Photo Shutterstock Unions AOb and FNV have decided to cancel this Thursday’s planned demonstration against budget cuts in education upon the urgent advice of the mayor of Utrecht. The public safety cannot be guaranteed.
The NOS says the security triad received ‘concrete information from outside the city showing that a pro-Palestine organisation intends to hijack the demonstration’. A letter from Mayor Sharon Dijksma to the municipal council adds that ‘violence will not be shunned.’
Unions AOb and FNV state that it is ‘terrible that students, teachers and staff wanting to protest tomorrow are now unable to make their voices heard’. LSVb chair Abdelkader Karbache is very disappointed but sees no alternatives. ‘The municipality would have forbidden the demonstration anyway.’
Mayor Dijksma regrets that the demonstration must be cancelled. ‘I am gravely concerned that, in a time when being able to voice your opinion is of such value, there are others who threaten violence to rob us of this freedom.’
