Asylum seeker quiz: tasteless television or great PR stunt?

Public television channel VPRO will tonight broadcast a quiz show featuring five failed asylum seekers competing for €4,000 to help them settle back into their home country.


The show, a one-off as part of an experimental tv week, aims to show ‘how Dutch they are’, says VPRO television head Frank Wiering. ‘We will not hear sad stories, we want to show the sort of people they are and that is is a sin to let them go.’
The players have to answer questions about the Dutch monarchy, history, geography, Dutch celebrities and the language, with the winner taking home cash to help establish a new life. The runners up will get tulip bulbs and a bullet proof vest.
The five all face leaving the Netherlands before the end of the year. They include and aerospace technology student from Cameron and a Guus Meeuwis fan who will be deported to Chechenya.
The VPRO says the programme Weg van Nederland (which means both ‘away from the Netherlands’ and ‘crazy about the Netherlands’) has caused a stir abroad, generating horrified headlines in Belgium, Germany and France.
But it is not a hoax, like the 2007 Great Donor Show in which people competed for a kidney transplant, Wiering says.
‘We want to focus attention on the fact that a lot of children of asylum seekers are being deported,’ he told RNW. ‘These are children who speak great Dutch and only know their country of origin from the television. We think we need to stop and think about this.’
The show will be broadcast on Nederland 3 at 8.30 on Thursday evening.

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