He says this in an interview with NRC. A number of activists were preventively arrested for the major climate demonstration on the A12. They got a restraining order.
One of them was Lucas Winnips, who went to the demonstration despite his restraining order. He was arrested there:
The preventive arrests came under harsh criticism from the Public Prosecution Service: the right to demonstrate would be under pressure. About that criticism, OM top man Gerrit van der Burg says: “Those arrests are based on suspicion of sedition, a criminal offense. And we used the most accessible way to arrest them.”
The OM chief says that there was indeed reason to arrest people preventively. “It’s about safety for us. So that a citizen, despite the fact that there is a demonstration in the area, can still cross the street with a safe feeling.”
Taken off the bike
He says one of the demonstrators was “plucked off the bike” because all six had to be arrested at the same time. “Otherwise they could coordinate their answers. So there was an investigative interest.”
Last Saturday, on the day of the Extinction Rebellion demonstration itself, 768 people were arrested, the majority for blocking the road.
According to Van der Burg, demonstrators seem to only want one thing: to be arrested and cause a fuss. “They make it as difficult as possible for us, with chains and glue.”
Although the climate activists did not use physical force last weekend, he said, “they did frustrate agents in their work”, for example by taping their fingers to delay identity registration. According to him, their aim increasingly seems to be to commit criminal offenses or to ‘challenge the authorities’.
