Hate Buster

Key to the city

Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen’s inclusive policies have defused racial tension and kept tolerance alive

Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen knew his city risked a spiral of racial violence last Nov. 2, when Muslim extremist Mohammed Bouyeri shot and killed filmmaker Theo van Gogh, then cut Van Gogh’s throat and impaled a note on his chest threatening others for insulting Islam. But Cohen was not about to let this outrage pass in silence. He called on Amsterdammers to “kick up a ruckus and make yourselves heard.”

An estimated 20,000 people did just that, gathering on Dam Square that evening to bang on pots and drums to protest the murder. “I felt it was important to bring people together to express our anger that something like this could happen in our city,” says Cohen, 57, who became mayor in 2001 after a long career in national politics with the Labor Party. “The Muslim community did not need to be asked. They took the initiative themselves to join in and condemn the murder.”

While the inflammatory tone and language of some Dutch politicians alienated the country’s almost 1 million Muslim minority, Cohen’s inclusive approach was widely credited with helping keep reprisal attacks against the Muslim community in Amsterdam so low. A report by the Anne Frank Foundation counted 106 reprisals across the country, but only one incident was reported to Amsterdam police. “Cohen was incredibly successful in defusing the tension in Amsterdam,” says Hans Dijkstal, a former leader of the conservative vvd party. Since law school, Cohen says his motto has been audi et alteram partem, which he loosely translates as “listen to all sides.” And he works hard to stay true to that dictum. Earlier this year, for example, a group of young Moroccans complained that they were being systematically turned away from discos; club owners countered that young Moroccans are often the instigators of rowdy behavior. Together the two sides agreed to come down hard on venues that discriminated, but to be equally tough on troublemakers. Says Ayhan Tonca, chairman of the Contact Group for Muslims and the Government, a leading Dutch Muslim organization: “Cohen puts the emphasis on dialogue, which is the only way divisions in our society will be solved.”

Cohen was born into an intellectual Jewish family; his paternal grandparents were killed at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. But Cohen says the Holocaust was always discussed in rational rather than emotional terms during his childhood; this taught him to look at problems analytically. Those who know him say this background contributed to making Cohen such a pragmatic politician. As Junior Justice Minister between 1998 and 2000, he steered two potentially controversial laws through parliament: one toughening up asylum procedures and another introducing same-sex marriages. Cohen’s moderate tone on the asylum issue is in stark contrast to the current tenor of the debate in the Netherlands, where immigration has become intensely divisive.

The letter skewered to Van Gogh’s body referred specifically to the Jewish mayor of Amsterdam and included him in death threats, but Cohen says he’s not frightened: “Immigrants have always been part of our city and Amsterdam is, and remains, tolerant. Jews should not be afraid to walk the streets wearing their skullcaps, Moroccans must be able to find jobs, and homosexuals must not be insulted. The only ‘us and them’ that exist are the citizens who want to live together in peace and those who don’t.” —By Abi Daruvalla

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