Police have been pelted with fireworks at a protest against a planned asylum seekers’ centre in Apeldoorn, in the latest in a string of violent confrontations.
Around 150 people gathered on a roundabout on Laan van Maten, where the local council wants to turn an empty school building into an emergency shelter for 240 refugees, at 7pm on Tuesday.
Protesters blocked the roundabout, stopping traffic going through, and hung a large banner with the slogan “AZC Waleweingaarde Nee” (“no refugee centre on Waleweingaarde”).
Police initially confined the group to the roundabout, but left the scene at around 9pm when they were attacked with fireworks, Omroep Gelderland reported.
They returned with around 15 vanloads of officers who cleared the last protesters from the site. It is not known if anybody was arrested.
It is the third demonstration at the site since the municipal council announced last month it wanted to move 240 asylum seekers into the school who are currently living in a hotel in nearby Beekbergen.
Bed shortage
Last Tuesday 300 people staged a demonstration in which fireworks and eggs were thrown at the building, while a small group of counter-protesters who held up placards supporting refugees were subjected to verbal and physical abuse.
The accommodation service COA needs to find a new location before its contract with the hotel in Beekbergen expires on July 1.
Local mayor Ton Heerts says the council is “taking responsibility” after asylum minister Bert van den Brink called on municipalities to help solve the acute shortage of beds.
Van den Brink has warned he will invoke the “spreading law”, which allows him to force councils to take a proportionate share of refugees, if they do not make their own arrangements.
Violent clashes have taken place outside other sites earmarked as refugee shelters in recent weeks, such as in Loosdrecht, near Hilversum, where vandals smashed the windows of a disused town hall building last week.
The council wants to house 70 single male refugees in the building for six months, but some local residents say they were not properly consulted on the decision.
Some protesters have held banners and worn clothing bearing the symbol of the extreme far-right group Defend Netherlands. The organisation was involved in the anti-immigration demonstrations in The Hague last September, when the offices of political party D66 were vandalised.
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