The highest boss of the Public Prosecution Service (OM), Gerrit van der Burg, believes that “protests are becoming increasingly grim” and defends in an interview with NRC the preventive detentions of climate activists, now more than a week ago. Van der Burg tells the newspaper about the criticism of the eight controversial arrests: “These arrests are based on suspicion of sedition, a criminal offense. And we used the most accessible way to pick them up.”
Van der Burg, chairman of the Board of Prosecutors General of the Public Prosecution Service, responds with the interview in the newspaper to the decision of the Public Prosecution Service to preventively arrest the climate protesters who allegedly called for a blockade of the A12 last week. They were released again, but received an area ban. Last Saturday, on the day of the Extinction Rebellion demonstration itself, 768 people were arrested, the majority for blocking the road.
The Law Board ruled this week that the right to demonstrate is “seriously under pressure” due to the preventive arrests. “The right to demonstrate is very important to us,” says Van der Burg. “It is an important principle for us to continue to live up to that right and other fundamental rights every day. At the same time: when I read that the OM has been intimidating and arbitrary; those are very big words. We also performed at farmers’ protests. We made dozens of arrests, in a number of cases also in advance. Also for sedition.”
According to Van der Burg, it almost seems that “being arrested is the intention of climate activists”. “They make it as difficult as possible for us, with chains and glue,” says the OM boss NRC. Although the climate activists did not use physical violence last weekend, he said, “they frustrated agents in their work”, including by taping their fingers and thus delaying identity registration. According to him, their goal increasingly seems to be “we are going to commit criminal offences. Or, we are going to challenge the authority”.
The decision to arrest the demonstrators on suspicion of sedition caused criticism in the days before the demonstration. In response to the arrests, various civil society organizations registered for a support campaign on the viaduct above the A12. The Public Prosecution Service previously said in a response that it was “evaluating” the run-up to the blockade.
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