Prime minister Mark Rutte has reacted to criticism of his appeal for people to ‘behave normally’ earlier this week by saying he did not care about people’s backgrounds.

The open letter, published in most newspapers on Monday, has been criticised for appearing to focus on Muslims while ignoring anti-social behaviour by other groups.

‘‘It is not about being white or back, Muslim or Christian, gay or straight, a migrant or someone going back generations,’ he said in a letter published in Thursday’s Volkskrant. ‘The only thing that interests me is how we behave in this country.’

‘In my letter I wrote in detail about the sort of behaviour that I and many others don’t want,’ the prime minister said. ‘But what is more important, is what we actually want. That we start behaving a bit more normally again.’

Rutte was responding directly to letters by two Volkskrant readers. In one, Carla van Hoof said Rutte had ignored ‘real’ Dutch people no matter how ‘abnormally’ they behaved. His motto is obviously ‘to get as close as possible to the PVV’, she wrote.

The full page newspaper ad on Monday generated considerable comment in the Netherlands and abroad, with the New York Times newspaper comparing Rutte to Trump. The NRC said ‘the way the prime minister insinuates that people ‘from outside’ are ‘abusing our freedom to mess things up’ is far from normal.

Rapper

Meanwhile, Dutch rapper Massih Hutak has produced his own spoof of the letter, which he hopes will stimulate youngsters to turn out and vote at the March general election.

‘It’s wrong to think that if you don’t vote your vote just goes to the largest party. It’s much worse than that,’ he writes. ‘Not voting means giving up. Giving up means not taking responsibility. Not taking responsibility means doing nothing.

‘Dear friends, the world is a trash pile,’ Hutak goes on. ‘Deal with it. But if you asked me I’d say that the Netherlands is still the most beautiful part of the trash pile. Here you can praise and insult your god. Here you can fall in love with whomever you want. Here you can call people idiots without ending up dead or in jail with a life sentence.

‘The Netherlands is my home. Amsterdam North to be precise, but Amsterdam North is part of Amsterdam and Amsterdam is in the Netherlands, so technically speaking the Netherlands is my home, know what I mean? Good.’