POLICE DETAIN 100 AFTER PROTEST AGAINST LOCKDOWN
AMSTERDAM dutch police used water cannon, dogs and mounted police to disperse a protest in central Amsterdam on Sunday against coronavirus lockdown restrictions and detained more than 100 people for throwing stones and fireworks.
The demonstration in the city’s Museum Square, which violated a ban on public gatherings, came the day after the government introduced a nightly curfew for the first time since the Second World War.
Protesters, organized in part by restaurant owners fed up with the country’s long-lasting lockdown measures, carried a banner saying “Stop The Lockdown.”
Fearing a riot or a disease-spreading event, Mayor Femke Halsema had designated the square as a “high-risk zone” and gave police the power to pre-emptively frisk people for weapons.
Police cleared the square after people ignored instructions to leave and detained those who attacked them with stones and fireworks in nearby streets, the mayor’s office said.
Parliament voted narrowly last week to approve the curfew, swayed by assertions that a variant of COVID-19 first identified in Britain was about to cause a new surge in cases. New infections in the country have generally been declining for a month.
On Saturday night, police had arrested 25 people across the country and handed out 3,600 fines for curfew violations.