(Rotterdam) When Rotterdam went up in flames on Friday night against a backdrop of protest against the sanitary restrictions, Akash Anroadh was overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu: the rioters were “the same” as those who burned a barricade in front of his business in January, after the announcement of a curfew in the Netherlands.
Cars set on fire, police officers stoned and targeted with fireworks by hundreds of hooded young people and hooligans… The explosions of violence recalled those of the beginning of the year, caused by the establishment of a night curfew to fight against an upsurge in the COVID-19 epidemic.
Faced with a new surge in cases, the country reintroduced partial containment last week, with a series of health restrictions affecting in particular the restaurant sector, which must close at 8 p.m. The government is also planning to ban certain places for the unvaccinated, including bars and restaurants.
On Friday, the spark came from an anti-restriction protest, organized via social networks and which quickly got out of hand, according to the police, which arrested many rioters not living in Rotterdam.
Unlike January, anger over health policy ravaged the city center rather than the popular Feijenoord area, where Akash Anroadh’s Indian goods store is located. A relief for the 27-year-old Dutchman since the police ended up firing live ammunition, leaving five injured.
As in January, “there was a domino effect”, he regrets, with clashes the following nights elsewhere in the country.
“At some point, it will start again,” prophesies this trader, little surprised by the profile of the rioters. In Rotterdam, most were barely adults, according to the authorities, who underline the great diversity of the culprits.
“Frustrated”
Some had links with the hooligan milieu, according to the Minister of Justice, who noted the different nature of the unrest on the following nights, first in The Hague and then in other cities, where tense rallies took place ” apparently without social or political motivation ”.
“Young people are frustrated because there is nothing they can do with the coronavirus,” sighs Mr. Anroadh in his shop.
For him, as for most Rotterdamers met by AFP, the new measures served as an “excuse” for a multitude of young people with confused motivations, who wanted to do battle.
“The ban on the public in football stadiums and that” on fireworks “, which deprives the Dutch of a very popular New Year tradition, also fuel anger, he said.
A little further on, Emre overflows with resentment. “Of course I’m frustrated, and I’m proud of what we have done,” loose this 19-year-old brown-haired boy, who wishes to remain anonymous. Motivated by the calls on social networks, he went downtown on Friday with five friends.
“Idiots”
In the Netherlands, “almost 85% of adults are vaccinated, but it is getting worse”, enraged this unvaccinated, who openly doubts the effectiveness of anti-COVID-19 sera.
His anger goes beyond the pandemic alone. Faced with Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who denounced the “scum” in January and described the latest disturbances as “pure violence” perpetrated by “idiots”, the young man replied that the head of state “is a liar, hated by many here ”.
Emre criticizes him in particular for the recent scandal of family benefits, which has seen thousands of parents falsely accused of fraud in family benefits, sometimes on the basis of ethnic profiling applied by the administration.
“People are protesting against 2G (measures)”, which plan to reserve access to many public places to only vaccinated (“gevaccineerd”) and cured (“genezen”), says Samski, an 18-year-old who wants to remain anonymous . His associates also insult the police, according to them guilty of controlling them more than the others because they are of Turkish origin.
After the January riots, the populist leader Thierry Baudet, a new figure of the extreme right in the Netherlands, quickly attacked “mass immigration”. A poor explanation for many Rotterdamers.
“The crowd was very diverse on Friday, there were also many hooligans from my football club,” remarks Mark Been, in his fifties and a fan of Feyenoord Rotterdam, a team which has some of the most violent supporters in Europe.
In this country very attached to individual freedoms and facing an endless pandemic, “people are a little lost” in the face of the hardening of the executive, which has long been reluctant to take coercive measures, recalls Ronald Slingerland, in front of the still blackened facade of a building in the city center.