Last month on Coffee House I drew attention to the inconsistency in how Europe responded to the migrant crises in Belarus and France. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, was accused of ‘weaponising’ Middle Eastern migrants seeking to enter Europe at his country’s border with Poland, but no government dared criticise France for the chaos in Calais.
There is similar hypocrisy in how the EU has reacted to Dutch police firing live bullets at protesters in Rotterdam. Last Friday three people venting their anger at the fresh Covid restrictions imposed by the Dutch government were wounded by what a police spokesperson referred to as ‘warning shots’. Shouldn’t warning shots have been fired over protesters’ heads and not into their bodies?
As disturbing as the reports were of the shooting, equally shocking has been the silence from the EU and the United Nations.
As disturbing as the reports were of the shooting, equally shocking has been the silence from the EU and the UN
They haven’t always been so reticent when a police force takes aim at demonstrators.
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