Netherlands

Last week, on the first day of the 2025 Nato summit, Rotterdam harbour’s railways were shut down by action group Geef Tegengas. The group focuses on how logistical hubs act as bottlenecks of the industries fuelling war, genocide, injustice and ecological collapse. In this piece, one of the activists involved reflects on the group’s recent action.

As Turkey begins its military attack on Kurdish regions in northern Syria, leaving dozens killed and tens of thousands fleeing their homes, activists are taking action against arms shipments to the Turkish military, and some states are responding by suspending arms shipments.

On 10th April, members of the Amsterdam-based group “Stop the War on Migrants” took action during the annual shareholder meeting of Airbus.

Germany has been joined by Finland, Netherlands, and Denmark in a suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The decisions follow the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and announcements by the United Nations that Yemen is experiencing the worst famine the world has seen for 100 years.

ABP – Netherland's largest pension provider – has decided to end it's it's investments in companies that produce nuclear weapons, as well as investments in the tobacco industry.

Wednelda de Vries

Originally published on the 'Explosive Stuff' blog. The original article can be found here: http://stopwapenhandel.org/node/1955

Martin Broek

Defence-industries profiting of the Dutch tax laws are double cynical. Apart from ethical objections, the defence industry are evading the very taxes which are uses by their governments to pamper them, buy their product, subsidize their research and facilitate their exports.

In 2009, US president Obama put the Netherlands on his list of the world's worst tax havens. The Dutch government did its utmost to deny this allegation. But the issue was on the agenda and has never disappeared since.

Wendela de Vries describes the action Stop Wapenhandel took against the presence of Dutch companies at the IDEX arms fair.

Wendela de Vries

Frank Slijper

After the bloody suppression of protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, the European Union (and the US) ordered an arms embargo that applies until today. From a human rights perspective this is fully justified: the situation remains appalling and attempts at democratic reforms are nipped in the bud. At the same time the embargo is also clearly politically motivated, to keep China as small as possible in military terms. While the economic relationship with China has grown, military co-operation rightly remains a thorny issue. Despite cracks in the embargo it won't be off the table any time soon. Yet it is a question how long the blockade will be maintained with China strengthening its power base.

The German Marshall Fund of the United States annually does a survey on important "transatlantic trends", which can make an interesting read. One of the questions asked is: "Please tell me to what extent do you agree with the following: Under some conditions, was is necessary to obtain justice." (Q29.2). The answers are quite revealing (see graphic below).

Despite the bad weather thousands of Bombspotters have gathered in Kleine Brogel today to denounce the illegal nuclear policy of the Belgian government. They responded to the appeal of Vredesactie and were not intimidated by the massive presence of police and military personnel, kilometres of barbwire, several helicopters and guard dogs that were being deployed in order to try to keep the illegal nuclear policy in place.