Citizen, your papers please. 50 Euro fine for not having ID in Holland

ID cards: a story I thought I'd never write.
Henk Ruyssenaars, Tuesday, 20/09/2005 - 11:37

Amsterdam - Sept. 20th 2005 - This is a story I thought I would never have to write. But, the neocons* managing The Netherlands, like in the US a so called 'Christian government', gave its approval last Friday Sept. 16, 2005, for the introduction of a biometric type of ID from October next year, a credit card style 'driving license'. It's the last nail in the Dutch coffin for freedom: after the yoke of compulsory ID cards now the Dutch get an electronic bit in their mouth, completing the electronic steering.

Freedom in Holland officially died Jan. 1st 2005 when a new law came into effect, making it compulsory in the Netherlands for everybody above the age of 14 to - at all times and outside of one's home - carry an official ID. Leaving home without it means at least a fifty Euro fine, eventually a court case. The first trial - in which a batch of two-hundred-and-fifty people is taken to court for not carrying an ID card - starts next week Sept. 28th in the central dutch city of Utrecht. Demonstrations against this Dutch, and also global shame, have been announced.

At the end of last August close to fourty-seven-thousand people had been fined, of which four thousand were children aged 14 and 15. Last January around 100 people a day were stopped, checked by the police and fined when they were not able to immediately produce a valid ID card.

NOW, 8 MONTHS LATER THIS ABUSE HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED.

And I've never thought I'd ever have to cover the same trials in my native Holland. Compassionate, understanding people and groups always were fighting Apartheid and the compulsory passes for the blacks in South Africa. Thirty years ago I saw in Johannesburg what will happen in Holland next week: the inhumane spectacle of hundreds of people who have been dragged into court because they - in their own country - could not immediately show an ID card and are punished. And remember: we were promised a European Union without borders, where we all would be able to travel freely, not even needing a passport. None of it was true: it was all a pack of lies.