City council parties GroenLinks, the Party for the Animals, and D66 are shocked by the police’s actions during the occupation of the Academy building on April 25. They’ve asked the municipal executives for an explanation.
The parties announced this on Tuesday. They sent the mayor and aldermen written questions on Tuesday afternoon.
Right to protest
The parties are concerned that the right to protest, which is a fundamental right, was violated, they say in their letter to the municipal executives. ‘Any curtailment or suspension of this right should be scrutinised’, they said.
According to them, there is currently ‘a lot of confusion about exactly what happened during and before people were evicted from the building’. They’re looking for an explanation on several key issues.
They’ve asked the executives whether a protest like the one that happened on April 25 would have to be announced beforehand. They also want to know if the students informed the UG about their protest and if so, whether that satisfied the requirements of notification.
Proportional actions
The parties also wanted to know what the mayor did after the UG called the police on the students for unlawful entry. ‘Did the mayor (or the police) spend any time determining whether this was a case of unlawful entry or just a protest?’
They also want to know what kind of decisions were made concerning the police actions outside the Academy building, where at least one officer used their baton, and whether the mayor thinks the police actions were a proportional response to the situation.