When the police in the Netherlands no longer defend freedom of expression and the fanaticism of the pro-abortion movement leads to intolerance on campus
Universities should be places where public debates can be held safely. But our recent experience at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) last March showed us that this is no longer so obvious.
As part of a series of street campaigns carried out in the Netherlands and Flanders, our volunteers from TFP Student Action Europe and Stirezo Pro-Life have been visiting various campuses, distributing a leaflet entitled “9 reasons to protect the unborn child”.
Our aim is simple: to challenge, in a lawful and peaceful manner, the left-wing “dogma” prevalent in university circles that abortion is a “woman’s right” and that one cannot object to it.
As usual, in the early stages of our campaign everything was going peacefully – not that all students at TU/e were pro-life (far from it!), but all conversations and interactions on campus remained within the bounds of civility.
Until a growing number of students and university staff, radical left-wing activists, completely changed the tone of the interactions…
“Go away!”, that was their slogan. The abortion activists surrounded us with jackets and banners, so that we were obscured from view. We tried to move our protest several times, but they kept following us. They also used a megaphone with a siren sound, coupled with loud screaming, to make our slogans unintelligible.
To hinder us even further, the counter-protestors resorted to even more shameful tactics. An abortion activist snatched flyers out of the hands of a TFP campaigner, and another one of our campaigners was spat in the face. Shockingly enough, one of the counter-protestors even tried to set our banner on fire.
These acts are clearly illegal under Dutch criminal law, which prohibits hindering lawful public demonstrations with violence or the threat of violence. This is the level of the pro-abortion movement – they are willing to commit crimes, just to prevent people from defending the unborn in public.
What made the situation even more outrageous, was the fact that multiple police agents were present at the scene. While the counter-protestors were harassing us, they stayed to watch at a distance. It constituted a serious failure in their duty to maintain public order and protect lawful demonstrations.
In the end, we decided to finish our protest at the TU/e earlier than planned, because our safety was not guaranteed and our protest was made impossible. To our unpleasant surprise, however, the abortion activists kept following us. They tried multiple times to block our path, for no reason but to harass us. This, too, was a violation of Dutch criminal law, which prohibits trying to block someone’s exit route.
The whole affair had an interesting aftermath, because some of the abortion activists had drafted an open letter to the university board. In a twisted manner, they tried to portray us as the wrongdoers, using misleading framing and false accusations.
They lied that their counter-protest was “peaceful” and accused us of physical violence. We did push several abortion activists to the side, but only because they intruded into our personal space and blocked our path on the street. Of course, this was conveniently left out, to frame us as aggressors. The authors of the open letter also accused us of making “online hate videos” and “radicalized anti-women content”, claiming that this “incites to violence”. Absurdly enough, they even accused us of sexually harassing a student during the protest.
The open letter was spread amongst students and staff, gathered more than 600 signatories, and was presented to the university board. But immediately afterwards, it was taken offline, suggesting that the accusations only served to destroy our reputation. As everybody knows, keeping false accusations on the internet carries the risk of having to defend yourself in court.
The events during the protests in Eindhoven should serve as a wake-up call to realize how deep the societal crisis is nowadays. It is clear that universities have become progressive bubbles, where anyone who professes traditional christian values is immediately suppressed. The maxim appears to be: tolerance for everyone and everything, except for traditional christians.