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Netherlands: Anti-fascists arrested

01 March 1995

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In Utrecht, the police arrested around 170 nonviolent anti-fascist demonstrators on 4 March, after the city's Mayor Mr Opstelten declared all demonstrations illegal because he thought there would be violent confrontations between racist groups and protestors. Under a long-forgotten law introduced against fascist fighting squads in the 1930s, everyone whose clothing reflected a "political orientation" could be arrested on the spot. The anti-fascist demonstrators, who were preparing to lay flowers at a statue of Anne Frank, were transported to a football stadium and kept there in unheated concrete rooms for several hours. Afterwards, following public criticism of the one-sided police interventions, the Mayor declared he had not known about the historical background of article 435a of the Penal Law.

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