They know that the anger on which the Hague demonstration drove is directed against them: “Everyone feels that”

The ‘Kozijnendokter’ is visiting the D66 head office in The Hague. The windows of the ground floor are finished with wooden plates and a jetty of the glazier is standing against the facade. A provisional repair is still visible in one of the top windows. It is the rare traces of the violence that raged through the city last Saturday. It is also a symbolic wound, as the party emphasizes. Paper is stuck on the wooden plates with four times the sentence ‘Democracy cannot be breaked’.

The D66 office was a target of the demonstrators of the ‘Elsfest’, who threw stones against the windows there. Four police officers were injured when they were massively attacked by ‘rig’, as politicians from left to right called them afterwards. Some journalists were attacked.

But the demonstration itself had another target: asylum seekers, migrants, Dutch people with a non-white skin color. Afterwards, in The Hague they ask themselves why politicians and media have since been mainly concerned with the issue whether it was political violence or not. And why the Minister of Justice and Security called the perpetrators “extreme right and Nazi”, but not “racist,” as cultural scientist Jaswina Elahi notes. “Nazi – as if this demonstration was directed against Jews.”

Four Dutch people from The Hague with roots from outside the Netherlands and one Turkish student who lives in The Hague are talking about the impact of the derailed antimigrant demonstration. Their primary reactions range from ‘worrying’, ‘unprecedented’ and ‘scary’ to ‘disastrous’. Whether they have a Surinamese-Hindostan background, Moroccan or Turkish roots, they all feel that the anger on which this demonstration was driven is directed against them. “Everyone feels that,” says Kavish Partiman, the local CDA leader.

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They all received or sent apps to their friends and family that day with the question: “Are you safe?” Warnings were forwarded to others Poc (people of color, People of color) not to go to the center, because the demonstration was about to switch to violence. Adel Mahmood, chairman of the political group, shows his phone: an app that the chairman of a mosque umbrella organization sent him to him. Do not go into the city, was the advice for Muslims. “They may soon go on” Muslim yacht, “it said. “Especially our sisters must look after.”

Bivouac

Zeynep Inan, who follows a Master Neurosciences in The Hague, ran her bike from the short legs through the square to the long legs. “Then I saw them. At first I thought that the Dutch national team had a match, because I all saw Dutch flags. What I thought was crazy is that some wore a balaclava. When I walked through the group, I said in my best Dutch:” Can I get through? ” I have to say a little further away.

In front of the door, Inan saw the group run by smoking pots in their hands. “I also saw boys in the group who were from Turkish and Surinamese descent to me. Then it got quiet. Five minutes later I went out. I walked home with my bike. I also saw more agents than usual in the Zeeheldenbuurt. Then I thought for the first time: this antimigration sound was really big. Until Saturday I had not been through.” ”” ””

CDA member Partiman deliberately did not go to the city center that day. “You don’t have to look for the difficulties. On my forehead it is not written whether I am Muslim or Hindu. The group that demonstrated there had not thought about it, he had looked at my color and concluded: it does not belong here.” If the demonstrators shout ‘we are the Netherlands’, and they cried, then everyone who doesn’t look like she doesn’t like it. ”

Colleague councilor Adeel Mahmood notices, much more than before, when he looks at social media. “If I am talking about ‘our city’ in a post – and I have been living in The Hague since I am a baby – it is now in hundreds of reactions: ‘What do you mean your city?’

It comes down to them, they all say that they are not considered full, never. Cultural scientist Jaswina Elahi: “The image that people of color are less worth less is seen by repetition as normal.”

Normalized – that’s what they all say. That it is normal to hear from talk showers or politicians on TV that asylum seekers, migrants, immigrants or non-Western Dutch people are a problem for the Netherlands. In any case, none of them feel supported by politicians and other opinion leaders. Mahmood: “Where is the reply? Who supports us? Who is behind me?”

This week reported NRC About a study by the think tank The Hague Center for Strategic Studies. It showed that four in ten Dutch people think that the interests of people born in the Netherlands should outweigh those of others. The comments included in the investigation complain about the ‘too much [aan] foreigners “and the” loss of their own culture and security and Christian norms and values. ” Migration is seen as the most important threat to the Netherlands. In the NRC-article was cited researcher Gerben Bakker who said: “The ultra -nationalist groups find support and legitimacy under the silent middle class.”

Social worker Mirhan Sakruca thinks that, in his eyes, the rather moderate political reactions to the violence will also have strengthened the demonstrators. According to him, they feel justified to continue with this. “I think they have free rein.”

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The result is that most interviewees feel less connected to the Netherlands. Elahi says her fifteen -year -old daughter sighed this week: “Mom, I no longer feel like a real Dutchman.” But she is Dutch, says Elahi, just like herself. They are nothing else, where should they not?

Elahi describes the dynamics that follows. “If you are systematically excluded, it can work two sides in it. Some people feel stronger connected to their ethnic group, others experience more distance because they do not recognize themselves in the diversity within that group. In that case, the feeling of not really belongs.”

Not at home

Mirhan Sakruca says: “If such a demonstration runs out of violence and a message of hatred, and we can only discuss that in our own group, yes, then an integration problem arises.” He misses the support of Dutch people, says Sakruca. “Do they understand when I say: I don’t feel at home here?”

He is only 21, born and raised in The Hague-Zuid, and he sees the future gloomy. Getting married, having children, working – he does not see the perspective on a carefree existence. A few years ago he worked as a part -time job in primary education. A seven -year -old boy comes to him. That says, “You are not Dutch at all.” Sakruca says, wait a minute, then I’ll get your teacher. The lady is added. “She gets angry with me. I tell her what happened. Then she will talk around the corner with that boy. He just dries to the schoolyard a little later. She recorded it for him, not for me.”

Jaswina Elahi formulates it concisely: “What conditions do you actually have to meet to be protected against a sense of insecurity?”

Zeynep Inan says that she once drove a Uber and the driver gave her the advice: “If you really want to be safe, then you have to learn Dutch.” She nods and says, “So I’m going to do that, learn Dutch better.”

Yet inan says that she is the risk that her as gay Woman in her mother country of Turkey happens to be a bit annoying, reassments higher than in the Netherlands. “I still believe that the laws and rights will protect me here.”

Adel Mahmood shakes the head. “In the United States they also thought they had enough rights to invoke. And you can now see how easily they are pushed aside. Every migrant can be picked and secured, without a form of process.”

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