His actions against the dictatorship in Oegenda never receive attention, unless he goes to protest on Dam Square during Remembrance Day: so Nico Schoonderwoerd tried again yesterday, but this time the police were immediately on his neck. “While we did not do anything that was not allowed, we had read very carefully what the rules were.”
He’s back home after a hectic night without sleep. Nico Schoonderwoerd did not get far yesterday with his silent protest on Dam Square. It makes him laugh a little. “We just had tickets, me and seven others. But it was way too quiet. I’m quite tall, they recognized me straight away, although this time I wasn’t wearing a red cap, but a gray one. The officers were waiting to intervene. So when we wanted to get the posters under our clothes today, it had already happened. We brought posters with us, because it didn’t say anywhere that that wasn’t allowed. Flags were not allowed, signs, umbrellas, but nothing was said about posters. And okay, I also had a banner of one meter and the regulation stated that banners were not allowed. But actually nothing was allowed. My lawyer had already said: they are going to arrest you no matter what, even if you hold up a postcard.”
Schoonderwoerd and two other activists who stand up for the Ugandan community were deported. “The other two didn’t even have a poster, they were only arrested because they were filming me.” The charge of sedition was quickly dropped, he says, because there was no such case. Now Schoonderwoerd ((his wife is from Uganda, hence his involvement) will be charged with disrupting a demonstration.
‘I’m on Dam Square so often, never any attention’
The activist realizes that it is painful that yesterday – despite all the pleas not to abuse Remembrance Day at this sensitive time – he attempted to stage a small protest. But there would have been no disruption, he says. Not even from breaking rules. He would have just been quiet. Schoonderwoerd says he has full respect for the commemoration and he did it ‘with pain in his heart’. “But I stand on Dam Square so often, never any attention, while when we did this last year during Remembrance Day, there was that attention. Apparently this is the only way. And if after today there is never any attention to the situation in Uganda again, then yes, I will have to do it again next year. Although I don’t really want it anymore. All that stress that comes from it.”
Schoonderwoerd and the other demonstrators are protesting because, according to them, money goes via the EU and the Netherlands (70 million per year, according to Schoonderwoerd) to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, leader of the country in central Africa since 1986. He came to power after a bloody five-year war and rules with an iron fist. International sources show that press freedom is minimal in the country and that torture and executions take place. “Our prime minister and our king just met that man, didn’t they? And in 2022 we invited Mayor Halsema to a conference of the Ugandan community in the Netherlands, which also included residents of her city Amsterdam. Well, we haven’t even gotten a response yet.”
Schoonderwoerd and the two other arrested activists are represented by lawyer Willem Jebbink. He doubts whether anything will remain of the indictment. “It appears that two of them have done nothing culpable at all.”
This is how the dead were commemorated on an almost ’empty’ Dam:
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Tags: activist Dam Square Remembrance Day pain heart Remembrance DayLiberation Day
