The police and the Public Prosecution Service have identified several suspects in the investigation into defamation, insults and threats against writer Pim Lammers. The Central Netherlands police informed the ANP on Monday. It is expected that these suspects will be heard shortly. The police want to “speed up the investigation, to send a clear signal,” said a spokesman. “We take this matter very seriously. Free speech is a great good.”
Lammers resigned his assignment for the Children’s Book Week two weeks ago because he had received death threats. These followed online attacks against Lammers over an old adult story he wrote nearly a decade ago, about the relationship between a teenage boy and his trainer. The fuss arose after a Christian lobby group, presenter Monique Smit and model Kim Feenstra, without any context, shared a few sentences from the story online.
The Public Prosecution Service has assessed some of the many hundreds of messages and responses to Lammers. “Many reactions are very nasty, but not legally punishable,” explains the police spokesman. “In a number of cases, according to the Public Prosecution Service, it is about publishing the punishable reactions.”
Not only Lammers, but also authors who stood up for him received death threats. Authors and publishers then decided to place a full-page advertisement in all national newspapers to show support for Lammers, and bookshops also supported him. They paid extra attention to the writer’s works by, for example, displaying his work in a prominent place and hanging posters with his poems.
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