Arjen de Wolff

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Arjen de Wolff (born 1969 in the Netherlands) is the executive director of Radio Zamaneh in Amsterdam.

Radio Zamaneh Amsterdam-based Persian language radio

Radio Zamaneh is an Amsterdam-based Persian language radio. "Zamaneh" is the Persian literary term for "time".

Amsterdam Capital city of the Netherlands

Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with a population of 866,737 within the city proper, 1,380,872 in the urban area, and 2,410,960 in the metropolitan area. Amsterdam is in the province of North Holland. Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North" due to its large number of canals which are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Contents

Political career and activities

In the 1990s, De Wolff served as a civic member of the Democrats 66 political group on the Amsterdam-Zuid District Council and the Municipal Council of the City of Amsterdam.

Democrats 66 Dutch political party

Democrats 66 is a social-liberal political party in the Netherlands. Its name originates from the year in which it was founded.

From 1994-1998, De Wolff was a political counsel to the Amsterdam Aldermen for Arts & Culture and Media. [1]

In 2004, Arjen de Wolff moved back to the Netherlands from Curaçao to become secretary-general of the parliamentary group of Democrats 66 in the Dutch House of Representatives. During these years, Democrats 66 was a governing party and was faced with internal struggles over political direction and future leadership. De Wolff actively participated in a movement to establish Democrats 66 as a mainstream party in the centre-left of Dutch politics, with an emphasis on social and economic issues rather than the more traditional constitutional reform related agenda of the party.

Curaçao Island country in the Caribbean, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Curaçao is a Lesser Antilles island in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about 65 km (40 mi) north of the Venezuelan coast. It is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Since the early 1990s, Arjen de Wolff has played an active role in trying to bridge the gap between centre-left parties of the Netherlands. He was a coordinator of Opschudding, a movement of dissent within Democrats 66 that later merged with Niet Nix, a social liberal current within the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA). De Wolff was a member of Democrats 66 for over twenty years, holding several political offices for that party. He gave up his membership in 2008 and in 2010, he joined the PvdA.

The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in the Netherlands.

In 2011, Arjen de Wolff was one of the founders of a new centrist political initiative called Dag van 100, aiming to transcend the polarized political debate of the time and bring together thinkers and practitioners from both the centre-left and the centre-right of the Dutch political spectrum. According to Dutch daily newspaper Het Parool, the initiative aimed to participate in the municipal elections. [2] Dutch political weekly magazine Elsevier highlighted the disappointment of the founders in the current political parties. [3]

<i>Het Parool</i> Dutch newspaper

Het Parool is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was first published on 10 February 1941 as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945). In English, its name means The Password or The Motto.

Elsevier commercial academic publishing company that publishes medical and scientific literature

Elsevier is a Dutch information and analytics company and one of the world's major providers of scientific, technical, and medical information. It was established in 1880 as a publishing company. It is a part of the RELX Group, known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier. Its products include journals such as The Lancet and Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, the Trends and Current Opinion series of journals, the online citation database Scopus, and the ClinicalKey solution for clinicians. Elsevier's products and services include the entire academic research lifecycle, including software and data-management, instruction and assessment tools.

International career in democracy, governance and media development

In 2008 and 2009, Arjen de Wolff worked in different parts of the Caucasus as director for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), overseeing programs in political party building, civil society building, Democracy and Governance development [4] and election monitoring and assistance. [5]

In May 2009, Arjen de Wolff was detained by police in Baku, Azerbaijan, while attempting to prevent staffers of the regional National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) representation, where De Wolff was regional director at the time, from being arrested. [6] [7] When police wanted to release him later in the day, De Wolff refused to leave the police station without his local staff members. They were subsequently released as well. [8]

In the WikiLeaks dossier, known for its United States diplomatic cables leak, Arjen de Wolff is mentioned a few times, amongst others on his work in the North-Caucasus and Azerbaijan. [9]

From 2009 to 2011, De Wolff served as country director for Internews in Iraq, where he assisted in the development of Aswat al-Iraq, the first independent Iraqi news agency, trained young journalists and citizen reporters, and assisted in reviewing Iraqi national media legislation and CMC procedures. Program activities extended to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. He talked about his experiences in Iraq in an interview for IKON Dutch public broadcasting network [10]

In 2011 Arjen de Wolff was appointed as the director of Persian-language Radio Zamaneh in Amsterdam. [11] In 2012, 100 Dutch-Persians sent a letter to The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and criticized his acts in this radio station. [12]

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References

  1. ↑ "Prijsvraag". Nostraverus.com. Archived from the original on 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  2. ↑ "Nieuwe paarse partij komt op - POLITIEK - PAROOL". Parool.nl. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  3. ↑ "Leden PvdA, D66 en GroenLinks beginnen eigen beweging". Elsevier.nl. 2011-12-21. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  4. ↑ "Joint Programmes - Logframes and Activities". Jp.coe.int. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  5. ↑ "Mazahir Panahov meets Arjen de Wolff, NDI's Resident Director in Azerbaijan » Avciya.az - Eng". Avciya.az. 2008-08-14. Archived from the original on 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  6. ↑ "Baku Police Detain 50 Protesters During Flower Festival". Rferl.org. 2009-05-10. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  7. ↑ Arzu Geybulla. ": May 2009". Flyingcarpetsandbrokenpipelines.blogspot.nl. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  8. ↑ "Cable reference id: #09BAKU387". Cablegatesearch.net. Archived from the original on 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  9. ↑ "Cable reference id: #08BAKU972". Cablegatesearch.net. Archived from the original on 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  10. ↑ "De Andere Wereld". Ikonrtv.nl. 1969-11-10. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  11. ↑ "Management & Board | Radio Zamaneh: Independent Media, Debate and E-learning for Iran". Archive.radiozamaneh.com. 2013-05-16. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
  12. ↑ "Cyrus News Agency - Nederlands". CyrusNews.com. Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 2013-10-05.
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