As a guest on Room for Discussion, UvA’s debate programme, Brekelmans (VVD) was supposed to answer questions from students, but protesters outside the venue made so much noise that he was barely audible. He was removed from the stage by security guards after 15 minutes, writes university magazine Folia.

In a statement on LinkedIn, UvA board president Edith Hooge calls it a “low point” that a group of students and staff behaved in such a threatening manner that the interview with the minister had to be cut short. “Open and free debate has been sabotaged.”

Freedoms

As Brekelmans left the stage, the protesters cheered and chanted slogans like ‘Free Palestine’. The interview took place on Roeterseiland, a UvA campus that has been the scene of regular pro-Palestinian demonstrations over the past year.

Responding to the incident on X, Brekelmans wrote that he had wanted to engage with students on the issue of international security. “At universities, we should be able to have an open exchange of ideas. The fact that this has been made impossible is highly regrettable, especially as these are the very freedoms that we protect at the Ministry of Defence.”

Previous episodes of Room for Discussion, including one featuring Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema, have also been disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. An interview with Brekelmans’ predecessor, Kajsa Ollongren, was postponed twice for security reasons.

Board president Edith Hooge is fed up. “This really needs to end”, she writes on LinkedIn. “Attendees were intimidated, our security guards were assaulted. This is unacceptable. Naturally, we will be filing a police report tomorrow.”