You may have read our article the other day, about a man from Geen 4 mei voor mij, an ‘anti-racism activist group’, who had created a Facebook event, with plans to hold a noise protest during the WWII commemoration on Dam Square (Amsterdam) on 4th May. Well, there were calls for the protest to be banned. The judge is still ruling this.
Well, now he has changed his mind about the Remembrance Day protest. Instead of the planned noise disturbance during the 2-minute silence at Dam square, he says that he wants to sound an alarm a couple of minutes before the silence. He agrees that after this is conducted, he will leave. This is what he told the court today, whilst they were discussing the ban.
Mayor Van Aartsen said that they are free to demonstrate, just not on Dam square on the 4th May. There is a worry that it will cause too much panic – similar to what happened in 2010, when a disturbed man started screaming and caused fear at the ‘dodenherdenking’ in Amsterdam’s Dam square:
So, why the protest in the first place?
Let me just recap on why the protest was organised in the first place. An event was organised by Geen 4 mei voor mij because they felt that the commemoration was unfair. The group has been campaigning for years about commemorations of the dead. They felt that the commemorations did not take into consideration all of the victims in the Dutch West Indies and that white’s are favoured in the remembrance. They also want commemorations for victims involved in the Indonesian independence struggle.
We are yet to know what is going to happen, but understandably a lot of people are pretty p**sed about it.
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