President of anti-Islamic Pegida Netherlands: Who is Edwin Wagensveld?
First, there is an organization founded in Germany known as racist and Islamophobic: Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA). The movement is spreading rapidly in other European countries as well.
Wagensveld is the head of Pegida Netherlands, which was founded on 11 October 2015. He tore the Holy Quran in a demonstration he held alone in the city of The Hague on 22 January under police protection in front of the temporary Dutch parliament building, and on 13 February (2023) in the city of Utrecht.
Similarly, the action of PEGIDA, which planned to burn the Qur'an in Rotterdam on October 22 (2022), ended before Wagensveld was taken into custody.
Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (German: Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), abbreviated Pegida (stylised in its logo as PEGIDA), is a pan-European, anti-Islam, far-right political movement. German Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicised and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.
Wagensveld, who was released the same day after being detained, wanted to carry out a similar action in The Hague the next day, but the police detained Wagensveld again because he did not comply with the demonstration rules.
In a written statement made by the Dutch Prosecutor's Office on 17 November, it was stated that Wagensveld, who was detained by the police for insulting the Prophet Muhammad using a megaphone at the PEGIDA demonstration in Rotterdam, would not be prosecuted because he insulted the religion itself and did not commit any crime, not the members of the Islamic faith.
Pegida Netherlands is the Dutch branch of the German movement Pegida (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). It had its inaugural rally on 11 October 2015 in Utrecht. Those in attendance included Lutz Bachmann, Siegfried Däbritz, and Tommy Robinson.
Pegida (German: Patriotische Europäer Gegen Islamisierung Des Abendlandes), which stands for "Patriot Europeans Against the Islamization of the West", is a Dresden-based German political movement. The movement, which initially targeted the German government, started to organize mass demonstrations on October 20, 2014, to oppose the Islamization of the West.
Pegida was founded in 2014 by Lutz Bachmann, owner of a public relations agency in Dresden.
She first performed in Dresden on Monday evening, October 20, 2014, with around 300 fans. She then continued to gather in Dresden every Monday except for Christmas, finding more supporters.
Their number reached 5,500 on November 24, 2014, and 17,500 on December 22, 2014. On January 5, 2015, he showed up in Dresden with 18 thousand people.
According to their leaders, Germany's decision to provide arms support to the Kurdistan Regional Government was instrumental in their action.
They were organized as a Facebook group on the clashes between radical Islamists and Kurds in the demonstrations in Hamburg and Celle, where the Yezidi population was relatively high, during the period when conflicts increased in Kobane and demonstrations were held in many cities in Germany.
However, let us point out right away that PEGIDA's objection to Germany's arms support is not for humanist reasons. Counter-arms aid as it increased the crisis and led to more immigrants coming to Germany.
In the leaflets they distributed in November, PEGIDAists demanded a controlled, rated immigration policy like in Canada, a strict deportation policy, a tightly controlled travel policy, a tough attitude towards criminals, and the preservation of Christian-Jewish Western culture and German identity. brought.
He also stated that he was in favor of re-emphasizing the concept of patriotism in Germany, where the concepts of patriotism and pride in ethnicity were interpreted negatively due to World War II and Nazi past.