A protest against the emergency shelter for asylum seekers in Loosdrecht got out of hand on Tuesday evening. A fire broke out at the reception location in the town hall after demonstrators threw flaming torches and fireworks at the building, a spokesperson for the Gooi en Vechtstreek Safety Region said.
An image from the ANP news agency shows that bushes immediately next to the building caught fire. Officers attempted to extinguish the fire, but stopped when the fire spread further. The fire brigade later extinguished the fire.
According to the safety region, a burning torch had also been thrown on the roof of the location. This extinguished on its own, probably due to the rain. The fire brigade had difficulty reaching the scene of the incident due to the crowd.
According to a police spokesperson, the Mobile Unit ordered activists to leave and intervened when this was not obeyed. The situation is now “under control”. The police arrested one suspect. The mayor has issued an emergency order for the area around the shelter.
The first asylum seekers arrived on Tuesday morning in Loosdrecht, where an empty part of the town hall can accommodate seventy people. The spokesperson for the safety region did not clarify whether those people were present in the building during the fire. The police don’t want to say anything about that either.
Unrest
There has been some unrest around the reception location in the North Holland town for some time. Several times protests turned into riots and the Mobile Unit had to intervene. National anti-azc groups also joined the demonstrations.
FVD leader Lidewij de Vos came to the village to express her support during a “women’s march”. During other demonstrations, MPs Gidi Markuszower and Mona Keijzer also showed their faces.
At the beginning of the month, a rioter was sentenced to six weeks in prison, two of which were conditional. The man from Ermelo is said to have thrown at least twenty paving stones through the windows of the town hall. He rammed the electric entrance doors of the building with a traffic bollard.
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Three days of violent protest against the arrival of an asylum seekers’ center: why is the resistance in Loosdrecht so great?
