Under the slogan “you are not alone”, a thousand demonstrators gathered in Utrecht, in the western Netherlands, on Thursday to protest the surprise victory of far-right candidate Geert Wilders in Wednesday’s parliamentary elections.

Another demonstration against the far-right party also took place late Thursday afternoon in Amsterdam.

Members of left-wing parties organized the Utrecht demonstration “to show the Dutch that we never leave anyone behind and that we fight for everyone’s rights,” organizers said.

Wilders surprised the Dutch establishment by winning 37 seats in parliament, a feat that puts his party by far first.

Despite toning down his harshest anti-Islamic statements during the election campaign, the Freedom Party (PVV) manifesto calls for a ban on mosques and the Koran.

Judy Carazzoli, a 25-year-old journalism student from Syria, said Wilders’ electoral success made her “very afraid because the PVV is an openly racist party that wants the ‘de-Islamization’ of the country”.

Carazzoli said some of her friends are refugees with residence permits, who now fear for their future.

The PVV manifesto states that these residence permits should be canceled because “certain parts of Syria are now safe”.

“So I know what it’s like to flee war to find refuge in a safe country, but now we no longer feel safe,” he told AFP.

“I came here for freedom and tolerance, for a place where everyone can do what they want,” said Ahmed Hassan, a 30-year-old Egyptian software engineer. “It scares me when I see a party trying to make this country less, not more, safe,” he said.

After the far-right’s victory in the parliamentary elections, the scope of which surprised even across the border, a difficult task awaits its Islamophobic leader Geert Wilders: to convince his opponents to form a coalition.

The PVV won 37 of Parliament’s 150 seats, more than twice as many as in the 2021 election, according to near-complete results.