Politicians react angrily to the message that Farmers Defense Force leader Mark van den Oever would share telephone numbers of CDA members on social media. MPs are not pleased with this way of ‘doxing’. The municipality of The Hague does not expect a massive protest on Thursday.
FDF has been focusing on social media specifically on the CDA for some time, sometimes with threatening language. “The CDA is going to pull the plug from the cabinet. They don’t know it themselves yet, but we do know it,” said Van den Oever in a recent video. According to reports on social media, he now shares the telephone numbers of CDA MP Derk Boswijk, who speaks on behalf of the party on nitrogen, and of other Christian Democrats. According to Member of Parliament Eline Vedder, she receives ‘non-stop telephone calls and apps with advice’.
Van den Oever could not be reached.
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Party leader Wopke Hoekstra calls the action ‘reprehensible and unacceptable’. Disagreement is part of democracy, says the CDA leader and minister, ‘but publishing numbers to intimidate people goes beyond all boundaries of decency. Stop that’.
“What a pathetic attempt at intimidation, far across the border,” says CDA minister Hugo de Jonge. “No CDA member is really impressed by this. And really no farmer benefits from this,” said the minister on social media. “Hands off our CDA colleagues in the House of Representatives and the Senate,” calls D66 MP Sjoerd Sjoerdsma. “This is a reprehensible form of harassment that must stop asap.” According to his fellow party member Tjeerd de Groot, ‘this is going much too far’.
‘crazy, intolerable’
Independent Member of Parliament Liane den Haan calls the action crazy. “Demonstrate okay but within the rules. Disagreeing is okay but respectful. Inverted flags, disgusting. But harassment? Reprehensible and intolerable,” she says. Many politicians indicate that they have been threatened and intimidated more often in recent years. Various politicians have also visited their homes around the farmers’ protests.
protest Thursday
The municipality of The Hague does not expect farmers to come en masse to the court city on Thursday to demonstrate at noon. A spokesperson for Mayor Van Zanen says that the municipal council has ‘no reason’ to assume that the demonstrators will show up in large numbers or that their protest will lead to ‘disorders’. The municipality hopes to get in touch with farmers’ action group Farmers Defense Force (FDF), which has announced the protest.
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