by Massimiliano Sfregola
It was pretty surreal to see in the news Edo Haan, Maassluis mayor congratulating with himself for the great success of Sinterklaas Intocht event, while police was still keeping in custody 200 people who had, in fact, not committed any offense.
If I didn’t see with my own eyes the “army” deployment in the small town, if I wasn’t stopped, questioned and searched (despite showing my press card and having explained to the officers that no, I was not there to ruin a children’s party) maybe I would have believed in some kind of exaggeration. To be fair all was pretty exaggerated last Saturday, starting with the ordinances that the mayor of Maassluis and his more well-known colleague of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb have adopted for the occasion: ban on demonstration in both cities and in Maassluis, restricted access to “intocht” area just for families as if it was a private party for locals. A young man alone with Southern european look then, might have been way too suspicious for the officers.
Once in Maasluis I discovered that the two Dutch municipalities are actually outside of the EU because in the EU the Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees freedom of movement and freedom of expression to all; it also guarantees some kind of flexibility on adjusting the principles to protect some other interests but in this case, what would be the interest which deserves to be protected? Tradition? So really a questionable tradition worths a (temporary) suspension of two rights protected by the Dutch Constitution and by EU law?
And what about those who have the power to enforce the law? I might be biased but I strongly believe that police, last Saturday, did it all wrong. Those enforced in Maassluis and Rotterdam were crowd control strategies that normally authorities put in place against hooligans: the area of the centre divided into zones separated by fences and undercover officers deployed everywhere are all preventive measures normally put in place against the risk of terror attacks or clashes between supporters. Measures, in fact, designed to prevent violence or bloodshed, not to prevent activists from demonstrating.
To demonstrate is a right, to treat as terrorists a group of 200 protesters is an irresponsible act. What example was given to citizens? That the majority, the strongest, not only wins (the right to show a controversial symbol, in this case to mock the coloured community of The Netherlands) but takes everything, including the right to silence those who disagree? It is irresponsible treating a group of political demonstrators as hooligans or terrorists. Last Saturday awful crowd control management by the politie is a worrying alarm: now we know that emergency measures in The Netherlands can be enforced at any time, even for trivial reasons.
The excuse of protecting children from barbarians cannot justify the suspension of some Constitutional rights sealed on EU principles. To watch police, mostly white officers, using an exaggerated use of force against a group of protesters, in large part black, it is a shocking scene that someone would not expect to see in Europe, year 2016.
If the intention was to leave an indelible spot of shame on this “intocht” then there was just one more thing: leaving the only allowed political spot to a neo-nazi group. What a great idea and what visibility granting permissione just to the neofascit group NVU while the anti-Zwarte Piet where in Rotterdam handcuffed.
What should worry the most is the social experiment, unintentionally carried by the authority, giving green light just to demonstrations in support, normalization facade through militarization, “sanitizing” of the envirnoment and then preventive arrests. It is scary because this way to force normalization could become, itself, normal.
