Thirty years after the Bijlmer disaster, Rob van Gijzel is still excited about this tragedy. The Eindhoven resident, who was also mayor of Eindhoven, spent years dealing with the disaster in the House of Representatives. He is still not happy with the attitude of the government: “It is hard for them to take responsibility.”
43 people died on 4 October 1992 when a plane crashed into a flat in the Bijlmer. What followed was a years-long debate about the facts. Van Gijzel believes that the victims have been abandoned: “That still excites me. There are times in life when you cannot defend yourself against what happens to you and certainly not when it is done by the government. And that happened here. All kinds of things have disappeared and a lot is and remains secret. There are also often no backups. There are a lot of weird, open ends to it.”
“The government is structurally failing and that is not appropriate.”
Van Gijzel gives an example: “A man and a woman went for a walk just before the disaster, the children stayed at home. They never saw their children again. They received seven therapeutic group treatments to work through the grief, and they had to declare their inventory to the insurance company within three weeks. But no one can to trade if you have lost two children. Then the government must help and not just for a while, but for a long time. And that’s where they left it.”
Van Gijzel sees many parallels with other disasters and affairs. “The government always shows the same attitude. Again with the allowance affair. You are causing a big problem for people, some of them have even had their children taken out of their homes because you got them into financial trouble. You find out, you say it shouldn’t have happened and then you don’t arrange it.”
“Exactly the same with the Bijlmer disaster. We eventually got a parliamentary inquiry, but things haven’t gone well since then. The government then structurally fails to do so. And that’s not right. After the Bijlmer disaster, people were left to their own devices. I am extremely disappointed about that. And when you see what that means for people, again with Groningen and childcare. We should not want that.”
“If the government is co-responsible, then it dives.”
As a Member of Parliament, Van Gijzel has tried for years to find out the truth about the Bijlmer disaster. He does see a resemblance to Pieter Omtzigt, who has been committed to the allowance affair in recent years. “Omtzigt and I ran into the same mechanisms. In a different time, but the mechanisms are the same. And Rutte had promised: we won’t do that anymore, but I don’t see that improvement. It is hard for the government to take responsibility. As a Member of Parliament I have experienced many disasters: Enschede, Volendam, Faro, the Hercules disaster, the Bijlmer disaster. And you always see the same pattern: if the government is jointly responsible, then it dives. Then she lets go. Really.”
Van Gijzel can only think of one case in recent decades, in which the government acted adequately. “That is the disaster with the MH17. And that’s because the government didn’t bear any responsibility there. She was a co-victim there. I was mayor of Eindhoven at the time. We’ve been to people’s homes, national meetings, talks with the Prime Minister. You don’t see that happening in other cases.”
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