The police reported 32 arrests of underage climate activists to child abuse hotline

The police reported the arrests of 32 children involved in the A12 blockade in The Hague to the child abuse hotline Veilig Thuis. The climate action group Extinction Rebellion is upset and sees this action as a violation of the right to demonstrate, De Volkskrant reports.

The climate group is appalled by this and fears that this will have a negative impact on the participation of young protesters in the future. "I am shocked by this figure," said Extinction Rebellion spokesman Roel Kessels. He said he was dismayed by the police action and claimed that the report to Veilig Thuis was a deterrent to underage protesters and their parents.

Extinction Rebellion had noticed over the past weeks that increasingly fewer children participated in the blockade of the A12 in The Hague. Kessels assumes that it is because of the way the police deal with underage demonstrators. Usually, they are the ones who always have to show their IDs during the A12 blockade.

According to the police spokesperson, the decision to forward the arrests was not unfounded. The 32 arrests were forwarded to the reporting center only after an internal quality controller had assessed whether there was sufficient reason to forward reports from officers. And this was the case in all the arrests, the police stated.

Most parents whose children were arrested during the climate protests have not yet been contacted by Veilig Thuis. However, one such case has already been handled by the reporting center, involving a 47-year-old mother and her 15-year-old daughter. The two were arrested twice by police near the highway blockade in September.

"The authorities said I had endangered my child and I had to defend myself". The reporting center, which investigates about 120 thousand reports of child abuse or domestic violence each year, received a police report that said the minor daughter was "within the radius of the water cannon." The employee the mother spoke with asked her, "How could I be so sure my daughter was not in danger? That made me uncomfortable," the 47-year-old mother told De Volkskrant.

However, her case has since been closed because there was no evidence of child abuse, according to Veilig Thuis.