The PointBy Daniel Greenfield

Remember when the media was vocally insisting that “No Go Zones” in European cities were a crazy lie invented by Islamophobes?

Then Merkel came out and said it. Now Amsterdam’s ombudsman is all but saying it.

Tourist hotspot Amsterdam turns into a “lawless jungle” after dark with the police powerless to intervene against crime and violence, the city’s ombudsman warned in an interview Saturday. “The city centre becomes an urban jungle at night,” Amsterdam’s official ombudsman Arre Zuurmond told Dutch daily Trouw, warning of illegal car and bike races zooming through the streets, open drugs sales and general mayhem. “Criminal money flourishes, there is no authority and the police can no longer handle the situation,” he warned.

Or are trying to handle it.

Zuurmond paints a painful picture of the city centre’s nightlife after previously setting up three cameras in the busy Leidseplein square ringed by bars and clubs. “One night we counted 900 offences, mainly between the hours of 2:00am and 4:00am. The atmosphere is grim, and there is an air of lawlessness,” he said. “Scooters race through the pedestrian areas. There is a lot of shouting. Drugs are being bought. There is stealing. People pee and even poop on the streets,” he said. “There is violence but no action. You can even pee on the van of a mobile (police) unit and the driver won’t say anything.”

He isn’t directly addressing Islam, instead it’s about the lack of police control. But much of Amsterdam’s crime comes from its Muslim settler population.

The Netherlands is starting to resemble a narco-state with the police unable to combat the emergence of a parallel criminal economy, a report from the Dutch police association has warned. Official figures suggest crime is on a downward trend but officers say many victims have stopped reporting incidents while organised crime syndicates have been given a free rein. A large majority of ecstasy taken in Europe and the US comes from labs in the south of the country, which are increasingly run by Moroccan gangs involved in the production of cannabis. Half of the €5.7bn a year of cocaine taken in Europe comes through the port of Rotterdam, according to Europol.

This is what Geert Wilders was talking about.

“The truth has to be told”, wrote ‘a commentator from the Netherlands’. “Moroccan youths here in the Netherlands are causing numerous problems. They carry out hold-ups, rob old people and attack bus drivers and gays. These incidents are occurring on a daily basis. In my opinion, the Dutch have a lot of patience with these criminals.”



Even though the majority of the Moroccans who reacted consider Geert Wilders a racist and believe he doesn’t offer solutions for the problems, they agree with his position. “What Wilders says is true”, writes a reader who says he witnessed the behaviour of young people of Moroccan origin during the three years he lived in the Netherlands.

How broad is the problem? As Soeren Kern notes at Gatestone, very broad indeed.

Forty percent of Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands between the ages of 12 and 24 have been arrested, fined, charged or otherwise accused of committing a crime during the past five years, according to a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Interior. In Dutch neighborhoods where the majority of residents are Moroccan immigrants, the youth crime rate reaches 50%. Moreover, juvenile delinquency among Moroccans is not limited to males; girls and young women are increasingly involved in criminal activities.

Those no-go zones sure are a myth, aren’t they.