Feyenoord asks Utrecht to explain police's harsh treatment of fans

Feyenoord will ask the municipality of Utrecht for clarification on Monday about how the police treated the Rotterdam football club’s fans on Sunday afternoon. The club management received “both disturbing stories and images regarding the reception and departure of our supporters at the Galgewaard Stadium,” Feyenoord said in a statement on its website.

Videos shared online show riot police officers and an armed arrest team using force against Feyenoord fans around the match against FC Utrecht on Sunday. Several short videos, apparently made after the match, show riot police officers hitting people with batons. Another video shows a police officer using pepper spray on supporters boarding the bus.

Feyenoord said it did not want to jump to conclusions. “However, images posted on social media and eyewitness accounts strongly suggest that some police officers acted unnecessarily forcefully before and especially after the FC Utrecht Feyenoord match.”

The club will ask the municipality of Utrecht “for further explanation and an investigation into the way the travelling supporters were treated.”

A spokesperson for Utrecht mayor Sharon Dijksma told RTV Utrecht that the riot police’s intervention against Feyenoord fans was necessary due to fears of a confrontation between supporters’ groups of FC Utrecht and the visiting club. “Supporters sought each other out,” said a municipal spokesperson. So the riot police were deployed.

The Utrecht police said they’d only be able to comment on the matter on Monday. A spokesperson told ANP that two arrests were made: one for sedition and one for having a stadium ban.

Feyenoord’s official supporters’ association condemned the treatment of the Rotterdam fans. “Supporters deserve respect,” the supporters’ association De Feijenoorder said in a statement. “Not to be treated if they were suspected from the outset.”

According to the supporters’ association, the Feyenoord fans were met by “a large police presence” when their bus arrived and frisked “based on vague ‘indications’ that there may be fireworks.”

“We find this course of events disproportionate, intimidating, and unacceptable,” the association wrote. Safety measures must be “proportionate, careful, and well-founded,” they said. “What happened here is disproportionate in our opinion.”