Hundreds participate at protest march against sexual assault in Leiden

Around 300 people took part in a protest march in Leiden on Saturday night against the recent sexual assaults in the city. The night-time protest march is an initiative of the Leiden Top 50, a network of influential women in the city. They are very concerned about the incidents in Leiden's city center, as several women, including students, have been harassed or attacked in the evenings and at night in recent weeks. The participants gathered at Stadhuisplein and walked a route through the city center that eventually brought them back to Stadhuisplein.

However, no arrests have yet been made regarding the sexual offenses that are gripping the city center of Leiden. The most recent incidents involved the rape of several women. Here too, the perpetrators have not yet been found and arrested. The frequency of these incidents has led to more and more young women feeling unsafe in their city and no longer daring to walk the streets alone at night, Hart van Nederland reported.

But the women in Leiden have had enough and want to make a statement with the protest march "The street belongs to everyone". “It's unacceptable that it's not safe for women to walk the streets in Leiden," Gwen Piroti, one of the organizers, told Hart van Nederland. "Women now go home in groups or take their bikes instead of walking. They feel less free. Of course that's not acceptable," she said.

The protest march was also attended by council members, councilors and the current mayor Peter van der Velden. "We want people to be able to walk through the city the way they want," the mayor told Hart van Nederland. The organizers say they feel supported by the politicians walking along.

"The march was peaceful and people mainly talked to each other. The statement was made that you have to behave in Leiden and that this behavior is unacceptable. The prevailing feeling is that it's good that we all did this together. The best thing would be if something like this would not happen again," said a spokeswoman on behalf of the organizers.

This is not the first time that such incidents have occurred in Leiden. In 2019, several assaults and rapes in the city center also led to great insecurity, especially among young women. A year later, a then 22-year-old man from Leiden was sentenced to four years in prison in this case.