At Chinese restaurant Bij Ling in Nieuwe Pekela, they are still stunned one day after the police raid. “We are not doing anything wrong. No one tells us why this happened.”
That is what Qiong Chiu (51) says. She has been running a restaurant for decades, three years ago she opened the renovated restaurant on the Dokter Harm Brouwerstraat in Nieuwe Pekela. The neighbor was shocked on Tuesday morning when suddenly ‘a lot’ of police walked through the narrow alley between the Chinese and his home.
They forced the side door and searched the building for three hours. Owner Chiu has no idea why. “We don’t know ourselves.” According to her, nothing wrong is happening in the restaurant. ,,We have done nothing wrong.” The company is also still open, she assures.
Boxes opened
Officers opened all refrigerators, freezers, cupboards and containers, says Chiu. “Even the trays of food.” The result is that she has no idea through which hands the food has passed, how long the stuff has been outside the refrigerator and whether it is still edible. “Everything we had already made goes into the trash. It is not good to sell that.” When the agents left, they also did not close the building, according to her.
A storm of questions poured in from the village. ,,Everyone asked and called what had happened.” The restaurant has a good reputation in the village. ,,Everyone was very sweet, I’m glad about that.” Her daughter decided to post a message on social media explaining the situation. ‘Maybe the sushi was so good that they wanted to come for a second round’, they give the story a light twist.
‘No firearms’
Still, the raid has not gone down well with Chiu. ,,This is of course not good for the company.” She finds the whole situation difficult, also because she doesn’t get any answers. “I think it’s important to know how this came about. What happened? Nobody tells us anything.”
According to a police spokesman, the context of the raid is that information had come in that there may be firearms in the restaurant or the adjacent building. An arrest team of eight people and possibly a few detectives then entered the building. Then the team searched it. “No firearms were found.”