Harassment charges filed after Leiden professor finds anti-left sticker on home

Historian and assistant professor Nadia Bouras found a sticker from anti-left action group Vizier Op Links on her doorpost on Sunday. She will file charges of harassment, she said on Twitter, posting a photo of the sticker. "I just got home and found this on my doorpost. This is not normal," she tweeted.

The sticker reads: "Observed location. This location is being observed by followers of Vizier Op Links. Go to vizieroplinks.org to share tips and get a view of leftist activists."

Ik kom net thuis en vind dit op mijn deurpost. Dit is niet normaal. pic.twitter.com/pE428Wgk7Y

— Nadia Bouras - نادية بوراس ⵏⴰⴷⵢⴰ ⴱⵓⵔⴰⵙ 🍉 (@NadiaBouras) March 21, 2021

Vizier Op Links has a website and is active on social media. It's goal is to break the "left hegemony", by "mapping left-wing networks" with the use of tips. Who is behind the platform is unclear. The website states that "the activist left has nestled in the capillaries of our system: media, education, justice, government and business."

Bouras is assistant professor of migration history at Leiden University. She is considered a prominent expert in the field of migration and integration. "I find this very intimidating," she said to Het Parool. "I was terribly shocked. Just like my children, who was frightened by my reaction. Normally I get notes or strange things at my work address, but like this at my home, that is very intimidating."

The Leiden professor was not the only person to be intimidated in this way. Huub Bellemakers, candidate council member for green party GroenLinks in Nijmegen, found such stickers stuck to his home last week. "I wanted to go to work. After that I was a bit scared," he told RTL Nieuws. "I looked over my shoulder and left my GroenLinks face mask at home."

In response to the stickers, Vizier Op Links said on Twitter that the stickers are "playful and freely available". "Thousands of them have already been sent, literally. A bit complicated to charge us for each individual sticker. The left has been trying to frame and cancel us from day one. Nothing new."