Tovek "Tofik" Dibi (born 19 November 1980 in

Vlissingen Vlissingen (; zea, label= Zeelandic, Vlissienge), historically known in English as Flushing, is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river ...

) is a former Dutch politician for

GreenLeft GroenLinks (, ) is a Green politics, green List of political parties in the Netherlands, political party in the Netherlands. It was formed on 1 March 1989 from the merger of four Left-wing politics, left-wing parties: the Communist Party of th ...

(''GroenLinks''). He was a Member of Parliament from 30 November 2006 till 19 September 2012. He focused on matters of criminal law,

safety Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings There are two slightly di ...

youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. Y ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

, and

integration Integration may refer to: Biology * Multisensory integration * Path integration * Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome *DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technolo ...

Biography

Dibi is of Moroccan descent. He has studied Media and Culture at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other bein ...

, specializing in cinema. He combined his study with activities in the Marxist

Turkish Workers' Union in the Netherlands The Turkish Workers' Union in the Netherlands ( tr, Hollanda Türkiyeli Isçiler Birligi (HTIB), nl, Turkse Arbeidersvereniging in Nederland) is a left-wing organization founded in 1974 by a group Turkish workers. Its first purpose was to commit Tu ...

( tr, Hollanda Türkiyeli Isçiler Birligi (HTIB), nl, Turkse Arbeidersvereniging in Nederland), and in his own neighborhood

Bos en Lommer Bos en Lommer (; English: Wood and Shade) is a neighborhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. From 1990 to 2010 it was considered a district of the municipality of Amsterdam in the province of North Holland. As of May 1, 2010, it was merged into the new ...

in Amsterdam. Together with the

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

''International Socialists'', he initiated the national demonstration ''Stop Bush!'' organizing protests when

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

visited the Netherlands in 2005, and the national action committee ''Enough is Enough'', which focused on the discrimination against Muslims. In September 2006 Dibi unexpectedly came in seventh on the list of GreenLeft for the 2006 general elections and was chosen in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

in November 2006. The GreenLeft screening commission called him "a political talent", to Dibi's own amazement, for he had not considered his candidacy all that seriously. At the time he was the youngest member of parliament. Because of his background he concentrated on improving opportunities for young migrant people in the larger cities. On 13 January 2007 Dibi was arrested and later released while pamphleteering against Dutch politician

Geert Wilders Geert Wilders (; born 6 September 1963) is a Dutch politician who has led the Party for Freedom (''Partij voor de Vrijheid'' – PVV) since he founded it in 2006. He is also the party's leader in the House of Representatives (''Tweede Kamer'') ...

with members of the International Socialists. Their posters called Wilders "an extremist" and "harmful to society". In May 2012 he made public his internal candidacy for heading the GroenLinks list for the September 2012 elections. He lost the internal elections to

Jolande Sap Johanna Catharina Maria "Jolande" Sap (born 22 May 1963) is a former Dutch politician and former educator and civil servant. A member of GroenLinks (GL), she replaced Wijnand Duyvendak as a member of the House of Representatives on 3 September ...

, netting 12% of the vote versus Saps 84%. Dibi wasn't re-elected to parliament. After his departure from parliament, he returned to university where he studied until 2014, leaving without a qualification. He released a memoir, ''Djinn'', in October 2015. The book deals with his struggles with his

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to pe ...

, which he had kept secret during his time as a member of parliament, his Muslim background, and his political career. ''Djinn'' was translated into English in 2021.

References

*
Parlement.com biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dibi, Tofik 1980 births Living people Dutch Muslims Dutch people of Moroccan descent Dutch relationships and sexuality writers GroenLinks politicians Gay politicians Dutch gay writers LGBT members of the Parliament of the Netherlands Members of the House of Representatives (Netherlands) People from Vlissingen Gay Muslims 21st-century Dutch politicians