THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (AP) – Politicians and local leaders on Monday condemned rioters who clashed with police in about ten towns and cities across the Netherlands a day earlier, on the second night of a coronavirus nightmare.
“This is unacceptable,” said Prime Minister Mark Rutte. “It has nothing to do with protest, it’s criminal violence and that’s how we will deal with it.”
Eindhoven was hit hardest, with police clashing with hundreds of rioters who burned a car, threw stones and fireworks at officers, smashed windows and looted a supermarket at the train station in the south of the city.
“My city is crying, and so am I,” Eindhoven mayor John Jorritsma told the media on Sunday night. In an emotionally improvised press conference, he called the rioters “the scum of the earth” and added: “I am afraid that if we continue on this path, we are on the road to a civil war.”
The riots coincided with the first weekend of the new national coronavirus between 09:00 and 04:30, but mayors stressed that the violence was not the work of citizens concerned about their civil liberties.
“These protests are being hijacked by people who only want one thing and that is rioting,” Humbruls, mayor of the city of Nijmegen and leader of a group of local security organizations, told the news program Op1 on Sunday night.
Police in Amsterdam arrested 190 people amid riots during a banned protest on Sunday while police in Eindhoven detained at least 55 people. One woman who was not involved in the riots in Eindhoven was injured
In the eastern city of Enschede, rioters threw stones at the windows of a hospital; On Saturday night, young people in the fishing village of Urk burned down a coronavirus test facility. Police in the southern province of Limburg said military police were sent to two cities as reinforcements.
“There is absolutely no excuse,” Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag told Dutch television. “It’s violence and I hope the police track down all these people and there are heavy penalties.”