An anti-asylum protest in the Netherlands descended into violent chaos on Saturday as masked demonstrators clashed with riot police.
Thousands of protesters had gathered for an “Els Rechts” demonstration against mass migration in The Hague.
But the gathering turned violent, with video footage showing masked protesters battling with riot police, as others threw bottles and rocks at officers.
One video circulating on social media on Saturday showed a police car erupting into flames, with police using water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowds.
Credit: @BobHGL / X
Some protesters blocked highways while others vandalised an office belonging to Democrats 66, a Dutch centre-left political party.
Saturday’s demonstration was organised by a woman known as “Els Rechts,” a Right-wing activist who is prominent on Dutch social media sites. She has publicly distanced herself from the rioters.
Protesters wave flags at the ‘Stand up for the Netherlands’ demonstration – Josh Walet/Getty Images
The rioting was also condemned by the Netherlands’ far-Right Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders, who had earlier declined an invitation to attend the protests.
“Tackle this scum with an iron fist,” he said in a post on social media site X. “Blocking the highway and violence against the police is totally and completely unacceptable. Idiots.”
Credit: @BobHGL / X
The protests were held around a month before national elections in the Netherlands, where opinion polls suggest Mr Wilders’ Freedom Party will take first place.
One of the speakers at Saturday’s demonstration was a member of a separate Right-wing populist party, BVNL, who reportedly complained his country had become a “multicultural nightmare”.
He told the crowds that “women used to be able to wear short skirts and gay men in Amsterdam could still hold hands in the streets”, De Telegraaf reported.
Police officers are targeted as tensions spill over into violence – Josh Walet/EPA/Shutterstock
Ms Rechts has 23,000 followers on X and describes herself as a 26-year-old political activist.
In a statement issued after the event descended into chaos, the activist said she was mortified by the violence and urged her supporters to go home.
Credit: @WurfTwain / X
“How terrible I find this! I condemn every form of violence! What happened here is incomprehensible. Police officers were cornered, and things were destroyed and set on fire,” she wrote on the social media site.
“I assumed that people came to demonstrate peacefully, but unfortunately, for whatever reason, it turned out very differently. I regret that it happened this way. If I had known this in advance, I would never have organised it.”
Rob Jetten, the leader of D66, the liberal party whose offices were vandalised, referred to the rioters as “scum”.
“Keep your hands off political parties. If you think you can intimidate us, tough luck. We will never let extremist rioters take our beautiful country away from us,” he said.
As in the UK, France and Germany, tensions have risen in the Netherlands about the number of asylum seekers being accommodated in the country, in addition to housing shortages and the rising cost of living.
