THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch MPs will this week debate the touchy subject of scrapping royal defamation laws, but the issue has exposed rifts within the fragile ruling coalition, news reports say.
The Netherlands remains one of the few countries that still maintains “lese majeste” laws, dating back to 1830, making it a criminal offense to insult Dutch King Willem-Alexander.
Parliament’s lower house will on Thursday discuss a bill proposed by the progressive D66 party, which would drop clauses against defaming the king contained within wider laws on crimes against the royalty.
First deemed a crime in 1830 and taken up in the Dutch statute books in 1886, in modern times the law “implied restricting freedom of speech,” D66 parliamentarian Kees Verhoeven says in the proposed bill, penned in early 2016.
— AFP
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