Is the official allowed to demonstrate? ‘I am not just a cog in the machine’

The entrance to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Rijnstraat in The Hague is certainly not a pleasant place for one sit in. A chilly westerly wind blows rain through the passage to Central Station, causing large puddles in front of the revolving doors.

Yet they have come again: the government officials who demonstrate every week against the war in Gaza and against the Dutch government’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Israeli bombings have now killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, including more than 10,000 children. About 70 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. Due to a lack of water, food and electricity, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis is emerging.

Three weeks ago, about 150 civil servants sat on the wet asphalt, on this Thursday there are still about thirty. “There are fewer people today because we are still in the holiday period,” says Marta Schäferová. She will be there again next week, she smiles. “I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t do that.”

The demonstrations, however modest, have caused quite a stir – and many negative reactions. Officials should do their work behind the scenes and keep their mouths shut, said a number of commentators. “The political leadership determines the line, not the other way around,” said outgoing Minister of Justice and Security and VVD leader Dilan Yesilgöz. “Individual actions in public can weaken the civil service,” Kutsal Yesilkagit, professor of public administration at the University of Leiden, told the daily. Fidelity.

The weekly sit-in in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not an isolated event: in recent months, officials have taken action on various fronts. After the PVV’s election victory, about forty Amsterdam municipal officials demonstrated at the Dokwerker monument to show that they stood for the Constitution and the rights of all citizens, regardless of their origin. Last week it was announced that four civil servants from the province of Friesland had been reprimanded for signing a letter from around 4,500 civil servants about the slow progress of climate policy. “We ask civil servants for objectivity in their work for the province,” the provincial government wrote.

When the Constitution was revised in 1983, it was established that civil servants may also demonstrate as civil servants

“The activist official is very topical at the moment,” says an Interior Department employee involved in the sit-ins against the war in Gaza. According to the official, there is a lot of discussion in her ministry about ‘official craftsmanship’, with some putting loyalty to the political leadership first, while others point to the right to freedom of expression and the duty to report abuses. The political discussion about the Constitution and the rule of law raises questions among civil servants, the official says. Of course, she can well imagine that there is criticism of the Gaza actions: “At the same time, I think that the critics look very much at one side of the civil service.”

Wim Voermans, professor of constitutional and administrative law at the University of Amsterdam, is quite upset about this. When the Constitution was revised in 1983, it was clearly stated that civil servants may demonstrate not only as Dutch citizens, but also as civil servants, Voermans says emphatically. The only exception to this is laid down in Article 10 of the Civil Servants Act, which states that a civil servant may not demonstrate if it hinders ‘the proper performance of his duties’ or the ‘proper functioning of the public service’. “If you are responsible for Israel or the Palestinian territories at the Foreign Office, it may not be useful to demonstrate against the war,” said Voermans. “But that is something completely different from the widely used position that all civil servants must remain silent.”

Awareness of tension

The government officials who NRC spoke for this article – often on the basis of anonymity – are aware of the tension in which they operate. At the same time, they believe that they cannot stand idly by when fundamental rights are violated. “Article 90 of the Constitution requires the Netherlands to promote the international legal order,” says a young official at the Ministry of Justice. According to the official, the Netherlands has a duty to condemn the massive bombing of Gaza: “The cabinet refuses to do this. And by supplying parts for Israeli F-35s, the Netherlands facilitates violations of the laws of war.”

What should you do when political decisions fall below the moral threshold?

In recent months, officials have repeatedly pointed out the risk of Israeli war crimes and the duty to promote the international rule of law. However, these professional advice has been ignored, as an official at the Foreign Office says: “Of course it is the democratically elected representatives who make the decisions. But what should you do when political decisions fall below the moral threshold?”

In the conversations with NRC, several officials talk about a book by the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, who reported on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in the 1960s. Arendt wrote about the ‘banality of evil’: the thoughtless cooperation of countless anonymous government employees, which makes great crimes possible. “I am not just a cog in the machine,” says a Foreign Affairs official. “Of course I implement political decisions loyally, but within the boundaries of the democratic constitutional state.”

This does not mean that civil servants take sides in the conflict. “The situation in Israel and Palestine is characterized by polarization and disinformation,” says Celeste Flores Uijtewaal, who works at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). “I therefore focus on the reports from international organizations, which are absolutely clear about the enormous scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza and the urgency of a ceasefire.”

Many civil servants talk about the oath of office they took. “In it you swear allegiance to the King and to the Constitution,” says one of them: “and not to the political line of the cabinet that happens to be there.” Several officials refer to the Benefits Affair, in which tens of thousands of citizens were driven to the financial abyss without officials raising the alarm. After the scandal, which led to the resignation of the Rutte III cabinet, parties announced a ‘new administrative culture’, in which there should be more room for contradiction within the government. “If we have learned anything from the Benefits Affair, it is to make our voices heard when we see injustice,” says Marta Schäferová. “That affects me very much.”

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About 150 government officials demonstrate against the Dutch position on the Gaza war: ‘International and humanitarian law are being violated’

According to professor Kutsal Yesilkagit – who is critical of the actions of civil servants – there is something “fundamentally wrong” with the “loyal contradiction” in the ministries in The Hague. “The device is instrumentalized. Civil servants are expected to keep the minister out of the wind and can no longer express their criticism.”

Yesilkagit can well imagine that civil servants decide to go public. But there also lies a danger, he says. Yesilkagit examined public administration under populist regimes in Poland, Hungary and in the US under President Trump. The civil service – the ‘fourth estate’ – can have a dampening effect behind the scenes. “But with open protest you bring political polarization into the apparatus,” says Yesilkagit. “That gives populist politicians the space to say: those left-wing civil servants do not want to implement democratic decisions. The result is political appointments.”

According to Yesilkagit, it is therefore better for civil servants not to demonstrate – even if the Dutch rule of law or international law is at stake. Professor of Constitutional Law Wim Voermans fundamentally disagrees with this: “You now see that many civil servants are walking on eggshells. Good governance requires civil servants who are not afraid to express their opinions – even in public.”

Marta Schäferová remains cautious. “I wanted to call on others at work to come, but I decided against it. There are also officials with a different opinion about Gaza.”

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