In the beginning of march, Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk threatened to end a six-month moratorium on deporting LGBT asylum-seekers back to Iran.
Deporting LGBT asylum seekers to Iran where they face torture and execution would be a serious breach of the Netherland's legal obligations, as Human Rights Watch pointed out in a recent letter to the minister.
The European Social Democracy has widely abandoned the fight for the right of people who are persecuted in their homeland to seek asylum in the Union in recent years. This was for strategic reasons: the weakest are always the first target of the right, and many Social Democratic parties followed them in the bashing of immigrants, asylum-seekers and muslims. We leave the stage to small-scale Eichmanns like Rita Verdonk.
The right readily reacts to this left misconception of "strategy" by cracking down on a new group of people (this is how real "strategy" looks like). If we give up support for one group of people, we'll weaken support for the other issues we care for, too.
Johanna Dohnal, social democratic Austrian women minister once said: "To hold one's horses for tactical reasons usually turns out to be a mistake." It's heartening to read that maniacs like Verdonk now face stiff opposition in the Netherlands.
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