Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who served time in prison after he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl, won his second match at the Paris Olympics and received an even harsher reaction from the crowd on Wednesday than for his first match.
Just booing?
He went to another country, raped a 12-yo, fled and after conviction, his government - the Netherlands, only decided to give him a year of prison.
There’s an important detail that I’m not really seeing here. The UK gave him an 8 year sentence. The Netherlands negotiated to have him transferred to their jurisdiction, which happened after 1 year served, and then the Netherlands promptly let him go.
Not saying it’s right, but for context:
One legal distinction is that Van de Velde is unlikely to have been convicted of rape had he stood trial in the Netherlands rather than England. In England, sex with a 12-year-old is rape, regardless of the circumstances: an under-16 cannot legally consent. But after he was extradited to the Netherlands, having serving almost a year of his prison sentence, he was released after less than a month. Under Dutch law, his crime was deemed to be the lesser offence of ontucht, sexual acts that violate social-ethical norms.
That, combined with him being on the Olympic team, sorta makes me concerned about Dutch people
The Netherlands is kind of fucked up when it comes to morality sometimes. I used to work with people from this country, and there were constant issues.
Edit: look up “Netherlands Santa”
The other responder here is either an AI bot trying to cloud the issue wa long answer, or a human doing the same. Right out of the playbook— Not falling for it 💅
Dude they even said that Zwarte Pete is being phased out because while Zwarte Pete themselves in the context of only the Netherlands wasnt very problematic, the fact that the world is more globalized and Americans who HAD been hurt by THEIR history of Blackface took precedence over an overall positive tradition for people of the Netherlands. Nuance exists, and American history is not WORLD history
If you’re not willing to be nuanced about difficult topics in good faith, you clearly do not care about it, nor about making the world a better place.
I’m sorry, but this is just really kind of disingenuous to start something like this next to a topic such as this. Your experience with one company or something is purely anecdotal and the controversy around Zwarte Piet is also very nuanced to this very day. The kind of nuance someone not from here will not get from a casual google search. For anyone that cares about actually understanding, here’s a rundown:
Many people attributed Zwarte Piet as a fun and good role model for kids, not some kind of caricature clown to laugh at. Literally almost everyone grew up knowing and having a fond enjoyment of Zwarte Piet, like a childhood imaginary friend that always showed up when you needed a smile the most. And that creates a strong desire to set that positivity forth by continuing the tradition. It takes really good reasons to destroy something most people attribute to be part of the greater good of their lives.
We try to understand racism, and strive to effectively reduce it rather than just mindlessly treat symptoms. Many people saw the existence of Zwarte Piet as a way to instill positive experiences to kids who might be isolated from having positive experiences with actual people of color. We know that in part racism comes about from not having enough (or too many bad) real world experiences with people of different skin colors. It is a type of fear of the unknown. As such, this still seems like solid reasoning. (Fun note, rats will also not help other stranger rats with a different fur color to escape even with no direct harm to themselves except when they have already lived alongside aside a rat with that fur color)
Even people of color were not completely on one side, but for the ones that it hurt, it hurt loudly. Black people in the Caribbean (Also part of the Netherlands) still use Zwarte Piet to this day, because they do not care - They do not see the racism in it. Unfortunately there seems to be a correlation between being affected by racism and seeing the racism in Zwarte Piet, as many of us learned as the conversation marched on. And racists definitely did wield Zwarte Piet to make their racism be known. In a world without racism, Zwarte Piet would not be controversial. And many people were not acutely aware of the racism some people of color faced.
The majority has wanted to get rid of it (since about 2018, actually), and most places have more accepted solutions in place now. But this does not mean that many people agree because we think Zwarte Piet is actually inherently racist. It’s because we’ve heard the concerns of people of color and weighed their burden to be more important to relieve than the perceived benefit of tradition and instilling a positive message on people that look different from yourself. It also didn’t help that the vast majority of people that still wanted to overrule those concerns were pretty obviously racist, which pushed even more people over the edge, because we don’t want to hold traditions in place that shield racists and bigots. Some countries could really learn from that.
EDIT: Added a video about the rat study :)
What else should they be doing? Storming the court and dragging him to a lynching tree? I’m guessing the French wouldn’t be especially accommodating to such vigilantism.
i think at the very least he deserves an ass whooping. not trying to get into vigilante wierdo justice here but it would be nice to see one less confirmed remorseless pedo in this world since the system has definitely failed in this case.
Not putting him on a pedestal as a representative of your country would be a good start.
There’s SO many options between one year in prison and extra judicial killing. Like, in prison for 10 years, just off the top of my head.
Stop putting words in their mouth, there are so many things to do other than booing that are non violent but you just immediately took the most extreme possible outcome and suggested that was what the person you are reply to meant.
They could have not invited a convicted child rapist to represent their country at the Olympics.
Really? You want vigilantism and lynching? Do you think that might possibly go wrong at some point?
