It was the day of the 'Plexit'. According to Lubach (NPO1) that means: the departure of Ronald Plasterk. The informateur submitted his report to the House of Representatives as the conclusion of his failed attempt at cabinet formation. At the talk show tables, the interpreters could choose who would get the wind from the front.
In the Eight o'clock news and with On 1 (NPO 1) that was formation partner Pieter Omtzigt. The surprise of the report was that Omtzigt had already said in the beginning that he did not want to join a government with Geert Wilders. Why then had they kept talking for months? Omtzigt did not want to justify himself and avoided his responsibility, the investigators found.
The table of Humberto (RTL4), however, understood Omtzigt. He was rightly suspicious of Wilders, thought PvdA leader Frans Timmermans. Sophie & Jeroen (NPO 1) pointed to Plasterk as the culprit. That vain person had come too much to the fore and had taken sides against Omtzigt.
I know, it is important who will govern the Netherlands, but actually the great attention on TV for the formation stuff is rather small and inward-looking. The talk shows could also have talked about US presidential candidate Trump offering Russia to freely invade NATO countries (NOS News: “You bet they are shocked at NATO”). Or about Rafah, the Palestinian city where one and a half million refugees are trapped and which is being bombed by Israel. The disadvantage of this news is that Gaza is relatively far away, this has been going on for months and it is extremely depressing.
Fortunately, there was a Dutch hook on Monday: the court in The Hague banned the government from supplying F-35 parts to Israel. There is a risk that these fighter jets will be used in actions that violate international humanitarian law. Sophie & Jeroen had the boss of Oxfam Novib who had filed the case and a daughter of a man stuck in Rafah, to bring war a little closer.
The Minister of Foreign Trade believed that the court should not be about foreign policy. And it is also difficult, the judge who seems to take the politician's seat in an international conflict in which the Netherlands does not participate. Yet the court did nothing more than hold the government to its self-imposed laws.
Justice
Nigerian widow Esther Kiobel also came to The Hague to seek justice. She filed a lawsuit against Shell here because the company was allegedly complicit in the death of her husband. The widow is the subject of the documentary Esther & the law, the case against Shell (NPO 2).
In 1995, her husband Barinem Kiobel and eight others were executed by the then Nigerian regime. As a high-ranking official, he stood up for his people, the Ogoni, who rebelled against Shell. According to Kiobel, three other widows and Amnesty International, the regime acted in close cooperation with Shell. The multinational denies this.
The documentary follows Esther Kiobel in the court in The Hague, on her trip to Nigeria where she looks for witnesses and in her hometown of Dallas where she borrows a thousand dollars from a bank at exorbitant interest rates. It's a side path, but I still want to know how it ends.
Esther & the law is a portrait of a militant woman who has experienced terrible things but does not leave it at that. This emphasis on her person has the disadvantage that you are left with many questions about the case. The judge rejects the claims due to lack of evidence. And the viewer has not seen that evidence either. It turns out to be difficult to get your rights in a completely different country so many years later.
#review #difficult #rights #country #years
