Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated following a radio-interview at the Mediapark in Hilversum.
Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch politician, was assassinated by Volkert van der Graaf in Hilversum, North Holland on 6 May 2002, nine days before the general election of 2002, in which he was leading the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF).On a few occasions, Fortuyn had expressed his fear of being murdered: after being pied at the official release of his book De puinhopen van acht jaar Paars, as well as, most notably, on the talk show Jensen! on 22 March 2002. In court at his trial, Van der Graaf, an environmental and animal rights activist, said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak members of society" in seeking political power. Van der Graaf was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. The sentence was upheld after he appealed. He was released on parole in 2014 after completing two-thirds of his sentence and has since lived in Apeldoorn, Gelderland.
Wilhelmus Simon Petrus Fortuijn, known as Pim Fortuyn (Dutch: [ˈpɪɱ fɔrˈtœyn] (listen); 19 February 1948 – 6 May 2002), was a Dutch politician, author, civil servant, businessman, sociologist and academic who founded the party Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn or LPF) in 2002.Fortuyn worked as a professor at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam before branching into a business career and was an advisor to the Dutch government on social infrastructure. He then became prominent in the Netherlands as a press columnist, writer and media commentator.
Initially a Marxist who was sympathetic to the Communist Party of the Netherlands, and later a member of the Dutch Labour Party in the 1970s, Fortuyn's beliefs began to shift to the right in the 1990s, especially related to the immigration policies of the Netherlands. Fortuyn criticised multiculturalism, immigration and Islam in the Netherlands. He called Islam "a backward culture", and was quoted as saying that if it were legally possible, he would close the borders for Muslim immigrants. Fortuyn also supported tougher measures against crime and opposed state bureaucracy, wanting to reduce the Dutch financial contribution to the European Union. He was labelled a far-right populist by his opponents and in the media, but he fiercely rejected this label. Fortuyn was openly homosexual and a supporter of gay rights.Fortuyn explicitly distanced himself from "far-right" politicians such as the Belgian Filip Dewinter, Austrian Jörg Haider, or Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen whenever compared to them. While he compared his own politics to centre-right politicians such as Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Edmund Stoiber of Germany, he also admired former Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl, a social democrat, and Democratic U.S. president John F. Kennedy. Fortuyn also criticised the polder model and the policies of the outgoing government of Wim Kok and repeatedly described himself and LPF's ideology as pragmatic and not populistic. In March 2002, his newly created LPF became the largest party in Fortuyn's hometown Rotterdam during the Dutch municipal elections held that year.Fortuyn was assassinated during the 2002 Dutch national election campaign by Volkert van der Graaf, a left-wing environmentalist and animal rights activist. In court at his trial, van der Graaf said he murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as "scapegoats" and targeting "the weak members of society" in seeking political power. The LPF went on to poll in second place during the election but went into decline soon after.