The right to demonstrate is not sufficiently guaranteed in the Netherlands. Amnesty International writes that in a Monday published report. Mayors are taking “unnecessary and unlawful measures” to quell demonstrations for fear of nuisance and disturbances. Peaceful protesters are being wrongly treated as ‘burdens’ or ‘security risks’, Amnesty said. The human rights organization asks municipalities to better protect the right to demonstrate.
According to Amnesty, demonstrating — the “oxygen for democracy” — is too easily subordinated to fear of public disorder. “That bar has to be much higher; after all, a protest march with a lot of noise is already a disturbance of public order.” Only when national or public security is threatened, or the health or freedoms of others are at stake, is it justified to limit the right to demonstrate, Amnesty writes.
As an example, Amnesty uses how the municipality of Haarlem moved a protest march against the housing crisis from the city center to a park at the beginning of this year. The authorities’ fear of “disorders” was leading in this.
Risk averse behavior
Other examples of how administrators want to cram the right to demonstrate into too narrow frames: the anti-monarchist activist group Republic wanted to protest along the royal route during King’s Day this year, but was initially referred to a place far out of sight of the procession. And the mayor of Rotterdam Aboutaleb banned a silent protest march by the Rif Werkgroep Rotterdam in 2019. Due to ‘security considerations’ this was only allowed to take place in the afternoon and not in the evening.
Concerns about the right to demonstrate are not new; they have been sounding from different mouths for years. In 2019, the National Ombudsman also wrote in a critical evaluation that mayors tend towards “risk-avoiding behaviour”. Instead of going to great lengths to facilitate and protect demonstrations, governments ‘not infrequently’ regard the right to demonstrate as part of a balancing of interests: the right to demonstrate versus the interest of public order and safety, according to the report.
Also read: Lack of time, suspicion, hooligans and the bow to violence