Trouble between two ethnic communities in a small town continues to dominate the Dutch papers today. There's also room for security scare stories regarding Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders and Schiphol Airport, whilst the city of Amsterdam faces an artistic exodus.

Racial tensions boil over in small town
All today's papers cover what the mass-circulation De Telegraaf is calling the race riots in Culemborg, a small town in the centre of the Netherlands. The term is too sensational for the series of nasty incidents perpetrated by young men from the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Moluccan communities which live there.

According to de Volkskrant, tensions between the two ethnic groups were already high when a car was torched on New Year's Eve. "By chance," a local tells the paper, "it was a Moluccan footballer's car." Moluccan youths then reportedly beat up a 55-year-old Moroccan man in retaliation.

Around 5 a.m., a car with five Moroccans inside rammed a house in a street popular with Moluccan families. The Moroccan side of the story is that the driver lost control over the vehicle after it was stoned by Moluccan youths. "You don't ram your own car with four passengers inside, do you?" asks the same local.

Other people in Culemborg are just sick and tired of the continuing trouble. A Moroccan woman who lives in a 'Moluccan' street says she gets on perfectly well with her neighbours, but someone threw stones through her windows on Sunday evening. "I've lived here for 33 years," she tells the paper. "I have respect for everybody. It's just bad youths from both groups. I hate them."

Lock down
Trouw's headline reads: "Culemborg's Moluccan neighbourhood locked down". There is now a huge police presence in the town to try and impose order. Only 14 youths have been arrested since the New Year and alleyways in the area have now been shut off with cement blocks to stop troublemakers managing to get away from police.

Not only local Moroccan youths are being stopped from entering the Moluccan area, young Dutch Moluccans from other parts of the Netherlands will also be kept out. The fear is that Moluccan 'reinforcements' might be called in. The local authorities have also imposed a ban on gatherings of more than four people.

The paper asks whether the massive police presence will sort the situation out. The local police chief explains: "A number of youths are not put off by the chance of being arrested, but actually see this as a way of gaining status."

Breach of faith?
Despite its enormous 'race riots' spread, De Telegraaf still has a little space on its front page to devote to a story about the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), Geert Wilders.

The anti-Islam firebrand has been under the most stringent police protection for years following threats against his life. However, Karen Geurtsen, a journalist, managed to infiltrate the PVV for four months posing as a work experience student. 

"If I'd wanted to," she tells us, "I could have done something to him." She had no problem obtaining a pass with which she was able to get everywhere, including the PVV's high-security meeting room in parliament itself, without even having her bags checked.

Mr Wilders appears to see the affair more as a breach of good faith than a security lapse. "I don't feel less safe because of this, but I feel I've been had. This was below the belt," he fumes. Nevertheless he is going to take up the security aspect with the authorities.
 
Breach of security?
The AD, meanwhile, has space on its front page for a touch of righteous indignation (at least on behalf of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport) about another exposé, this time perpetrated by a foreign newspaper:

"Our national airport is no haven for international terrorists, as the British paper, the Sunday Express, has claimed after a photographer was able to smuggle an insulin syringe on board a plane."

The paper assures us that a syringe by itself could never endanger a passenger plane. Besides, it goes on, the syringe was not discovered either on the outbound flight to Amsterdam from London. A Schiphol spokesperson is left to dismiss the Sunday Express as indulging in "pure sensationalism". Something the AD would, of course, never do.

Amsterdam losing out to Berlin
"Creative? Go to Berlin" a headline in nrc.next tells us, explaining that Amsterdam is too expensive and less inspirational than in years gone by. The Dutch capital's image as a global hotspot of bubbling creativity is disappearing fast, with artists demoting it to a mere holiday destination.

Artists are forsaking Amsterdam, the paper says, and Berlin, which is far bigger and cheaper, is their preferred destination. There, they can rent a studio and eat out twice a day for a fraction of the price in Amsterdam.

Nrc.next traces the path of Dutch webdesigner Edial Dekker from the Dutch to the German capital. He explains: "Amsterdam was too small, too easy. I was looking for adventure... a global metropolis, where I could build up a webdesign agency from nothing".

The paper, however, also lists attempts by Amsterdam City Council to stem the exodus of artistic talent. These include the Amsterdam Arts Fund which pumps some eight million euros a year into about 700 projects. The city's 'breeding ground'  policy also provides about 2500 workplaces for artists, craftspeople and what are termed cultural entrepreneurs.