The Dutch government assured Tuesday that it would not renounce the curfew imposed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, after a series of violent riots started, according to a minister, by “scum”.
• Read also: Netherlands: second night of riots after curfew imposed
Dutch police made at least 184 arrests overnight Monday to Tuesday, counting a total of more than 400 people in detention for their participation in the riots that have rocked the Netherlands since the entry into force of a curfew Saturday night.
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At least ten police officers have been injured in the latest clashes with rioters, who looted shops and torched cars in several cities including Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague on Monday evening, the worst unrest in the country in four decades.
“You do not capitulate in front of the people who break the windows of the stores”, reacted Tuesday the Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra, quoted by the Dutch press agency ANP.
The latter considered that the people at the origin of the riots were not legitimate protesters, saying that “it is the scum that does that”.
Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus also told the ANP that the government will maintain the curfew, in effect between 9 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. until at least February 9, deeming this measure necessary to stem the spread of the new coronavirus .
Several cities have granted additional powers to the police as a new call to protest Tuesday evening was organized on social networks to protest the curfew, the first imposed in the Netherlands since World War II.
“Criminal violence must stop,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged on Twitter, who assured Monday that “99%” of the Dutch supported the restrictions.
“Shameless thieves”
Protest actions had started on a small scale on Saturday night and a COVID-19 testing center was set on fire in the village of Urk, in the conservative Protestant region known as the “Bible belt” in the north. .
They spread on Sunday and the police used water cannons, tear gas and mounted police in Eindhoven (south), Rotterdam or Amsterdam.
Clean-up operations continued on Tuesday in several city centers, including those in the port city of Rotterdam and ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the south, where images showed bands of rioters looting shops.
The mayors of several cities have reacted with anger, that of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, calling the rioters “shameless thieves”, reported the public television NOS.
Police unions have pointed out that these were the worst riots in four decades since clashes between law enforcement and squatters who were evicted from buildings they illegally occupied in the 1980s.
Police chief Henk van Essen strongly condemned the rioters, saying the unrest had “nothing to do with the right to demonstrate”.
The Dutch government announced in mid-December a new series of measures to fight COVID-19, the strictest ever imposed since the start of the pandemic in the Netherlands, where more than 13,600 people have died from the disease .
“Repressed frustration”
According to Dutch media, most of the protesters are a mix of activists opposed to containment and young people frustrated by increasingly harsh measures in a country where, until recently, the device to deal with the coronavirus was among the most lax in Europe.
In some towns, staunch supporters of football clubs such as FC Den Bosch have formed groups to defend stadiums and hospitals from looters.
Carsten de Dreu, a professor of social psychology at Leiden University, however, warns against such actions, which he says could ignite an already explosive situation.
For Mr. De Dreu, who sees the riots as a reflection of the “pent-up frustration” of some people, it was foreseeable that the new measures could lead to protest actions.
Neighboring Belgium, where a curfew is also in place, feared an overflow of unrest after calls on social networks to demonstrate on Saturday.
“We take this very seriously because we are close to the Dutch border,” Paul Van Miert, the mayor of the Belgian city of Turnhout, told VRT television channel.
