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© Unknown42-year-old Mitch Henriquez was beaten and suffocated to death by Dutch police officers in The Hague
When Aruban Mitch Henriquez decided to attend the 'Night at the Park' music festival in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 27th, he probably expected to spend a pleasant evening listening to music with friends before returning to his family. But when he left his home that evening, it was the last time his family would see him alive. A few hours later, Henriquez would effectively be beaten and suffocated to death by Dutch police.

On the evening in question, as the festival wound down, Henriquez was walking with friends when they passed a group of police officers. According to eyewitnesses, the police were "staring for a long time" at Henriquez, who jokingly said to the police officers "what do you want? Here is my gun". An official police report on the incident also stated that Henriquez made a joke about having a gun on him. Without further warning several police officers jumped on Henriquez telling him that he "shouldn't joke about that". The fact that police realised it was a joke did not seem to moderate the violence they used against him. One witness wrote on her facebook page:
"I saw the beginning. They were running towards him, and jumped him from behind. It was a whole group of police officers. He fell on the ground and about six officers were sitting on him, one officer with a baton kept hitting him on his head and legs. [...] We yelled "don't hit him, don't hit him", but we, my husband and I, a woman and a couple of other people were told to leave the scene and officers were coming towards us."
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Henriquez in the hospital
After being repeatedly beaten on the head, Henriquez lay seemingly unconscious on the ground while police officers continued to sit on him. Instead of being taken to the hospital, he was sent to the police station. According to the public prosecutor, Henriquez "became unwell" during the drive to the station, but from the video footage taken by one of the bystanders, it appears he was already unconscious or in a coma before he was put in the police car. Henriquez officially died the day after in hospital.

The autopsy revealed the cause of death as acute oxygen depletion due to suffocation. According to Chief Public Prosecutor Kitty Nooy however, it may take months for a conclusion regarding his death to be reached. The five police officers that took part in his arrest have been put on non-active duty, and are officially suspected of being involved in Henriquez's death.

Taking a lesson from the USA

The murder of Henriquez bears a striking resemblance to the death of Eric Garner in New York last year. Several NYPD officers jumped Garner while one of them put him in a choke-hold. Garner died from this brutal treatment, meted out by those who claim to 'serve and protect'. Garner's last words were; "I can't breathe". Has the disease of reckless police brutality against civilians that is so common in the USA infected the forces of law and order in the Netherlands?

Identical to Garner's case, Henriquez's death caused a public outcry in The Hague. For four nights in a row at the end of June, Dutch citizens took to the streets to demand justice for Henriquez. On the first night, hundreds of people gathered in front of the De Heemstraat police station. During the protest, properties were destroyed and a store was looted. According to broadcast organisation NOS, rioters set off fireworks and threw stones and bottles at police officers. According to the police, oil was also thrown at them. Several officers were injured during the riot; 80-100 people were arrested, the majority were young adults. According to Arnoud van Doorn of the Islamic political party Partij van de Eenheid these riots could have been prevented, "with the already heightened anger and frustration among many people, the death of Henriquez was the last straw. Let's hope that we have now woken up from the naive dream that dissatisfaction can be eliminated with neighborhood barbecues and dialogue sessions. Use that money to fight poverty and youth employment", van Doorn said.
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Police officers surround protesters in the Schilderswijk district, The Hague
Indeed, tensions have been high in the Hague, home of the international court of human rights, where racist police violence is nothing new, particularly in the Schilderswijk and Transvaal districts. As one of the victims in these districts told the media: "I'm often asked for my ID, for no apparent reason. If I ask why I'm taken to the police station, I get beaten up and abused in the police car. It continues at the police station. They put me in a cell while I was handcuffed and kicked me repeatedly in my back. After that they they took a fire hose and sprayed me with water. They left me in the cell soaked in water for the night."

A report published last year by the social-scientific research institute SCP revealed that many Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese and Antilleans feel they are being treated unfairly by the police. According to research conducted by a Dutch police body, youths with a non-Dutch appearance are targeted more frequently by police. They are almost four times as likely to be frisked compared with native Dutch youths and almost twice as likely to be taken to a police station. According to the youths themselves, the police act more aggressively while frisking youths with darker skin. The researchers report that "youths would like to see police discriminating less". In addition, the study revealed that youths with a non-native Dutch appearance give a lower mark (4.8) than native Dutch youths (6.6) for their level of satisfaction with encounters with Dutch police.

