VVD Amsterdam wants a harassment-free zone for women
The VVD in Amsterdam is fed up with female harassment in public and wants a harassment-free zone to be adopted in the city. Within that zone, every effort must be made to prevent intimidation. “We are not succeeding enough at the moment to get a grip on it,” says party chairman of the VVD Amsterdam Claire Martens in Op1 on Thursday evening.
Currently, 75 percent of young women in major cities experience male harassment in public. Local politicians in Amsterdam have been trying to do something about this for years, but without visible results. “At the moment we have encountered hail,” says Martens. “We address her and the people, open a community center somewhere. You see it doesn’t work. I say: it’s done now.”
The harassment-free zone should teach the city government which approach works best. Martens: “We recommend one hotspot, instead of taking half measures everywhere. Within that hotspot, we do everything within our power to prevent women’s behavior from having to adapt to men.” Policy must then be made on the basis of the fewer that are drawn “so that we can roll out the whole of the Netherlands”, says the liberal.
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Amsterdam VVD member @ClaireMartens3 wants harassment-free zones for women. “It is not allowed anywhere, but what you see is that we have been working on the maps of this problem for years. We actually manage to get a grip on it.” #On 1 pic.twitter.com/DsDGUVhWnt
— Op1 (@op1npo) December 8, 2022
According to Martens, making the whole of Amsterdam a harassment-free zone is currently impossible. “Unfortunately we don’t have the resources. We don’t have much training and we don’t have enough enforcers.”
According to Martens, it is already known where the hotspots in Amsterdam are, thanks to declarations made by women. They want the hotspot to include “a Whatsapp number on which women can let them know when they are being complained about and by whom, so that we get a clear picture of who the perpetrators are and when it happens. We can then send enforcers.”
‘Men’s race problem’
Martens also says he regularly suffers from intimidation by men. “I live in Amsterdam-West, with great pleasure. But there are uncertain situations that are not okay. I have the last of the Moroccan boys on the street who will die for anything and everything if I walk in a dress. When I have met my girlfriends on a Friday afternoon, I go to the pub and the native boys feel they can touch me. It’s a whole breed of men’s problem.”
Door: Peter Visser