Anti-Islam PVV denounces Dutch rioting at asylum centers

Sietse Fritsma
PVV member Sietse Fritsma during a debate in Feb. 2010 (zilverbat./Flickr). (PVV member Sietse Fritsma during a debate in Feb. 2010 (zilverbat./Flickr))

Anti-Islam party PVV denounced violence and riots surrounding the talks of opening asylum centers in various parts of the country during a debate in the Tweede Kamer, lower house of parliament on Tuesday, NU reports.

"Resistance is okay, but peacefully an democratically", PVV parliamentarian Sietse Fritsma said in response to questions from the PvdA. The PvdA thinks the PVV remained quiet o the issue for too long. "Of course it's not good if aggression and violence are used." Fritsma said.

A number of discussions about the arrival of an asylum center devolved into rioting in various parts of the country over the past month. The most recent was in Heesch on Monday, where about a thousand people demonstrated, many of them not from the town itself. The police were pelted with fireworks, eggs and stones and the riot police eventually had to be deployed to calm things down. Three people were arrested.

Before that there were also aggressive protests and riots in Steenbergen and Geldermalsen. On Monday Mayor Cees van der Knaap of Ede - where the municipality plans to house 1,300 asylum seekers - called on the government for a national approach to the crisis, in which each municipality gets its own quota on the number of asylum seekers it must accommodate. The mayor also called off the information meeting on the asylum center, which was scheduled for Thursday, in fear of riots.