Dutch Occupy movement ‘now just a few activists’

RNW, 9 January 2012

Three months into the Occupy protest against the culture of greed in the financial sector and just small groups of activists are left in makeshift camps in the major Dutch cities, says the ANP press agency.

(Photo: ANP)

In Amsterdam, most tents which made up the round-the-clock demonstration outside the city’s stock exchange building have been dismantled, with just a few hard-core protesters remaining.

The city council says the number of incidents and nuisance associated with the protest have dramatically decreased since people were banned from sleeping at the site. The demonstrators themselves say they plan to concentrate in the near future on surprise protests such as flash mobs.

In The Hague, a handful of protesters are still encamped on common ground in the city. The council is deciding on a weekly basis whether or not they can stay there.

Conservative VVD councillors had called for any benefits being claimed by the protesters to be suspended, but the council ruled that the same regulations apply to the protesters as to any other benefit claimants.

The Occupy movement is also carrying on in Rotterdam, but it’s unclear how much longer the protesters’ tents can stay in the city’s busy Beursplein square.

There are still five large Occupy tents in Utrecht in which six people sleep. The Utrecht protesters say they are not prepared to leave, partly because they say people from the Occupy movement in Amsterdam are planning to join them.

The Occupy protest in Eindhoven is centred on a car park next to the city’s central station and can stay there at least until 19 January. In December, Eindhoven Council said the character of the protest was increasingly less orientated to the spreading of a message. For some time, there have been rumours about the trading of drugs at the protest site.