The Hague, The Netherlands – Youth groups faced the police in Dutch towns and cities on Monday night, defying the curfew against the country’s coronavirus and throwing fireworks. Police in the port city of Rotterdam used a water and tear gas cannon in an attempt to disperse a crowd of protesters.
Police and local media reported problems in the capital, Amsterdam, where at least eight people were arrested, in the central city of Amersfoort, where a car was turned on its side, and in other cities before and after the 9:00 pm to 4:30 am curfew. began.
It was the second night of unrest in towns and cities across the Netherlands, which initially emerged from calls to protest the country’s difficult blockade, but degenerated into vandalism by crowds agitated by messages circulating on social media.
Rotterdam police said the youth took to the streets “looking for a confrontation with the police”. Riot officials tried to stop the violence and made several arrests before firing tear gas. The police warned people to stay away from the area. The national broadcaster NOS showed a video of the police using a water cannon and reported that some stores were looted.
In the southern city of Geleen, police tweeted that young people in the city center were playing fireworks. The riot police accused demonstrators in The Hague.
Dutch media reported social media calls for more violent protests, even as the country struggles to contain new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
Police in the city of Goes and in the province of North Holland said they had arrested people on suspicion of using social media to call for protests.
“It is unacceptable,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Monday of Sunday’s riots. “This has nothing to do with protest, this is criminal violence and that is how we are going to deal.”
The worst target on Sunday was the southern city of Eindhoven, where police clashed with hundreds of protesters who set fire to a car, threw stones and fireworks at police officers, smashed windows and ransacked a supermarket at their train station.
“My city is crying, and so am I,” Eindhoven Mayor John Jorritsma told reporters on Sunday night at an impromptu and emotional press conference. He called the protesters “the scum of the earth” and added: “I fear that if we continue on this path, we will be on the way to civil war”.
Amsterdam police arrested 190 people amid protests at a banned demonstration on Sunday.
The riots coincided with the first weekend of a new national coronavirus curfew, but mayors emphasized that the violence was not the work of citizens concerned about their civil liberties.
“These demonstrations are being hijacked by people who only want one thing: to revolt,” Hubert Bruls, mayor of the city of Nijmegen and leader of a group of local security organizations, told the Op1 news.
Nijmegen was one of several towns and cities that issued emergency decrees giving police extra powers to keep people away from certain places amid reports of possible unrest. At least one store in Nijmegen was shown on Dutch television and was boarded up just in case.
Bruls, who chaired a meeting of security officials on Monday, said that despite the violence, he did not advocate limited new demonstrations.
“You should be very reluctant to limit the right to demonstrate,” he said, noting that Sunday’s disturbances came in protests that had already been banned by local authorities.
Eindhoven police said on Monday that they had detained 62 suspects and launched a large-scale investigation to identify and arrest more. A woman not involved in the riots in Eindhoven was injured by a police horse.
Local residents came to the scene of the riots on Monday morning to assist with the clean-up operation.
On Sunday, protesters threw stones at the windows of a hospital in the city of Enschede. On Saturday night, young people from the fishing village of Urk set fire to a coronavirus test facility. Police in the southern province of Limburg said military police had been sent as backup to two cities.
The Netherlands recorded more than 13,600 confirmed virus deaths in the pandemic.