Dutch police are investigating the violence exerted by a group of officers during a detention carried out in an asylum seekers’ center, where a pregnant woman is thrown to the ground. In a video circulating on social media, it can be seen how an officer says something to her, she makes a hand gesture, and then she is pushed away with such force that she ends up falling. At that moment, a man lunges at the police officers, one of whom has a dog, and chaos breaks out. The events took place on May 19 but have only now come to light. A police statement notes that only “part of what happened” can be seen.
The incident happened in Zeist, a city located in the center of the country. In one of the videos uploaded online, the woman is dragged by her clothes or hair, while the officers restrain the man. They all end up on the ground. The man, who was arrested, is now free. At the end of one of the videos, recorded by the Qatari Arabic-language television Al Jazeera, the woman explains that she had a premature baby girl five days after the incident. And that the arrested man is her husband, 30 years old, who broke a television upon learning that a relative of his had died in Gaza. According to the Qatari channel, the woman is of Syrian origin and he is Palestinian.
In a statement published on its website, the police report that “the officers intervened after receiving a report of threats and damage, in which a knife was mentioned.” “Afterwards, the situation partially seen in the images occurred, and the facts and circumstances are being thoroughly analyzed.” The police add that the officers “wanted to act quickly to ensure the safety of those present and their own.”
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Zeist is in the province of Utrecht, and according to the Distribution Law, which requires all Dutch municipalities to host asylum seekers equitably, it complies at 125% with what has been requested. It has capacity for 431 people when it should host 344, according to the official count. The law came into effect in 2024 and not all councils comply equally. There are, on the other hand, citizen protests against the presence of these centers, and according to the investigative platform Justice for Prosperity — a research institute based in Amsterdam — this rejection has recently been instigated by the Dutch far-right network Identitair Verzet (identitarian resistance).
According to the Central Statistics Office, in the first quarter of 2026, nearly 6,000 people applied for asylum for the first time in the Netherlands. This is 33% more than in the same period in 2025, but 20% less than in the previous quarter. While there are more people from Sudan and Somalia, and fewer from Syria, the majority group is composed of “people whose nationality must be established,” according to CBS. This may include, for example, Palestinians, as the Netherlands recognizes that passport as valid, but not Palestine as an independent state.
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