At least four police officers were injured following a violent riot that started with a clash Saturday evening between rival Eritrean groups in the city, which houses the Dutch Parliament.
The police used tear gas to break up the riots, involving almost 500 people, and at least 13 people were arrested. Witnesses said the area around the Opera business centre resembled a war zone, with several cars, including five police vehicles and a coach, set ablaze by the rioters who used Molotov cocktails made from petrol from a nearby gas station, and the road was strewn with stones and broken glass.
“Our colleagues were confronted with very serious violence which erupted out of nothing,” Dutch broadcaster NOS quoted local police chief Mariëlle van Vulpen as saying. ”Together with the public prosecutor’s office, we are conducting an extensive investigation into these incidents.”
The clash in the city on the North Sea, which also houses the UN’s International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, broke out after a group of pro-government Eritreans meeting at the business centre were attacked by group of anti-government activists.
Describing the rioting as “disgusting and unacceptable,” City mayor Jan van Zanen was quoted as saying that the police knew about the “tensions” between the two rival groups,. Security had been upgraded after “we received several reports about youngsters from the ‘Brigade Nhamedu’ looking for trouble,” he said.
A report in The Guardian last year said the Brigade Nhamedu, which is opposed to the authoritarian Eritrean regime, was responsible for violence at several events held by the Eritrean community in the US, Canada and Sweden over the past couple of years.
A spokesperson for the Federatie van Eritrese Gemeenschappen in Nederland, which had organised what she described as a belated New Year’s party at the business centre, said the rioters were not Eritreans, but Ethiopians upset over losing a recent war in the Tigray region. “They have been expressing their anger with a lot of violence for three years,” she said.
Migrants clash with police in The Hague pic.twitter.com/AUFtcMCNfU
— RT (@RT_com) February 17, 2024
Describing the violence as “completely unacceptable,” a statement released by the acting justice minister Dilan Yesilgöz said “Attacking emergency service workers who are simply doing their jobs is totally out of order, and there will be consequences.”
