The death of former Czech president Václav Havel has not yet been overshadowed in the papers by the death of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il. Reponses to the Deetman report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church fill many of the inside pages. Nrc.next looks at the situation of stateless persons. A local lawmaker is horrified by government measures targeting people on benefits. And De Telegraaf pays tribute to volunteers.

Václav Havel remembered in Dutch press
The news of the death of South Korean leader Kim Jong-il came too late for this morning’s papers. Instead de Volkskrant and Trouw pay tribute to Václav Havel, who died on Sunday at the age of 75.

Trouw recounts how he led the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in 1989 in what was then Czechoslovakia, just six months after his release from prison. He was still on parole when he became president on 29 December. The revolution had taken just ten days. Then protestors gathered in the cold on Wenceslas Square and rattled their keys to indicate it was time for the communist leaders to go. Yesterday, the Czechs returned and rattled their keys once more, this time as an ode to their former leader.

Havel died in his holiday home in the north of the country where he wrote many of his literary and political works. Before the revolution, the co-founder of the political movement Charter ’77, was often watched here by the secret police. The organisation was not a mass movement like Solidarity in Poland, but when the revolution came Havel was the man they followed. In his first speech, he said “I will never lie to you.” Trouw quotes his former advisor: “His legacy is that truth and love will overcome lies and hate.”

Reponses to the Deetman report
The reactions to the Deetman report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, which presented its findings on Friday, have found their way into the papers this morning. A letter from the bishops expressing their regret has gone down the wrong way, writes De Telegraaf.

In the letter the bishops say they are “deeply ashamed of the times a number of people with responsibility in the church failed to take action to end the suffering”. Calls for the bishops to stand down have been resisted. That’s not what the victims want, and besides none of the bishops were actually involved in the abuse, their sexual abuse spokesman tells protestant daily Trouw. Victims in AD call for the culture of silence in the Catholic Church to be broken. A photo in Trouw of churchgoers picking up a copy of the bishops’ letter – which was not read out in full during the service – shows a sign reading ‘Silence’ in five languages in the foreground.

In its commentary, nrc.next accuses the church of breaking many of its own rules. Not just the sixth and tenth commandments on lewdness were broken, but also the eighth, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Cardinal Simonis attempted to cover up what the church leadership knew about the abuse in the loaded sentence in German “Wir haben es nicht gewusst”, the phrase associated with the German people’s denials that they knew about concentration camps during World War II. What is clear from the Deetman report is that the church leadership did know and they did everything they could to cover up the widespread abuse.

UN criticises the Netherlands over stateless persons
On Friday, a UNHCR report damned the Netherlands treatment of stateless persons, nrc.next reports. Fifty years ago, the UN drafted a treaty to limit statelessness. An investigation into stateless persons has revealed that the situation in the Netherlands is worrying. There is no procedure to establish whether or not someone is stateless. More than 2000 people are registered as stateless in the Netherlands, but there are more than 83,000 people whose nationality is ‘unknown’, 10,000 of them do not have a residence permit and it is not known how many of the 97,000 illegal people in the Netherlands are stateless.

As far as the law is concerned, stateless people do not exist. They have no access to work, an income, health care, education or shelter.

To be registered as stateless, people have to produce documents demonstrating their situation, but many of them cannot. Many have had their nationality taken away from them because they belong to an ethnic minority. Others become stateless, when their country ceases to exist. Many stateless people end up living on the streets. Without identity papers they can be arrested. Once they are released they are given a letter telling them to leave the country within 48 hours, but without a passport they cannot enter any other country legally. Their situations are hopeless

Local lawmaker raises alarm over benefit cuts
In Trouw, a local lawmaker in Utrecht raises the alarm ahead of a debate in the Dutch Senate tomorrow. She warns that four times as many families stand to lose their benefits under the new government cuts than the 18,000 thought up to now. Rinda den Besten says, “I was shocked by the numbers.”

Under the latest cuts, young people with a job who are still living at home with a parent on benefits may find themselves supporting that parent – or vice versa. The government wants to put an end to multiple benefits going to one home, but the measure will also penalise people when they do get a job. But Christian Democrat MPs plan to ask the cabinet to review the measure for the first group.

Ms den Besten says she fears that the measure will lead to fraud, with people pretending to live elsewhere. Exceptional cases can turn to local councils for help, but she says “People will have to come to the counter with all their receipts, while there is already a lot of shame.”

Telegraaf pays tribute to volunteers
De Telegraaf pays tribute to the country’s volunteers, printing messages from ministers to those that give up their time to help others. A stunning 5.5 million people are volunteers, and this week they are being given special thanks in the campaign “Christmas greetings for volunteers”. “You make the difference,” writes Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Later today, Health and Sports Minister Edith Schippers will open a special concert organised by the mass circulation paper. “Without you, sports, healthcare and the whole of society would come to a standstill,” she tells volunteers.