Undercover police alleged to be stoking conflict as supermarket shelves go empty
Protests continue in the Netherlands over the government’s proposed nitrogen policy, which could necessitate the mass slaughter of livestock and potentially shut down almost a third of the country’s farms at a time when global famine may be imminent.
Events in the country are being compared by commentators and politicians around the globe to the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.”
Dutch farmers, truckers, and others have used social media in a decentralized way to organize blockades of food distribution hubs across the coastal northwest European country.
The result: empty supermarket shelves.
Officials at Albert Heijn, a major Dutch grocer, didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
However, the high-profile protests on July 4 didn’t affect operations at Eindhoven Airport, one of several airports targeted in a Telegram post that went viral in the preceding days.
“We will keep on monitoring the situation day by day,” an Eindhoven spokesman told The Epoch Times on July 5.
In addition, a spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Defense told The Epoch Times the ministry wasn’t asked by government to provide support in policing protests on July 4.
‘Farmers Are the Heart of the Country’
Mark de Jong, a protester and the owner of a transportation company that employs 30 people, told The Epoch Times on July 2 that his country’s nitrogen crisis is caused by the Dutch government and the European Union (EU).
“The farmers are not the problem—they are the people who have always looked after the land and nature,” he said.
Thierry Baudet, a member of the Dutch House of Representatives, offered a similar perspective in a July 5 interview with The Epoch Times.
Baudet, who leads the Forum for Democracy party, traced the current conflict to Natura 2000, an EU network of conservation areas established in 1992 through the Habitats Directive. More than half of the country’s nationally protected areas are also covered by Natura 2000.
