for calling out racism in the country where about a quarter of the population is listed by the national statistics office as having a "migration background." It remains to be seen if her party will win any seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament. Polls currently suggest it will fall short of the threshold.