Wilders calls on government to send in the army to quell immigrant unrest

“The scum – often immigrant – is destroying our country. They have nothing to do with the Netherlands. They do not share our values. Stop this and act Prime Minister Rutte before this violence becomes half a civil war. Stop it now. Deploy our army. Now,” Wilders tweeted after shocking images of Moroccans attacking a police vehicle surfaced on social media.

Wilders also retweeted a comment noting the almost exclusive presence of Moroccans in the rioting, as FWM reported, the first news source to do so.

Nederland. Het – vaak allochtoon – tuig maakt ons land kapot. Ze hebben niets met Nederland. Ze delen onze waarden niet.

Stop dit en grijp in @MinPres Rutte voordat dit geweld een halve burgeroorlog wordt. Stop het nu.

Zet ons leger in. Nu. pic.twitter.com/ZFxmAI6cYb

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) January 25, 2021

Ik ben nu op het #Kruisplein in #Rotterdam, maar eerlijk is eerlijk: Het zijn vooral Marokkaanse-Nederlanders die uit zijn op rellen.

— Ken Stash (@KenStash) January 25, 2021

“The vast majority were of immigrant descent,” shop owner Robert van Ewijk told Dutch daily De Telegraaf. He saw how molotov cocktails and pig carcasses were thrown through broken store windows.

Riot police were called out across the Netherlands as rioting continued for third night following the introduction of a curfew to try to stop the spread of Coronavirus. Some 151 people were arrested, police said. Police chief Willem Woelders told current affairs programme Nieuwsuur: “Things were relatively quiet until 7:30pm, but then all hell broke loose.”

In Haarlem and Rotterdam extra riot police were drafted in, Woelders said. In Amersfoort, fireworks were thrown at police and there were also problems in Den Bosch, where a group of up to 150 Moroccans had gathered in defiance of the 9pm curfew, and a Jumbo supermarket was looted.

In Rotterdam, mayor Achmed Aboutaleb had to evoke his emergency powers to call in riot police with water cannons after trouble broke out in the south of the city. There were some 60 arrests. RTV Oost reported that mobs were running through the centre of Zwolle and there were renewed clashes with police in the north of Helmond. In Amsterdam, there were at least nine arrests after riots erupted in the east of the city and in Gouda, the mayor also had to evoke his emergency powers after several cars were set on fire.

There were several arrests in Geelen, in Limburg, including minors, police said.

Prime minister Mark Rutte said 99 percent of people were complying with the stricter new rules, including the 9pm curfew that came into force on Saturday. He singled out the vandalism in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, as well as Enschede where a hospital building came under attack, for special condemnation. “Any normal person will look at this with disgust and ask themselves what possessed these people. This has nothing to do with protesting: it is criminal violence and that is how we will treat it.”