There is an eerie resemblance to his native Sierra Leone in the Netherlands these days,  but it’s not too late to do something about it, says author, columnist and broadcaster Babah Tarawally.

“The Netherlands is on the operating table”, was the opening line of my recent lecture in The Hague to an audience of students from abroad.

It took me back to an incident at a hospital some 20 years ago. A gland in my neck had been playing up and the specialist advised its immediate removal. Like any African, I regard doctors as demigods whose judgment is never to be questioned, and a date for the operation was set.

The day of the operation came and my girlfriend accompanied me to the hospital. As I was lying on the operating table in a state of partial undress she asked the doctor what exactly was wrong with me. The doctor seemed irritated and wouldn’t answer. She thought this was peculiar and insisted. At last he said: “My hunch is it’s a type of leprosy, probably contracted in his homeland.”

“I don’t agree with that, you can’t operate based on a hunch,” my girlfriend said resolutely. The operation was cancelled, I was found to be as fit as a fiddle, and most of his colleagues thought the surgeon was a fool. What this taught me is that it pays to be critical. When in doubt, ask questions. You can’t always rely on a title.

I was very naive at the time and if it hadn’t been for my girlfriend’s rebellious spirit, I would have been cut open unnecessarily. I often think about it and realise how lucky I was. I had only been in the Netherlands for a short time, having fled from Sierra Leone, a country ruled by a gang of criminals for decades who stifled any questions we had. We had to stand by and see how our country became embroiled in a civil war that could have been avoided.

We thought these politicians had our interests at heart. We had been taught to trust the authorities implicitly. It wasn’t until I came to the Netherlands that I learned to stand up to injustice. This country put the pen in my hand which allowed me to vent criticism openly, in essays, newspapers and books.

It’s been 30 years since I arrived here as a refugee and to my horror I am seeing that the Netherlands is beginning to resemble the country I fled. Under the guise of democracy we are accepting policies aimed at dehumanising part of the population.

We are not rebelling. We are saying they should be given a chance. We are lying on the operating table, because we have been infected with fear of our new common enemy: the other.

“He who holds down another in the mud will have to stay in the mud to keep him there,” an old African saying goes. It describes exactly what is happening in the Netherlands at the moment. We are deep in mud because we have been keeping “the other” there for years. But we can’t destroy other people’s humanity without devaluing our own.

The Netherlands, for centuries a place of refuge for wisdom and resistance, is on the operating table and a surgeon with trembling hands is preparing to cut it open. Who dares to stand up, ask questions, stop the knife from going in?

It’s time to rid ourselves of false fears. Stand up, ask questions and put up a fight before it’s too late.

This column was published earlier in Trouw