From
Expatica:
"Mum, baby arrested for lack of ID
A 33-year-old Amsterdam woman and her five-month-old daughter have been
jailed after failing to prove their identification. Since 1 January, everyone in
the Netherlands above the age of 14 has been obliged to be able to prove their
identity or risk a fine or jail. Marba van Dullemen and her baby Dominique, of
Amsterdam North, were arrested on Sunday night because she could not produce a driver's licence. They were detained in a cell for an hour until Van Dullemen's
partner arrived with her driver's licence. A police spokesman confirmed both
mother and baby were detained in a "day cell" made of glass and 3m by 3m in
size. Van Dullemen will be fined for driving without a licence and for not
wearing a seatbelt. "
A number of Dutch-based and Dutch bloggers wrote recently about this pernicious new law before it came in; the consensus seemed to be that they would commit civil disobedience and deliberately not carry ID. Now that the police have shown themselves to be small minded and petty enough to detain mothers and babies, would they care to reconsider? Speaking as an allochtoon, I always carry my passport. My Dutch isn't good enough to argue and you can betcha that as soon as they hear my non-Dutch accent, any police requesting ID will suddenly and conveneiently forget they ever knew any other language but Dutch. English? What's that? Ik kan niet.
What I would be very interested to know is the ethnicity and/or religion of the woman arrested. I live in Noord-Amsterdam: all the police I see are white, and most of the mothers and children I see are Moslem. Funny how this didn't happen in De Pijp.
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