WATCH: Agents stand between police and protesters on the Covid stand off at Tallinn Bridge. Photo: @david_jake_BENBS
Dutch police fired rubber bullets and sound grenades on Saturday after holding off protests over changes to a World War II battleground outside the capital, as police across Europe are trying to prevent further demonstrations when a controversial new law goes into effect in three days.
After Dutch police closed off the international bridge linking the Dutch city of Utrecht to Estonia’s capital Tallinn, triggering protests, the Dutch government allowed protesters there to cross into Europe to fight against the bill.
The protests flared after the Dutch parliament passed the “Breaking the Wall” law, which prohibits any reconstruction of the high-altitude bomb fields of World War II to determine where unexploded bombs were placed.
The island of Moluza was devastated by three German-controlled bombs in 1942. Some of the stashes of bombs were hidden in wooden saucers placed in the island’s grassy landscape, making it especially difficult to uncover.
Police in Utrecht had been preparing for protests this weekend to occur in different locations throughout the city. They had set up demonstrations in a half-mile area close to the Moluza-area.
However, police estimated that more than 100 demonstrators showed up at the location and blocked the streets near the Moluza-area with burning barricades of iron rods, wood, and concrete slabs to protest the law.
Officials detained more than 10 protesters and deployed police in riot gear to the locations to keep the protesters outside, but police told local media that several protesters attempted to climb onto the Moluza-area bridge.
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Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of “Ben Shapiro Show” on the podcast network Podbean. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Shapiro is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire.