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Geert Wilders to show anti-Koran film in Lords

05 March 2010 04:00 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders arrives in Britain today on the crest of an electoral triumph that could mean him entering government in a matter of months, APA reports citing www.Timesonline.com website.

Mr Wildersâ€™s Freedom Party made big gains in Dutch local elections this week, widely regarded as a dress rehearsal for the national poll on June 9.

He has been invited to the House of Lords by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the UKIP leader, to show his controversial film Fitna. This has already provoked widespread anger for its crude juxtaposition of extremist atrocities, such as beheadings and the 9/11 attacks, with verses from the Koran.

The Freedom Party, founded by Mr Wilders in 2005, won in the town of Almere, near Amsterdam, and came second in The Hague, the only two places in which it fielded a candidate out of 394 cities and towns, aiming for maximum impact with minimum campaigning.

â€œToday Almere and The Hague, tomorrow the whole of the Netherlands. This is our springboard for success in parliamentary elections,â€ said Mr Wilders, who campaigned in Almere for a ban on the wearing of headscarves in public. â€œWe are going to take the Netherlands back from the leftist elite that comforts criminals and supports Islamisation.â€

Mr Wilders, distinctive with his dyed platinum hair, has progressively picked up support from disenchanted Dutch voters by using fiery rhetoric about ending immigration, as the Muslim population in the Netherlands has grown to one million. He has compared the Koran to Hitlerâ€™s Mein Kampf and faces criminal charges for inciting hatred in a trial that was put on hold during the election campaign.

Mr Wilders was banned from Britain by Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, but restrictions were overturned on appeal and today will mark his second visit since then.

The most successful far-right party in recent times in the EU was the Freedom Party (FPO) in Austria, which joined the Government with 27 per cent of the votes in 1999 but lost power when its support fell dramatically in 2003.