Femke Halsema, Amsterdam’s Green mayor, has sparked controversy by posting crime statistics on sexual offences while seemingly not understanding the numbers herself. Halsema claimed the statistics showed migrants were unfairly blamed for crime.
The debate followed the high-profile murder of a 17-year-old girl in Amsterdam, allegedly by an asylum seeker.
Halsema went on Bluesky to refute an often shared graph, made by Dutch migrant expert Jan van de Beek, who wrote an in-depth book on the matter: Migratiemagneet Nederland.
The graph, nuancing age groups and gender, showed how migrants from certain countries were, per capita, more represented in sexual assaults.
It presented the number of male sexual crime suspects per 10,000 men, comparing Dutch-born men with six nationalities commonly associated with asylum seekers: Syrian, Iranian, Eritrean, Iraqi, Afghan, and Somali.
This showed that men from these countries commit sexual offences four-to-20 times more often than native men and that non-western men between 12 and 45 years-old were two-to-five times more often suspected compared to native men.
The numbers were biased in favour of migrants, because many received the Dutch nationality, inflating the numbers of Dutch offenders.
1/ Mannen uit typische asielherkomstlanden plegen 4 tot 20 keer vaker een seksueel misdrijf dan autochtone mannen👇
Bron: Migratiemagneet Nederland blz. 322, https://t.co/yO2yUPCuVx
Steun mijn werk: https://t.co/AODDQKjGRq pic.twitter.com/psBtWCuUmx— Dr. Jan van de Beek (@demo_demo_nl) August 23, 2025
Mayor Halsema was not impressed and went on a tirade on Bluesky.
“To be clear, violence against women or sexual violence is not something that has been imported: we have a long history of it here,” she said.
She juxtaposed a different graph, to counter the work from van de Beek, seemingly showing there were many more Dutch suspects than suspects from the migrant countries.
“On the left, in absolute numbers, on the right, after trickery,” Halsema said.
“The objective is to push the responsibility for sexual violence over the border. This is part of the problem.”
Links in absolute aantallen, rechts zoals na gegoochel gepresenteerd.De bedoeling is om de verantwoordelijkheid voor seksueel geweld letterlijk over de grens te duwen. Dit is onderdeel van het probleem.
— Femke Halsema (@femkehalsema.bsky.social) 2025-08-26T11:07:39.219Z
There was a lot of reaction to her post, with opponents arguing that presenting absolute numbers without accounting for population size distorted the issue.
Van de Beek himself responded critically, accusing Halsema of misrepresenting data. He argued that her use of absolute numbers (1,460 Dutch men vs. 150 men from specific migrant groups suspected of sexual crimes in 2022) ignored the significant over-representation of certain migrant groups when adjusted for population size.
He accused her of “demagoguery” given that he never spoke about absolute numbers.
Others criticised the mayor of Amsterdam. Ronald Plasterk, former minister for the Socialist Party and a scientist, said “it certainly wasn’t ‘trickery’ to share crime statistics per head.”
“It is precisely the omission of this information that is misleading.”
Former Dutch Senator Henk Otten said: “Starting to understand even better why Femke Halsema only began studying criminology at the age of 23 after an unfinished teacher training programme in history. Seriously curious whether she ever took (and passed) the statistics course during her studies. It doesn’t look like it.”
Former law professor Paul Cliteur noted that Halsema “must stop behaving like a left-wing debater. She should focus on her role as mayor, which includes safeguarding the safety of Amsterdam’s residents — a responsibility in which she is failing spectacularly.”
Halsema, together with other progressive politicians and many journalists, spread a narrative after the murder of the 17-year-old girl in Amsterdam that the problem were not migrant rapists, but men in general.
They blamed the so-called ‘manosphere’, with influencers such as Andrew Tate spreading “toxic masculinity” as well as “the women-unfriendly design of parking facilities”.
The girl, Lisa, was stabbed to death while on the phone with the police, reporting that she was being followed by a suspect described as an asylum seeker.
Geert Wilders also made negative headlines regarding the case. He said in the parliament that the police had arrested the suspect a week before his assault on Lisa, but released him, enabling him to commit the crime. But he had to retract this after proven wrong by the police.
“That was a mistake. It turned out not to be the case. I thought I had read it,” Wilders said. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”
