How activist Jan Huzen organized a border guard of citizens. ‘Unfortunately we did not find asylum seekers’

The German agents in the van must have looked strangely when they approached the Dutch border on Saturday evening. On the road they were stopped by men in reflective cardigans and signal lights. A border control, carried out by self -proclaimed Dutch civil guards.

« They thought it was so bad, » says initiator Jan Huzen Triumphantally. « They could not imagine that Dutch people would arrest a German police car on German territory. » Jan Huzen is a professional activist from Nieuw-Weerdinge, a village in Drenthe. The entrepreneur with a fence company has been firing protests against the Dutch government for years. Earlier he threatened to make the addresses of undercover agents public, and was convicted of incitement statements about the allowance affair and for organizing a farmer’s protest on the highway, resulting in an accident. This weekend he played for Grenswacht.

Message to followers Facebook

The idea came about after he read a « bizarre » news item on Facebook on Facebook, says Huzen. The German police would place asylum seekers across the Dutch border. That would be apparent from surveillance images that a resident had made near the border. The German police said to The Limburger That there is the return of migrants at the border.

That afternoon Huzen sent a message to his thousands of followers on Facebook. « Who is willing to start guarding the boundaries in the night hours now that the German police are dumping aside seekers across the border at night with vans and helicopters! »

« I thought: at most about ten people are coming, » says Huzen. That became twenty people. Among other things, some members of a civilian group from Ter Apel, led by a local PVV player, participated. « More than enough. So I thought: what are we still waiting for? »

Huzen and his Facebook followers left that same evening in yellow vests for the German border. They kept a number of cars there. « Unfortunately we did not find asylum seekers. No dark people, or something that looks like it. » What would happen if they had come across it? « Then we would chase them and interrogate, » says Huzen. « And we wanted to record that. To show the general public how asylum seekers are put down here over the national border. If you record that, then you will have a riot, I think. We have already achieved that a bit. »

Van Weel and Wilders

Because the huzen campaign will be big news on Sunday. Outgoing Minister of Justice and Security David van Weel (VVD) wrote on X that the frustration for the asylum inflow was ‘understandable’. « But don’t take the right into your own hands. Let the police and Marechaussee do their work. Keep the law. » PVV leader Geert Wilders wrote on X that he thought it was a « fantastic initiative ».

Due to the attention, many more people come to Ter Apel on Sunday evening to play for a border guard. « People from Limburg, Utrecht and Rotterdam had come to it. Only because Geert Wilders thought it was a great initiative. »

Wilders would also like to participate next time, he wrote on X, but according to Huzen, that will not happen. « I don’t think he wants to run the risk of being arrested. »

Westerwolde spokesperson

That is not an imaginary risk, because it is forbidden to present yourself as a police officer. « As a citizen you can’t just keep cars, ask people for identity cards and search cars, » says the spokesperson for the municipality of Westerwolde. « That is reserved for the police. »

But in the police, this group no longer has faith, says Krista Schram, lecturer in public confidence at the Hogeschool Inholland. « These people are desperate. They feel that the authorities can no longer steer this in the right direction and that they should do it themselves. »

But according to Schram, it is not intended that citizens persist on the border. « Migrants can also cross the border for all sorts of reasons. That can simply be legal, for example if they travel within the EU. It is up to authorities to check that. Because what happens if these civil guards come across someone who, in their eyes, passes the border illegally? Are they going to stop them, do they go on the fist? It smells at their own direction. »

No arrests have been made for the time being. « When the police were on the spot at the first action, they were in the parking lot and did nothing. That is allowed, » says the spokesperson for the municipality. The actions are, however, kept closely monitored. « The police have a picture of who these people are, » says Westerwolde spokesperson. The Northern Netherlands police did not respond to questions from NRC.

Jan Huzen does not intend to stop the actions. He knows that the police keep an eye on him. « That’s why I don’t say where we’re going to check in the coming evenings, » he says. « We only choose that at the last minute. We put ten border crossings in a grab bag, someone takes a ticket out, and there we go. »

To share

Mail the editors