People with guts go against the flow, defy accepted notions and conventions. Radio Netherlands Worldwide presents a series of portraits of people who this year proved they had guts. They could be politicians, idealists or your next-door neighbour.
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Franklin Hill is black and was born in Surinam (a former Dutch colony - now an independent republic - in South America). He lives with his white Dutch boyfriend in Amsterdam.
One night, Mr Hill was having trouble getting to sleep and at around four o'clock in the morning he turned on the computer for a chat session online. He came into contact with Marleen, who he thought he knew from a party, and a few other people. Before he knew it the chat became full of insults and profanity, directed at himself.
"Hey homo", was the initial reaction from Marleen. It turned out not to be the Marleen he met at a party. In response, Franklin Hill just asked, "Who is this?" There was no reaction and he typed: "Yeah, I'm gay, so what?" To his astonishment, all hell broke loose and all kinds of profanities were thrown at him via MSN. "Dirty faggot", "Death to fags and blacks", "The Third Reich should be resurrected" and so it went on.
Nice evening
After about four minutes, Franklin Hill lefts the chat session with the words "and a nice evening to you too". He was bewildered, but also angry.
"It takes audacity to do something like that", thought the 32-year-old flight attendant. His new "chat-friends" wanted to carry on for a bit. Their reactions were brief and to the point "F**k you, loser" and "You stay here!!!"
Mr Hill, who had once started studying for a law degree in Surinam, decided not to let it go at that. He copied the conversation and filed a complaint with the police. The police were flabbergasted. Franklin Hill: "The officer said he had never seen so much evidence of internet threats in black and white. I thought I would have been the umpteenth person to come in with a complaint, but that wasn't the case." His case went to court and two of his "chat-friends" were indeed prosecuted. Seventeen-year-old Marleen received 15 hours community service and a 36-year-old man was fined 750 euros.
As far as Franklin is concerned the others should have been prosecuted too. Franklin Hill: "Many people don't realise that you can be 'done' [prosecuted] for writing bad things."Satisfaction
It doesn't really matter to Franklin Hill what the punishment is: "The fact that they now know they can't just say what they want in a chat room and that they didn't get away with it gives me satisfaction."
Does he think he's got guts? "I'm still not sure whether I've got guts or not. I thought it was the people who insulted me who had the guts. It takes a lot of audacity to do what they did."
Is he scared they'll take revenge? "No, you just have to do something about it when people do something like this. A lot of people let things go. You don't have to get a gang together to beat these people up. There are enough laws and legislation to take on discrimination and threats."
* RNW translation (nc/tpf)
Tags: Black Gays, Bullying, Discrimination, Dutch Crime , Homosexuality, Internet, Netherlands