12 Shares 0



12

0







A government’s plan to house over one thousand refugees and asylum seekers in a town in the Netherland’s west area caused clashes to break out between the police and demonstrators on Wednesday night.

Violence erupted at the municipal council in the town of Geldermalsen located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Amsterdam with a population of some 27,000, where a meeting aimed at discussing the accommodation of 1,500 refugees was being held late Wednesday.

Police sealed off the town hall where the debate on the plans was taking place with fencing, but protesters, said to number about 100 stormed the building and Officials inside the council were forced to evacuate to higher floors. The Dutch police also fired warning shots in an effort to disperse the crowd as protesters tore down the fences and threw beer bottles and fireworks at police, chanting slogans against the proposed center for asylum-seekers.

According to officials, some 2,000 people had taken part in the protest. There were at least 14 arrests and two police officers were slightly injured in the clashes, the Telegraaf reported.

Miranda de Vries, the mayor of Geldermalsen, said she had been saddened by the protests against the plan, which considers housing the refugees in a local center for 10 years.

De Vries said on Twitter: ‘And people say they are frightened of asylum seekers. I am very very sad about this.’

The country’s Deputy Justice Minister Klaas Dijkhoff, who deals with immigration and asylum affairs, also voiced disappointment over the incident, saying it was “un-Dutch.”

The incident is the biggest display of anti-migrant sentiment in the Netherlands since hooligans attacked a Syrian refugee center in October.

The development came a day after the European Union unveiled its plan to establish a new border and coast guard agency. Authorities say the agency is aimed at increasing security at the borders of the bloc’s 28 member states, which have been receiving an unprecedented wave of refugees in recent months from the Middle East and Africa.

Under the plan, the agency will be allowed to intervene in crisis situations without requesting permission from host countries.

Similar protests, which escalated into clashes with police, occurred before in other countries of the EU, particularly in Germany, where there was also the burning of several shelters. The German government therefore promised «harsh response» to xenophobic attacks.

However, Lithuania this week took the first four asylum-seekers from Iraq within the framework of the European Union, which provides for the redistribution of 160 thousand workers. Vilnius agreed to accept 1105 refugees from the Middle East. Last year Lithuania took a total of 440 refugees who arrived from Georgia, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) show that some 933,77o refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while more than 3,619 people have died before reaching the continent.