Police recorded 769 instances of violence against gay people between the beginning of 2009 and September last year, the equivalent of around three cases a week.

The figures come from a new police report which aims to establish a better picture of the extent of anti-gay violence in the Netherlands. Previous reports have focused on questionnaires.

The report states six out of 10 instances took place in Amsterdam, where police have being paying extra attention to the problem following several high profile cases.

Some 17% of cases reported involved threats of physical violence, 31% simply physical attacks and 6.7% serious attacks, the report shows. The rest were categorised as muggings and fights.

Men were the victims in 84% of cases.

The report also looked at the perpetrators, who acted alone in 67% of cases.

Almost 62% of the attackers who were identified have Dutch nationality only, 16.6% had Moroccan nationality or were Dutch and Moroccan and 5.5% were Turkish. Almost 87% had other criminal convictions, mainly robbery and assault.

The report also said the number of threats against people because of their skin colour is far higher than for gay people but in terms of actual physical attacks, the results are similar.

English summary, pages 10 – 13