Dozens demonstrate against right-wing party Forum voor Democratie congress in Zandvoort
At the Hembrug site in Zaandam, demonstrations were held against the Dutch right-wing populist party Forum voor Democratie (FvD) on Saturday morning, reported NH Nieuws. The demonstration was prompted by a planned conference of the FvD on Saturday at a location on the site. According to one of the demonstrators, about fifty people from the region had come to the site in the morning to speak out against the arrival of FvD.
The protestors were stunned that the nationalist party, whose party leader has often spoke in praise of Vladimir Putin, would choose a location where 400 Ukrainian refugees were received this spring as the site for the party conference, reports NH Nieuws.
Participant Willem Croese and a fellow demonstrator who prefers to remain anonymous say that the group believes "there should be no room in Zaandam for the FVD’s hatred, anti-Semitism and the way they deal with journalists, for example".
According to Croese, the demonstrators are "individuals from the Zaandam region, people who are active in the political and social field". He did not want to say which organizations were represented at the protest, "because you are vulnerable with these kinds of people".
Erik Schaap of the discrimination affairs office in the municipality of Zaanstreek-Waterland was also present at the demonstration.
According to Schaap, "It is of course a meeting of an extreme right-wing anti-Islamic organization. I can imagine very well, and in fact I support it, that these [protestors] are making themselves heard. That these kinds of parties do not really belong in the Netherlands,” he says in an interview with NH Niews.
An online petition against the arrival of the FVD congress in Zaandam was signed about four hundred times.
The municipal spokesperson confirmed that the demonstrators have indicated that they will protest "against intolerance and the Forum for Democracy" when registering the action. He said they had been assigned a section along the route for convention visitors.
