They all think pretty much the same about asylum and migration: PVV, FVD, Group Markuszower, BBB, JA21 and ex-BBB member Mona Keijzer who is a member of Parliament on her own. And then during debates in the House of Representatives about asylum, attention is often urgently needed. On Wednesday afternoon, one of the rooms will discuss the anti-azc protests and riots in Loosdrecht and other municipalities where asylum reception facilities are located.
This time Gidi Markuszower, who had been to the protests a few times, seems to have decided that it should revolve around him. Twenty minutes before the debate with Minister of Asylum and Migration Bart van den Brink (CDA) starts, he sits next to the clerk – so he is the first to speak.
After only a few sentences, Markuszower has one MP after another on the cabinet: according to him, it involved “a few incidents” in Loosdrecht, he wonders whether “the violence” of the police against demonstrators “was proportionate”, he is talking about an asylum seeker who allegedly made a gesture towards local residents as if he wanted to slit their throats, he had heard that the fire that had started at the asylum reception center might have started naturally and therefore not was “lit.” He also says that “people’s rights are being trampled and crushed.” And according to him, the acting mayor in Loosdrecht wants to impress his “elite friends” with his emergency shelter.
D66 member Robert van Asten calls those words “poison of our democracy”, Stephan van Baarle van Denk says that the stories about the self-ignited fire and the throat gesture come from the “extreme right-wing caravan of lies” and that Markuszower must “stop inciting”. Lisa Westerveld of Progressive Netherlands wants to know what he thinks about “the role of politicians” in such protests, CDA member Jeltje Straatman asks him whether he is “legitimizing extremist ideas”. Markuszower wants “non-violent and democratic resistance”, but people are so angry, he also says: “It cannot be controlled much longer.”
His head becomes increasingly red. PVV member Marina Vondeling believes that if he is really so tough about asylum, he should stop trying to keep the Jetten cabinet “in the saddle”. “Because then there will never be an asylum stop.” According to Markuszower, the PVV was “lame”, he believes his old party should not have left the previous cabinet. “Then there would have been a PVV cabinet. Tell the Netherlands: sorry, we messed up, but from now on we will do better.”
Jimmy Dijk of the SP, outside the microphone, sighs and says: “What are you doing with yourself, boy, my god.”
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‘Those guys’
Minister Bart van den Brink hardly seems to be following it all, and there are hardly any questions for him. After the break, in the evening, it is his turn. But then suddenly there are far fewer MPs. Gidi Markuszower no longer appears. Van den Brink has to laugh a bit about it. “I wonder what the meaning of this is? Let me just apply it to myself.”
He folds his hands and says that he had watched the riots in Loosdrecht “with horror.” “It has become a revenue model for a number of groups or individuals, and there is no need to take tough action against it.” According to him, that is what the government does. “With the efforts of the police and the Public Prosecution Service.” The downside of this, Van den Brink also says, is that not everyone dares to speak out anymore. “We are receiving serious signals that people no longer dare to go to residents’ evenings.” And so “we need to standardize and say that this is unacceptable.”
The government does not seem to be able to do much more. Deputy Prime Minister Dilan Yesilgöz, who replaces Prime Minister Rob Jetten, who is traveling, at the weekly press conference in the afternoon, visibly makes an effort to sound loud and firm. She keeps calling the people who set a fire in Loosdrecht and then stopped the fire brigade “those guys” who “need to be taken off the street.” They must come “to court.” The police and the judiciary are busy, she also says, to “identify” suspects and, according to her, mayors will “work with emergency orders and area bans.” “As far as we know now, it is not the case that there are heavily organized networks behind it.”
It makes little impression on the room of journalists in Nieuwspoort. Is this all? Does the Jetten cabinet still have a “control” over what happens around the asylum seekers’ centers? But Yesilgöz thinks it “cannot be trivialized” that she speaks out like this, together with the entire politics of The Hague “from left to right and also as a society, that we do not want this.”
That doesn’t solve it, she says. “You are right about that.”
In the debate room, Minister of Asylum Bart van den Brink says that he does not want to make “any false promises”. “We’ve already had too much of that. So promises about stopping asylum or another discussion about state emergency law, you don’t have to try that with me. I’m not going to do that, it doesn’t make sense.”
What he will do: “Implement the distribution law.” Asylum seekers will continue to be distributed across the country. It cannot be otherwise, according to Van den Brink. “Because then you get what we had before: one municipality saying to the other: if you do it, I won’t do it.”
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