Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that one of Europe’s largest Syrian Christian communities is located in the Dutch city of Enschede. In the last elections the Freedom Party received a number of votes from the 8 000 Christian Syrians.
Enschede has two Syrian Orthodox football clubs and there are three Syrian Orthodox churches. If all voters from this group vote, they are responsible for four to five of the 39 seats in the Enschede municipal council.
“The Freedom Party understands how dangerous Muslims are”, says Gabriel a Christian entrepreneur from Enschede. He opposes the construction of a new mosque in Enschede: “The imam only speaks Turkish. There’s no need for such a large mosque, we as Christians fled because of the Muslims, you have to integrate or you better leave.”
The city council approved the plans for the mosque last year. The PVV says that it has followed all legal means to stop the construction of the mosque. “With us all people are equal, everyone must feel safe.”
The chairman of the Aramean Federation, Erwin Ilgun. says there’s a trend to vote for Wilders’ Freedom Party. “For a few years already now the Freedom Party is clearly winning in popularity”, he says. “The discussion about the city’s new mosque is obviously an issue.”
A Christian refugee from Turkey says he’s not surprised by the Freedom Party’s popularity. Abraham Beth Arsan says: “Syrian-Orthodox Christians fled from the Islamic world. We fled because our faith was forbidden. We’ve always been oppressed.”
An academic study of researcher Jan Schukkink showed that Syrian Christians were very well integrated and far ahead of other non-Western migrant groups.
“It has traditionally been a group of migrants who hardly manifest themselves”, says Schukkink. “At the celebration of Easter 10 000 people come to the Syrian Orthodox Monastery St. Ephrem in Glane, a town near Enschede, always in peace and quiet, and it is also well-organized, and that applies to the whole community. A lot of social control.”
The Netherlands has a tradition of setting up polling stations in unusual places in an effort to tempt people to vote, such as a city farm in The Hague and a popular student cafe in Zwolle.
Some councils even set up polling stations in railway stations to catch early morning commuters. The polling stations are open from 07.30 hours to 21.00 hours, when the count begins.
But for Enschede it will not be neccessary to entice voters for the PVV.
Net gestemd in een stembureau op het prachtige Duindorp! (1)#StemPVV pic.twitter.com/se1TbXoCH4
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) March 21, 2018