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Geert Wilders
Party for Freedom chair of the parliamentary party
In office 2006 – present
Born	September 6, 1963 Venlo, Netherlands
Political party	Party for Freedom
Website	www.geertwilders.nl

Geert Wilders (born September 6, 1963 in Venlo) is a Dutch right wing conservative politician who is best known for his views favoring the restriction of immigration, particularly from non-western countries, his criticism of and opposition to Islam. He is the leader of the Party for Freedom, a party he founded after he left the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

Contents 1 Life 2 Political career 3 Position on Islam 4 References 5 External links

Wilders was born in the Dutch province of Limburg and raised a Roman Catholic. He is now a non-denominational Christian. After his high school years, he worked for two years in Israel, near to the Jordan border, also visiting other countries in the Middle East. He completed his military service in 1983. After working in the health insurance industry, he became a parliamentary assistant to Frits Bolkestein in 1990, in that time keeping up a heavy travel schedule, including a visit to Teheran, Iran. In 1997, he was elected for the VVD to the municipal council of Utrecht, the fourth largest city of the Netherlands. A year later, he was elected to the national parliament.^[1]

Wilders' wife is Hungarian, they married in 1992. His father was a manager for the printing and copying manufacturing company Océ.^[1]

In September 2004, he left the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD in Dutch), having been a member since 1989, to form his own political party, the Groep Wilders, later renamed Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV or Party for Freedom). He left the liberal party, over a dispute within the VVD in late August 2004, about (among other things) his refusal to share the party's position that EU-accession negotiations must be started with Turkey. Geert Wilders has been in the Tweede Kamer since 1998.

His party program is one that claims to be committed to freedom of the individual; Wilders believes that the Netherlands has been held hostage by elitist (mostly social democrat and left-wing liberal) politicians for decades. He claims to want to give it "back to the people" and in this respect he can be seen as a populist.

His political views (and so the ones of the PVV as well) often overlap those of the deceased Pim Fortuyn and his List Pim Fortuyn. There are strong resemblances, certainly on socio-economic issues, to libertarianism. Wilders wants to lower taxes, decrease most welfare, raise highway speed limits and cut state regulations by making it mandatory to scrap two legal rules for every new one to be instated. On the crime issue he has supported a U.S.-style three strikes law with mandatory life sentences; initially also for petty theft — arguing that there was an enormous shoplifting problem caused by Moroccan immigrants that could only be resolved this way — but he subsequently modified his position in that he wants only three successive acts of violent crime to give rise to such punishment.

In polls released following the assassination of Theo van Gogh, it was estimated that Wilders' party could win as much as 29 (out of 150) seats in the Dutch parliament (Tweede Kamer). With the uproar over the killing of Van Gogh subsiding, this number declined to a low of one in October 2005. In February 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, it rose again to three seats.

A few weeks after the assassination, Geert Wilders stayed away from regular meetings in parliament for several weeks. Even though a member's presence is not mandatory, it is uncommon not to show up for weeks on end. Geert Wilders has stated that he did this out of concern for his personal security. Having been assigned a new seating position in the parliamentary meeting hall (one further away from the public observation area), he has once again started to attend meetings.

Wilders is under constant security protection because of frequent threats to his life. On 10 November 2004, two suspected terrorists were captured after an hour-long siege of a building in The Hague. They had three grenades and have been accused of planning to kill Geert Wilders as well as then fellow MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The men in question were presumed members of what the Dutch secret service, the AIVD, has termed the Hofstadgroep.

In recent interviews Geert Wilders more than once indicated that the Dutch Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights should be changed or temporarily revoked if necessary to better protect the Dutch people from Islamic extremism. He is in favor of stripping criminals with dual nationality of their Dutch citizenship and deporting them to the country of their original nationality.

In response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy Wilders published the specific set of cartoons on his website (February 1, 2006), purportedly in support of the Danish cartoonists and freedom of speech. Following his publication, Wilders claimed to have received more than 40 death threats in just two days.

In November 2006, PVV won, in their first Parlimentary Election, 9 out of 150 available seats.

Referering to the increased presence of Muslims in the Netherlands, he said: "Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!"^[2] Later, he suggested that Muslims should 'tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands' because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would 'in these days be hunted down as a terrorist'. Not surprisingly, these statements caused strong reactions in Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.^{[citation needed]}

• Dutch parliament page on Wilders. Background information about career (Dutch). Retrieved on March 15, 2005.

• (Dutch) Groep Wilders/Party for Freedom
• (Dutch) Geert Wilders