this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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The New Year festivities in the Netherlands have left two people dead, dozens with serious injuries and destroyed Amsterdam’s historic Vondelkerk church.

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[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

It was a shit show. But on the upside, a church burned down.

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 27 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

A 32-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman from Germany were arrested at a party centre in Beverwijk for firing guns into the air shortly after midnight. Other partygoers alerted the police.

That's the weirdest.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago

weirdest

Attacking public services. (Medics, police, fireman etc) BY FAR!!

They are out there instead of being with their loved ones for us. WHY attack them? Those morons must be punished to the absolute max.

[–] Fleppensteijn@sh.itjust.works 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I saw a lot of spent bullets in the streets after NYE in Berlin. Must be a German tradition

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That's crazy, I thought Europe didn't have a gun problem...

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

They have plenty of guns, they just don't go around murdering the fuck out of each other.

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

I wonder if they were originally from somewhere around the middle east, like perhaps Turkey? Firing guns into the air during festivities seems commonplace there.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 32 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I feel ashamed. That's not celebrating, it's riot for the sake of riots.

Lookup "carbid schieten" If a Policecar comes by, the 2 Policemen get out and face the crowd ......... they get a cup of hot coffee and a warm oliebol. They say "be carefull now you lot! Thanks for the coffee" and drive off. That is celebration in the (east and north) netherlands.

[–] huppakee@piefed.social 16 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

There have been those kind of celebrations (with or without carbid schieten) all across the country, just like there are warzones all over te country. I don't think we can allow the police to behave like that everywhere.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think we can allow the police to behave like that

That's 100% up to the people how they (can) behave

[–] huppakee@piefed.social 2 points 17 hours ago

Totally agree and totally why i said that. Worth working towards a world the police can be like that and everything is fine and nobody gets hurt.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago

Only works in less populated regions with cohesion and certainly not in cities.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 3 points 13 hours ago

I spent a new years eve in Amsterdam with friends many years ago and I remember it being quite wild. And they fired these huge firecracker strings also in the days leading up to it, like 180cm long...

[–] Overspark@piefed.social 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

As predicted. If only the cowardly government we still have would have had the balls to outlaw firework sales a year earlier, we wouldn't have had this "final blowout" and things would have been less bad. Still not good though, the culture around new years day has been insane for a while now.

[–] chocrates@piefed.world 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

This seems like some Florida or Texas shit, but I've not heard of major incidents in a while. What is the New Years culture there?

[–] Overspark@piefed.social 12 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Fireworks are only legal on new years eve over here. And there are a few countries in the EU where insanely powerful explosives are also legal (basically hand grenades), so they very easily find their way into our country, even though they're not legal here. The police do what they can but it's impossible to make more than a dent.

Fireworks used to be a fun way to have a great party. But as they got harder and louder, and the country got more and more densely populated, the problems also started to pile up. So the tone slowly shifted from a big party, to a rowdy night, to eventually a largely lawless night where it's more and more outright vandalism and rioting, instead of having a party. The past years it's been "normal" to have several deaths, thousands of wounded and scores of cars, houses and other buildings (from bus stops to supermarkets) burned down on new years eve. So even though the Dutch as a people are very resistant to changing their culture, the call to outlaw all fireworks got larger and larger. So large that even the last right-wing parties gave up their resistance last year and admitted that the only way forward was to do away with it altogether. But instead of banning it immediately they wussed out and said they would ban it after one more year with fireworks, even though everyone in law enforcement, the fire departments and medics begged them not to.

So naturally, everyone wanted to go out with a bang, and they basically succeeded. At half past midnight every mobile in the country got an emergency text to only call 112 (our version of 911) in life-threatening situations, since they were completely overwhelmed. Even though they doubled their normal capacity and every policeman, fireman and medic in the country was working as hard as they could to keep things under control. In my opinion political heads should roll for this but it seems the general opinion is to shrug your shoulders and keep on keeping on. Ironically the rest of the year the Netherlands is a very tame country, with less than 100 murders a year in the entire country for example. It's just this single night that got completely out of control.

[–] bigBananas@beehaw.org 1 points 7 hours ago

I didn't get a text, but then I live in a not-so-densely populated area..

[–] chocrates@piefed.world 3 points 12 hours ago

Wow, thank you. That makes sense

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 2 points 18 hours ago

FUCK YEAH WOOOOOOOO PARTY TIMR

[–] doleo@lemmy.one 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

still not going to be enough to do something about this fucking firework plague, though

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 3 points 7 hours ago

They literally already made a law to ban it for next time.

[–] 20cello@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago