The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) is not put off by the demonstrations, intimidation and arson of the past few days against the arrival of a possible asylum seekers’ center in Berlicum. “We still want an AZC at this place,” said a spokesperson for the COA.
“We more often have to deal with resistance and resistance to an AZC,” says the spokesperson. “At information meetings for a new AZC sometimes three hundred residents come. It is a small group of opponents who are heard loudly, that does not give a complete picture of whether there is support.”
The COA therefore cannot be intimidated by the demonstrations, arson and the pigs that are hung in Berlicum. “If we should not do everything that is opposed in the Netherlands, then we would not have any supermarkets or defense locations because there is sometimes also resistance from local residents.”
That does not mean that the resistance to an AZC may be there according to the COA. “It is good that people let them hear that they do not agree with something, but in a normal active way where you ask a question and get an answer or vice versa,” says the spokesperson, referring to the destruction of Thursday evening.
“It should not be that your fundamental rights abuse.”
The municipality also rejects these destruction. “It is a good right to demonstrate and also to be able to say what you think. But it may never be the case that you abuse those two fundamental rights, hanging pork legs on a fence, fellow villagers with a different opinion verbal attacks and people threaten people, says Locoburist Peter Raaijmakers.
The municipality draws a limit in all the violence and asks residents to do the same. According to Raaijmakers, the emotion that residents have is understandable. “Certainly in Berlicum itself it went loose in many places. There was a lot of emotion involved and that emotion may be there.”
The college continues to talk to residents. “Even when it comes to difficult things such as the intended location for an AZC. But in a decent and respectful way,” Raaijmakers concludes his reaction.