From us, from them, from abroad: riots in Utrecht

It seems that this hot week in Ondiep, a small neighborhood of Utrecht, is coming to an end. Along several nights some two hundred persons have been detained by the anti-riot squad of the police. Last night a silent wake, which make the headlines in De volkskrant, mourn the deceased neighbor. Even if in this morning the police fences that walled the neighborhood are still there, few people expect new riots.

There are several issues of interest regarding this week. For me, the most interesting is an almost automatic reaction of the press: the rioters were not from Ondiep, there were from abroad. So were the disturbances described in the media. Even the unique groenlinks blogger that wrote about it, Jasper Fastl, mention that assertion. My question is how do we know, and what does it matters.

In principle it is true that the official numbers of the police, at least in the press, refer to the existence of strangers to the neighborhood. First it was talked about a mayority, then about 1 in 5. All the same, what does it matter? Utrecht is a small city, and five minutes in a bycicle allows me to cross half of it. Is a person that heard about the death of a citizen in the hand of the police, that gets into his bike, and goes to another neigborhood a stranger? I don't think so. He (or she) is just another citizen from utrech, that with his own reasons believe that he should be where the police killed somebody. Why the persons that live hundred meters away from the shooting have more right to be upset that the persons that live one kilometer away? It beats me. The existence of the so called riot-tourists does not tells me that people like to travel to kick and be kicked by the police. It tells me that not only in Ondiep are frustrated people. Utrecht might be the city with higuest standards of life in NL, but not all citizen enjoys them.

Another issue is the mere existence of the riots. We have certainly heard about the riots in Paris, and somehow we were secretly happy that they did not happen here. But we are wrong. The same conditions produce the same results. Poverty, lack of future, empoverishment of a neighborhood. And the idea that police abuse existed. Shake this cocktail and you get riots. In Utrecht, in Paris, or in Venezuela. People is people all across.

The mention to venezuela is not gratuite here. That is the other very important issue shown by the riots of Ondiep. For many analysts the riots of Paris were just another example of failed (cultural) integration of migrants. Not so. Those riots were produced by a failed socio-economical model, which excludes a relevant amount of people from the welfare that Europa today has. In Paris the excluded that live in the banlieus are migrants. In Ondiep are autochtonen. Once again, the skin color does not matter. You can opress people only so far. Go beyong that tiny red line, and you will get them out of hand. Or you will get us out of hand.

Last, but not least. I checked the websites from the coalitie parties in Utrecht gemeenteraad, GL among others. Just look for a search function and type ondiep.

In the groenlinks site I get three articles posted two years ago. One, visionary enough, refer to the concerning events of violence that happened... already few years ago.

In the PvdA site the same. The CDA site does not have a search function (wow) and the christen unie wrote something in 2005 about the selling of alcohol.

And besides Jasper Fastl, were are the groenlinks bloggers from Utrecht blogging about ondiep? Robert de wethouder? Niki, Peter and Pepijn from the gemeenteraadfractie? and Jasper Haenen and Xaviera Ringeling from the leden? In none of these weblogs there is a mention to the riots of ondiep. I know, you write what you want into your weblog, but my friends from groenlinks: I miss your blogs here.