Netherlands: Protests Over a Death in Police Custody
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Version 0 of 1. The Dutch police arrested about 200 people Thursday night and Friday morning for disregarding a ban on public assembly in a neighborhood in The Hague hit by late-night rioting after the death of a man in police custody. The arrests capped four nights of rioting in the predominantly immigrant Schilderswijk neighborhood — a situation that has drawn comparisons with the angry protests that erupted in the United States following the deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers. Mayor Jozias van Aartsen, however, has strongly rejected such comparisons. “There is absolutely nothing in common between the work of American police forces and the Dutch police and the Hague force,” he told the national broadcaster NOS this week. Prosecutors investigating Sunday’s death of Mitch Henriquez, 42, from the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, say he probably died of oxygen starvation triggered by his arrest at a music festival Saturday night. |