There is yet another urgent letter from Ter Apel’s neighboring village in Drenthe. Nieuw-Weerdinge fears complete escalation due to the nuisance caused by asylum seekers. “This is going to get completely out of hand.”
Once again the mailbox in The Hague is rattling with mail from Nieuw-Weerdinge. Once again, State Secretary Eric van der Burg is being begged to help the village out of its malaise.
Wim Katoen, chairman of Local Interest, wrote on behalf of the village last year. He thus forced a listening ear, a visit from The Hague and measures, but saw little improvement on the street in Nieuw-Weerdinge.
Tone grimmer
In the new year, Katoen’s tone is grimmer and more threatening. After polite best wishes to the State Secretary, the village president describes a distressing situation of anger, powerlessness and frustration. He warns The Hague against local vigilantism as a result of failed government policy in a disrupted village where criminal asylum seekers can go about their business freely.
“New Weerdingers are so fed up with it and angry that there is now a threat of discord between residents, enforcement, police and security. Nuisance perpetrators who are arrested are back on our streets within an hour. Villagers are more likely to arm themselves against this group of criminals and also express their powerlessness and frustration against people who are supposed to keep us safe.”
Pure frustration
Last year there were several scuffles between villagers and nuisance asylum seekers or between the latter group and enforcement officers. At the end of October, a New Weerdinger was arrested for allegedly kicking a 22-year-old asylum seeker during a civilian arrest.
According to village chairman Katoen, things did not get out of hand due to the self-discipline of residents. But it is precisely the latter that is now under pressure. Katoen fears that it is only a matter of time before people from the village are arrested and tried because they cross the line out of sheer frustration.
“The lack of effective measures against criminal asylum seekers actually gives the government reason to save yourself. That is not good because it encourages violence,” says Katoen.
According to him, it is crystal clear who the troublemakers are. “The regular asylum seeker behaves and does not do anything bad. They don’t come to Nieuw-Weerdinge either because there is nothing for them to do here. 99.9 percent of the boys who walk here are only involved in criminal activities.”
Close gates
The village council does not stop at a cry for help and comes up with a list of proposals for The Hague to restore local safety. For example, to prevent unwanted visits in the evenings and nights, Katoen wants the Ter Apel asylum center to close its gates at 6 p.m. and that mandatory special shuttle buses be introduced between Ter Apel and Emmen. Nowadays, those who cause nuisance are sometimes even kicked off the bus in Nieuw-Weerdinge because they cannot be maintained on public transport. The village also advocates super-fast justice for those causing nuisance and more police in the region.
Although right-wing parties are trying to forge a new cabinet, the arrows remain focused on the current State Secretary Van der Burg. “Politicians in The Hague seem busier with their own affairs than with this problem and, as always, are seriously divided, making a solution from that side seem far away, so it will have to be arranged at ministerial level,” Katoen explains.
‘No salvation from the PVV’
He therefore hopes that the State Secretary will now translate his previous involvement into action and addresses him personally. “During our conversations here in the village, I experienced that you were very involved. Please help us to remove this group from our streets. That is the only measure that will really work,” he wrote to the minister.
During the House of Representatives elections in November last year, half of Nieuw-Weerdingers voted for Geert Wilders’ PVV. According to Katoen, too much confidence in his solutions is also a disastrous path. “Wilders was there straight away when a group left here for Scheveningen. With that he also made it clear, let them just sit there with the shit in Ter Apel and Nieuw-Weerdinge.”