NOTE: There is no indication of any cultural enrichment in this report from the Netherlands.

Many thanks to FouseSquawk for translating this article from De Dagelijkse Standaard:

Hell breaks out in Scheveningen: Shootings, violent outbreaks with blackjacks and massive disorder

by Tim Engelbart
August 11, 2020

During this Corona summer, Scheveningen has become something of the epicenter for all the chaos and violence in the country. Enforcement personnel have been beaten down with blackjacks, and on the pier, shot and stabbed. It is not funny: There have been several deaths.

The picturesque little coastal location is no longer what it once was. The fishing village, swallowed up by the Hague, is these days a paragon of violence, mass trampling of the Corona rules, and even murder. That is the conclusion one must come to after yesterday evening a Rotterdam youth, who was stabbed on the pier, died. There are also videos to be seen where grown men with drawn pistols run back and forth and shots are heard.

Things are going bad on the beach as well: When nobody is drowning in the sea, parking attendants are nearly knocked senseless with blackjacks because they simply monitor compliance with parking and Corona regulations. The beach is used as a public trash bin, and nature itself as an open-air campground. The government cannot control the total anarchy, as it appears from all images and reports.

Meanwhile, the chaos is so great, that the municipality has been forced to send in forest rangers to restore some calm. So, for now, say goodbye to the idea that the government in the Hague still owns the monopoly on violence. There are now enough groups of thugs who behave with impunity as if they were terrorists. No wonder that the de Mos Group [local political party in the Hague] now calls the once so lovely Scheveningen a “free state, an El Dorado for troublemakers who can go around undisturbed.” The PVV [Freedom Party] also thinks that this “last bastion of sobriety is going down the drain”, thanks to “weak left-wing administrators, including the VVD,” [People’ Party for Freedom and Democracy] says MP Machiel de Graaf: “Today is the last straw.”

It is very curious whether there is a Plan B today to restore peace in Scheveningen. But, given the complete mess it was yesterday, it seems sensible to be skeptical.