February 15th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Last Friday a dutch journalist asked an Amsterdam court to convict him for eating chocolate. He believes that by eating chocolate he was benefiting from child slavery on cocoa farms on the Ivory Coast.
Teun Van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labor.
“If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem,” van de Keuken said.
Ivory Coast, the world’s No. 1 cocoa producer which has been racked by instability since a brief 2002 civil war, is the target of allegations by international rights groups that children are working as slaves on its cocoa plantations.
The man began his attempt to be charged for eating chocolate two years ago, when the Dutch public prosecutor ruled that it was not a case for the courts and that the journalist was not directly involved with the cocoa business.
On Friday, he appealed against the prosecutor’s decision before a court which is expected to rule in April.
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November 24th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
Dutch Labour party leader Wouter Bos was turned away from a polling station in Amsterdam on Wednesday because he showed up to vote without all the right papers.
That’s not the way to start off an election day now is it?
The Labour leader, Bos, who is usually calm and relaxed, cameras Bos, at first looked stunned In front of dozens of television and then sheepish before hurrying home to fetch the correct documentation.
Bos has seen a commanding opinion poll lead vanish over recent months as his rival, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, took the credit for an economic recovery in the run-up to Wednesday’s parliamentary election.
There’s no word yet on how he did in the election but that couldn’t have been a good Omen.
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November 9th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
How eerie is this? A Dutch woman, who had already planned her own funeral and purchased her plot after her husbands death last year, was found dead next to the grave in Amsterdam where she wanted to be buried.
The widow, 65, probably died of a heart attack while she was visiting the family grave where her name, but no date, was already inscribed.
She had been carrying a bag with her that containing her will and had already organised details of her funeral including the music she wanted played.
I wonder if she really did just happen to die beside her own grave to be, or if she committed suicide? The report doesn’t state whether an autopsy was performed.
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