The profane is the claim that this EU was speaking to us through Rutte’s Holland

When the Netherlands allows itself to arrogantly edify Eastern Europe for human rights and democracy, it is good to know the whole picture

“The Netherlands looks like a drug state,” the Dutch Police Association said a few years ago in a report that received widespread attention in Europe. According to Europol, cocaine smuggling in Europe amounts to almost 6 billion euros a year, with half of this drug entering through the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

According to the DEA – the US drug enforcement agency, nearly half of the synthetic drugs (MDMA-ecstasy, methamphetamines) smuggled into the US were produced in criminal laboratories in the Netherlands, located in the region of North Brabant. In your 2020 book entitled ‘Netherlands Narcolandia’, Dutch police academy professor Peter Tops and journalist Jan Tromp present a startling analysis of the severe criminogenic environment and organized crime that controls entire areas of Dutch financial ports and cities and creates a gigantic resource . According to data from the Dutch banking association – NVB, money laundering in the Netherlands amounts to around 16 billion euros per year.

The Netherlands is a major hub for drug trafficking in Europe, which, despite its efforts, the country’s law enforcement system cannot cope with. The shown murders, as in the Third World, of the lawyers and journalists who are “digging” around the drug cartels are relevant. Even Prime Minister Rutte was placed under increased security last year after the middle-of-the-road murder of journalist Peter de Vries.

The situation with the trafficking of women is also drastic. The Netherlands also holds the next disgusting record: according to the 2021 report of the authoritative non-governmental organization Internet Watch Foundation, 41% of the discovered servers with child pornography in the world are located on Dutch territory. Two years ago, horrifying data were presented that the Catholic clergy in the Netherlands in the period from 1945 to 2010. has committed sexual assaults against several tens of thousands of children and minors.

Let’s not miss and highlight systemic problems of the Netherlands with racism and discrimination by international and non-governmental organizations. The picture becomes even more saturated if we add an exotic understanding of the rule of law and morality – the legalization of prostitution, the open offering of female flesh in shop windows and the legalized use of drugs. Values… For all those who are wondering – it is no accident that I do not use the official name Netherlands, but precisely advises part of the reasons with which the Dutch authorities switched to this name only – so that the country is not associated only with “red lanterns” and “light “drug”. But they remain there regardless of the rebranding.

It is paradoxical that this country is in Schengen, but we think that Bulgaria is not ready for Schengen. Despite the fact that all EU countries, the European Commission and the lower parliament, these inspections and missions show only one thing – Bulgaria meets all the criteria. The folktales that are based on the Dutch position, the harmful Russian influence in our country and our management problems are far from reality. The profane is the claim that this EU was speaking to us through Rutte’s Holland.

One would rightly ask, “Well, is that just the Netherlands?”. The answer is – of course, it’s not just that. But if we look at it through the prism from which the acting Dutch Prime Minister Rutte looks at Bulgaria, it looks exactly like this – a country with a breached border, from which half of the cocaine enters Europe, a significant part of the synthetic drugs that poison the youth are produced, money is laundered for 16 billion euros and has a severe problem with human trafficking, child pornography and child sexual abuse. I know that these facts – and they are official and authoritative and are debated in Dutch society itself – come into conflict with the idyllic image of the ordinary tourist about the land of tulips, of Rembrandt and Vermeer, of Hugo Grotius, Spinoza and Huygens, which is carried in the myth of the humble and industrious nation of merchants who became rich from their commercial talents and reclaimed their land from the elements of the sea. But, in fact, the picture is not only more complicated, but also much more unflattering. Therefore, when this country – the Netherlands – allows you (systematically) to arrogantly build up Eastern Europe for human rights and democracy, it is good to know the whole picture. Dutch politicians and elites, as well as similar mentality in other countries, must always be reminded that their hubris and edification rest on a rotten foundation.

In addition to what has been mentioned so far, the Netherlands also has one problem that erodes the depth of its claim to be a builder. A historical truth that has been carefully swept under the carpet in the name of the false myth of the “talented people of merchants” and only in recent years has broken through to the top of power, which with a humble face reluctantly admits and is ready to make excuses and buy indulgences. This is the story of the genesis of today’s wealth of the Netherlands, which is rooted in the gigantic colonial plunder of peoples and territories on three continents – in Africa, South America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia. Part of this robbery is also associated with slavery. Few people realize that Holland was among the biggest slave traders and users of slave labor, which later abolished slavery. The beautiful palaces, the unique system of canals, the high art, the gilded halls – all this is due not to any unique industriousness of the Dutch, but above all to colonial plunder and profits from slave labor. The odious Dutch East India Company alone has amassed, according to estimates in the scientific literature, a fortune that in today’s money amounts to almost 8 trillion euros. Not just from a normal spice trade. From the opium trade, from the sale of nearly one million slaves from Africa to Brazil and to the Dutch colonies in today’s Suriname and the Antilles, from the exploitation of slaves on Dutch plantations. This period – XVI-XVII century – in the historiography of the Netherlands is referred to as the “Golden Age”. Read Rembrandt’s exquisite full-length portraits of the influential sugar merchant Marten Sollmans and his wife are actually portraits of a ruthless slave-owning family. I have always followed the thesis that it is not possible to judge the past with today’s value and legal understandings, but together with that – before, which past is loaded with abomination, they should recognize them, repent and be more humble. The Netherlands did not go this way to judge Bulgaria, which has not done anything similar to other nations. Bulgaria did not trade in slaves, did not kill with genocidal passion the population of Indonesia fighting for freedom in the period 1945-1950.

Therefore, to someone like Prime Minister Rutte, I say one thing: when the leaders of my country in 1879 voted for that sacred text from the Tarnovo Constitution – that every slave who set foot on Bulgarian soil becomes free – you continued to mercilessly exploit slave labor and you amassed fortunes from this crime even up to 1910 when you changed slavery to your last colonies in the Caribbean. Are not you ashamed?