PARLIAMENT CALLED IN DUTCH EMERGENCY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 15

PARLIAMENT CALLED IN DUTCH EMERGENCY

(N.Z.P.A. Renter —Copyright) AMSTERDAM, June 15. The Dutch Parliament meets in emergency session today to discuss two days of violent clashes between police and strikers and rowdies which have made a battlefield of the heart of Amsterdam.

After police had made charge after charge against barricades thrown up by demonstrators last night, the Prime Minister, Mr Joseph Cals, said that special measures were being considered to end the disturbances.

The present situation could not be allowed to continue for another 24 hours, Mr Cals said. “If it does strong action will be necessary,” he said. Heavily reinforced police used firearms and tear gas yesterday to scatter rioters.

By the < end of the day at least 50 civilians and 16 policemen had been hurt. One civilian casualty was a 43-year-old man shot through the hand by a police inspector as he attacked a policeman with a bayonet. BATONS USED The emergency session of Parliament was called at the request of the Coalition Liberal Party who want to

question Ministers about the behaviour of police on Monday in breaking up a crowd of building workers demonstrating against the Amsterdam police. The police used batons on Monday night to disperse a crowd of building workers

demonstrating against a 2 per cent deduction from their summer holiday bonus for administrative costs. The death in this clash of one demonstrator, 51-year-old Jan Weggelaar, caused yesterday’s rioting. DEATH MYSTERY The workers claimed he had been beaten up by police, who in turn said he had died of heart failure. A union spokesman later quoted Weggelaar’s doctor as saying he had never had heart trouble.

Throughout yesterday the building workers clashed with police, overturned cars and set them on fire, smashed windows, and left a trail of de-

struction through the heart of the Dutch capital. POLICE SHOTS Later the workers were joined by crowds of “provos” —long-haired youths in leather jackets and jeans who played a prominent part in the demonstrations .at the marriage of Crown Princess Beatrix to a German diplomat in Amsterdam last March. They tore up pavements and parking meters, stoned shop windows, and threw up barricades against the police. Shots rang out in the city

centre late into the night, and as the rioters were driven out they tried to wreck as much as possible in their retreat.