Sjeltur

In large parts of Europe everybody knows what the German word aufmachen means. Between 1933 and 1945 a knock on the door by German government officials followed by the shouting of “aufmachen!” (“open it!”) meant the Nazi criminals would enter your house, without a warrant, search the place and often take away the people who lived there, never to return.

Decades later the local government of The Hague in The Netherlands wants to bring back the first part of these Nazi practices: warrantless searches of private property.

The city of The Hague has the so called Haagse Pand Brigade, this brigade of government officials selects houses they want to check out to see if everything inside is according to the rules… When they knocked on the door of a citizen in The Hague, let’s call him Devidas, he refused to let them enter his house he owns. He is defending his right to keep his private property a government free zone. The local government of The Hague didn’t like that, and now they are threatening him that they will be back with a warrant and break into his house to check it out. And instead of respecting the civil rights of Devidas, the government had the audacity to tell him that he surely must have something to hide if he refuses government officials to enter his house. It’s shows the changing mentality of the government in recent years, citizens are more and more guilty of something according to the government, until proven innocent…

In a justice state, according to the rule of law, the government must have reasonable indications to suspect criminal activities in a house to get a warrant and search the house. But in this case they don’t have such indications at all, this is an operation that targets hundreds, maybe thousands, of houses they want to check out on the inside to see what’s going on there. The government of The Hague thinks they just can go to a house they pick and expects obedience when they stick their noses where it doesn’t belong in the first place. Privacy? Civil rights? That doesn’t stop the government of The Hague. On top of that, the city of The Hague likes to portrait itself as the city of peace and justice, but justice is not for the people who actually live in The Hague, apparently. Perhaps it’s time to move the International Court of Justice somewhere else, where the government takes rights of citizens more seriously.

The government spits on the core of the justice state that supposed to protect the citizens from that government. If the government of The Hague gets that warrant, this protection cease to exist, they would get it without any indication that criminal activities take place. Hitler would have loved it, do we really need to say more?

This case has attracted much attention in the Dutch blogosphere, several blogs have reported about it, like Vrijspreker, and Geenstijl. This blog will keep you updated about new developments. Let’s hope the local government of The Hague will realize that they should respect the rights of citizens, and not bring back these fascist practices. Western countries in general are moving towards a nasty authoritarian way of governing, if they start with warrantless searches of houses, or reduce that warrant to a worthless piece of paper, then we know for sure the justice state is dead…