Despite this, the researchers involved did not conclude that police officers are treating minorities differently. Instead, they propose that the difference is due to non-Dutch youths spending more time on the streets, and that their behavior may be more criminal. They do admit that unfair treatment takes place on the streets by police officers, but disagree that there is systematic unfair treatment of non-native Dutch citizens. This is a common theory used to explain away racial profiling by police; the police aren't racist, those 'types' of people are simply more criminally-inclined than others. In fact, the Chief of the Hague police, Paul van Musscher, said as much in an interview in 2010:
Interviewer: How is it that young Moroccans from Gouda are so involved in crime? Is it their culture? Or are there other things at play, what do you think?

Musscher: Recently, this has been explained to me by someone who teaches us about multiculturalism. We take this issue very seriously. A Moroccan man. And he told me that residents from Gouda come from the Rif [a mainly mountainous region of northern Morocco]. They are Berbers. Berber comes from the word barbarian. And that is indeed culturally ingrained which makes them a bit wilder. Living easier on the streets. More rough. You could say that it came along genetically.

Interviewer: Genetically, even?

Musscher: That is his statement.

Interviewer: What do you think?

Musscher: You see of course that they culturally have a different habit than we do.
This echoes what I've written elsewhere about the Schilderswijk district and the way youths there, in particular Moroccans, are thought to behave more aggressively and criminally than their Dutch peers:
The perception of Moroccans in Holland as being violent and rebellious is long-standing. Mention it to any random Dutch person and they know exactly what you're talking about. Certainly, Moroccan youths have caused trouble in many neighborhoods, The Hague being no exception, but as is often the case, these youths are effectively marginalised and neglected by Dutch society with increasing racism in the Netherlands, making it difficult for them to get a job.

Dutch readers may want to watch this documentary that illustrates the kind of relationship between the police and citizens, mostly Moroccans, in the Schilderswijk district of The Hague. The examples of police behavior shown in the documentary, which include raiding houses in the middle of the night and kicking a helpless handcuffed Moroccan, probably contribute to some Moroccans' rebellious behavior towards authority. This is in contrast to the claim made by Dutch journalist Fleur Jurgens who said that parents of Moroccans ''are to blame for the antisocial behavior of their children by teaching them at a young age to hate the Dutch and abhor their society."
It is easier to refer to Moroccan youths as "barbarian and genetically criminal" or to blame their upbringing for their 'violent' behavior, than to pay attention to the real source of the problem: social marginalization, racism, rough treatment by authorities and a negative portrayal by media, politicians, employers, their fellow citizens and the police force.

In recent years, former police officers have also spoken out about the violence and racism that is an inherent part of police training and attitudes. Back in 2013, in response to allegations of heavy-handed and racist policing, the chief constable at De Heemstraat police station, Michiel de Roos, denied that his officers use excessive violence against immigrants and Dutch citizens of foreign extraction, stating: "My colleagues work really hard to maintain safety and are pretty successful in doing so." The Mayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen, wholeheartedly agreed with him. Interestingly, years ago, in a letter to a police neighborhood intervention team, the Mayor wrote: "During that discussion, I have made it clear that ruling with an iron fist by the policemen in this part of the city is absolutely necessary, and I've made it clear that I fully support this. The results that have been achieved with this approach in the last two years buttress my view."
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© anpMayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen
It appears however that this time, van Aartsen has changed his mind on the matter. Two weeks after the murder of Henriquez, he admitted that racism and the use of inappropriate violence is present within the police force, and said that the police department is aware of this. He also said that his alleged statement regarding the non-existence of racism among police officers is false. Wherever the Mayor stands on this issue, actions always speak louder than words, and the problem of police violence and especially their treatment towards minorities still has not been seriously dealt with. And until it is dealt with, the situation will further escalate and we may have more cases such as the tragic death of Aruban Henriquez in the near future.