Sjeltur

Earlier this blog reported about a citizen in The Hague who refused government officials to enter his house because he wants to defend his right to keep his private property a government free zone. The local government of The Hague wants to conduct warrantless searches, and if people refuse then they will come back with a warrant. But it’s not clear at all they have reasonable indications to suspect criminal activities in a house to get a warrant and search the house, as it should be. This way that warrant is reduced to a worthless piece of paper.

This week the political party Green Left of the local parliament of the city of The Hague asked questions about these practices. The local government of The Hague answered some of those questions. The government of The Hague confirms it tries to conduct warrantless searches and if people refuse, the city will come back with a warrant. Also in cases were reasonable indications to suspect criminal activities are lacking, so the city of The Hague confirms its totalitarian practices… we’ll see the same thing in the whole of The Netherlands, soon?!

Of course it’s a good thing the local parliament of the city of The Hague asks questions about these practices, although it missed the point that citizens have rights when it comes to their relationship with the government. The answers of the local government of The Hague confirmed that they try to conduct warrantless searches, and about 90% of the people where the government knocks on the door obeys. In some cases when people defend their rights and refuse to let them in their house, the local government comes back later with a warrant.

So what about the reasonable indications to suspect criminal activities that justifies a warrant? It turns out that the city of The Hague has a very loose definition of “reasonable indications”, it confirms that suspicions of neighbours are actually such indications… That’s exactly how things worked in the former DDR, back then people reported to the government about their neighbours and that was enough for the government to knock on the door of the people being suspected. Needless to say that suspicions of neighbours are not really reasonable indications alone to justify a warrant, these practices makes it really easy for someone to make life very difficult for the neighbour they don’t like, a phone call to the government is enough…

To make things worse, that warrant to conduct a search is given by the mayor of the city. In The Netherlands a mayor is not elected, but appointed. So this is how it works now in The Hague, government officials knock on the door of a house they selected to conduct a search, if the person who lives there wants to defend his civil rights and refuses to let them in, the government officials go to the appointed mayor who can give them a warrant to conduct that search anyways. There’s no democratic control of the government’s actions whatsoever in this process, civil rights of citizens then only exist on paper, in reality the government can do whatever it wants. I bet we’ll see these totalitarian practices everywhere in The Netherlands, soon. The decline of western civilization, a civilization where citizens have civil rights that protects them from unlimited government power, is in full swing. If this continues, disaster will be inevitable at some point in the future.

For those who understand Dutch, here a video with the disappointing questions and shocking answers from the local parliament and government of The Hague.