RIOTING YOUTHS IN DUTCH VILLAGE TORCH TESTING CENTRE

Sun 24 January 2021:

Rioting youths protesting on the first night of a Dutch curfew have torched a coronavirus testing facility and threw fireworks at police in a Dutch fishing village.

Police said they fined more than 3,600 people nationwide for breaching the curfew that ran from 9 pm on Saturday until 4:30 am on Sunday and arrested 25 people for breaching the curfew or for violence.

Video from the village of Urk, 80 kilometres northeast of Amsterdam, showed youths breaking into the coronavirus testing facility near the village’s harbor before it was set ablaze on Saturday night.

The police and municipality issued a statement on Sunday expressing their anger at rioting, “from throwing fireworks and stones to destroying police cars and with the torching of the test location as a deep point.”

On Sunday, all that remained of the portable building used to administer coronavirus tests was a burned-out shell.

Police in Amsterdam also were bracing for another protest on Sunday, sending officers to a square where demonstrators clashed with police a week ago. The city’s municipality designated the square a “risk area,” a move that gave police extra powers to frisk people.