There goes the NL's history of being reasonable, tolerant and always happy to discuss matters.
It started on Saturday on the island of Urk as a protest against the curfew that started at 21:00 that evening. The island is very religious. It is also a "closed society". Urkers don't tend to move away. "Foreigners" are treated very suspiciously. The traditional "rocks" of society tend to get ignored there when it comes to listening to sound advice. Vicar, Doctor and the police are all "outsiders". What started as a peaceful march was taken over by the younger locals. They started to throw fireworks, most of it illegal stuff creating eardrum bursting huge bangs and then they started on the riot. Cars were set alight. The local Covid test centre, a temporary "building", was burnt down.
Sunday it spread to larger towns and cities. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem, Eindhoven, den Bosch and more all had legal (permitted by the mayor under strict conditions) demonstrations against the lockdown and curfew. Some of those present were "normal folk" who arrived with placards to protest the measures. They were joined by local football hooligans and like minded thugs. They were joined by the hard right. They were joined by the Conspiracy theorists. Of course, there were the "agitators" as well. You know the sort, we've seen their type at football since te early 70s. At the forefront, goading the "opposition" and winding up their own and, when it kicks off, they retreat a safe distance to enjoy their handywork. Eindhoven Station was wrecked and all the shops plundered. There was also a hospital attacked.
Monday was a repeat of Sunday with another hospital getting attacked as well as riots in all of the major towns and cities.
Urk was quiet last night.
All organised. They message one another on "Telegram". Apparently it's messaging service that, quite handily, deletes messages automatically to the extent that the police, so far, don't know how, or even if, they can retrieve the images to trace the culprits. They do, however, have a lot of video and CCTV footage and that is being minutely scrutinised with facial recognition software to help identify as many rioters as possible. The police have already spotted lots of traffic on Telegram about further riots this evening.
We shouldn't be surprised that it happened. In the past 6 months we've seen similar in France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere.
How long before it hits the UK?