Alleged context (feel free to correct if you have info in comments):

After Israeli Maccabi hooligans terrorized Amsterdam, the Dutch government demonized the pro-Palestine movement and banned protests. People came to protest anyways (peacefully)

The police arrested peaceful protesters and put them in a bus. They were driven to a parking lot. The police released them from the bus in a parking lot near a station.

While the protesters were walking to the station the police started hitting them. Allegedly for not moving fast enough.

  • Sop@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    @lalehamirali on instagram has reported this whole event in their story. But here’s a summary:

    1. There was a peaceful protest on Amsterdam dam square. Due to the events with maccabi hooligans the city decided that protests are not allowed in the city until Thursday (today). Trough court decision the protest of Wednesday evening was allowed after all, but not in certain locations like the dam square. So the police considered the protest illegal.
    2. After a while the police started surrounding the protesters and called on them to leave and go to the assigned protest location.
    3. When the protesters didn’t leave, there were told by the cops to get into a bus that would bring them to the assigned location.
    4. Protesters didn’t comply and were forcibly put into the bus that they thought would bring them to the assigned location.
    5. Instead they were brought to a parking lot in the outskirts of the city. This is a tactic the police uses often to end protests they deem illegal or ‘dangerous’, because it allows them to end the protest without arresting all protesters. It’s on the protesters to get home safely (which can be very tricky because sometimes this happens at night when there is no public transport and not everyone will have their phone/money on them).
    6. There was no police on the parking lot so the protesters thought they could just leave and try to get home.
    7. Laleh says in their story that apparently someone in the bus, when most people had already left, broke a window.
    8. This resulted in lots of police coming to the parking lot and basically hunting on protesters who are trying to run away to safety. You can see in Laleh’s story how panicked everyone is because they don’t know what’s going on and the police just keeps going after them and hitting them, resulting in people having to run into nettle bushes and ditches. This goes on for a while and according to Laleh about 3/4 of the people in the bus were arrested.

    Mainstream news has reported on the violence (one of the rare occasions that they actually do that) and police is ‘investigating’ the incident.

      • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Why would violence be the appropriate / expected result in your mind?

          • Prandom_returns@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            The job of the police is to enforce law and government decree without violence. Violence is just a tool they have access to, but it doesn’t mean it should be used for every kid and granny.

          • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            That’s a silly way to word it, that normalizes violent behavior. It’s a common tactic / tool they use, but more accurately:

            “enforce the law and government decree is literally the job of the police.”

            Violence, at the most cynical, is a common way they do it.

            In this case, (not discussing the whole bussing thing), if an arrest was required, say, for the bus damage, it should have been completed with the absolute minimum violence.

              • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                1 month ago

                Normalizing via speech is entrenching this very problem. I’m not saying this thread is gonna tip the scales, I’m discussing that the above commenter replied as if it’s the right response. They are condoning and almost evangelizing the topic (evangelizing is way too active a word, I can’t think of a better one, but this one is too much).

                I think there’s distinction between your raising the issue that police have a monopoly on violence, and their commenting that violence is their job. Given the context, it comes off as they are saying “it is correct and GOOD that the police met this group with violence.”

                I contend it is not appropriate, but accept that is is common (even systemically so)