Violent anti-lockdown protests sweep the Netherlands

Nearly
500 people have been arrested in cities across the Netherlands
since protests began over the weekend. | Rob Engelaar/ANP/AFP via
Getty Images

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The rioters are a mix of anti-government groups and bored
hooligans.

Violent protests have
erupted in the Netherlands for the past three nights in a row,
with rioters
setting fires and clashing with police in defiance of strict
coronavirus lockdown measures.

Nearly 500 people have been arrested in cities
across the country since the protests began over the weekend,
including
more than 180 who were arrested Monday night. Riots took place
in bigger cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but also in smaller
cities across the country. Rioters violated the 9 pm curfew, and
looted businesses, set fires, and threw rocks at buildings and at
police.

“These are the largest riots in 40 years,” Laura
Groenendaal, a research and projects manager at the German Marshall
Fund, based in Houten, Netherlands, told me. “Normally we say
that the Netherlands are blissfully boring, so this is, of course,
the complete opposite.”

Robin
Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images An anti-government
activist screams at a Dutch police officer in Museumplein,
Amsterdam, on January 17.Rob
Engelaar/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Protesters clash with Dutch
police officers during a demonstration against coronavirus
restrictions in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.Robin
Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Anti-government activists
face off with Dutch police during a protest in Amsterdam.

The Netherlands has been under stay-at-home orders for weeks,
with nonessential businesses closed and limits on gatherings. In
early January, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte extended the
lockdown orders once again, citing
concerns about the more virulent B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant
first discovered in the United Kingdom.

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And this weekend, the government
enacted a 9 pm curfew through February 10 to help slow the
spread of the virus, the first time since World War II that the
country has imposed a curfew.

The rioters include anti-government groups and Covid-19
skeptics, but also criminals trying to exploit the chaos, and bored
people — mostly young men — who’ve been cooped up inside and
have now been unleashed. Police in Amsterdam said “football
hooligans” were part of the crowds in that city, according
to the Financial Times.

SOPA/LightRocket
via Getty Images Undercover police officers referred to in the
Netherlands as “Romeos” make an arrest during an anti-lockdown
demonstration.

“All of these different things formed this toxic cocktail, and
the announcement of the curfew, which started last Saturday, became
the spark which made everything explode,” Groenendaal said.

The protests are widespread, and some smaller cities witnessed
pretty dramatic violence over the weekend, including the southern

city of Eindhoven, where rioters incinerated a car and looted a
supermarket at the train station on Sunday.
In Urk, in the central part of the country, rioters burned down
a Covid-19 testing center.

Anadolu
Agency via Getty Images In the southern city of Eindhoven, rioters
incinerated a car and looted a supermarket at the train station on
Sunday.Stringer/Anadolu
Agency via Getty Images Protesters set bikes on fire in
Eindhoven.

Rutte called it “criminal
violence,” and dismissed the idea that these protests were
about freedom. “We must win the fight against the virus together,
because only then can we regain our freedom,” he
said Monday.

The country is preparing for more protests

The violence of these protests was a bit of a surprise, but
Dutch officials and police are preparing for the unrest to
continue.

Experts I spoke to said there is some dissatisfaction with the
current government, particularly over the slow rollout of
vaccinations in a country that otherwise
has a pretty efficient health care system. The Netherlands was
one of the
last countries in the European Union to get the vaccine, and
the
pace of inoculation is still slow.

The Dutch government got decent marks for its handling of the
coronavirus at the start of the pandemic, but it loosened
restrictions over the summer, and at first
didn’t advise mask-wearing and didn’t strictly enforce
social distancing rules.
Cases flared up again in the fall, and the Netherlands
became one of the hardest-hit countries during Europe’s second
wave.

That forced the government to introduce more stringent measures
to slow the spread, closing down bars and restaurants in the fall,
and
shuttering nonessential businesses and schools in December.

Cases have been declining, but the Dutch government has
extended those measures and added the curfew to
defend against the B.1.1.7 variant, which spreads far more
aggressively.

Robin
Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Protesters gathered in
Amsterdam against the lockdown imposed on January 21.

Some opposition lawmakers on both the left and the right did
criticize the curfew. Geert Wilders,
a right-wing populist politician, said the curfew meant

“losing freedom en masse and that is no fun.” But
ultimately, enough lawmakers backed the measures.

The rioters represent a small and disparate slice of the public.
How the rest of the country feels about the lockdown measures, and
the Dutch government’s handling of Covid-19, will probably be
clearer in a few weeks, as the Netherlands is holding general
elections for its House of Representatives in mid-March.

Robin
Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Many protesters were
responding to the government enforcement of a 9 pm curfew from now
until February 10 to stop the spread of the coronavirus. It is the
first time since World War II that the country has imposed a
curfew.

Rutte and his party, the People’s Party for Freedom and
Democracy,
has remained pretty popular. But an unrelated scandal
having to do with child welfare benefits forced the collapse of
the Dutch governing coalition earlier this month. Rutte, who is a
member of the largest governing party, is staying on until the
elections as caretaker minister. But taken together, the pandemic,
the vaccination hiccups, and the welfare scandal have created a
sense of weariness.

“I think it’s more kind of general malaise,” Harvey
Feigenbaum, a professor of politics and international affairs at
George Washington University, told me. “The government’s been
in power for a long time, and even though the party of the prime
minister is probably still the most popular party in the
Netherlands, I suspect there’s a certain amount of
fatigue,”

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