CHECK – No, a father and his child are not turned away from Saint Nicholas here because they do not have a valid coronapas

4 comments

  1. Last Sunday, Saint Nicholas was in Amsterdam. After a boat trip on the Amstel and the Prinsen- and Herengracht, the good man arrived at the Scheepvaartmuseum, where he also went ashore. The area where this took place was fenced off and you had to have a ticket and a valid coronapas to get in.

    Anyone without a ticket could watch from a distance. Like a father and his son do. Until they are sent away by a policeman. The situation is captured on film and then taken completely out of context to feed, among other things, the conflict between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

    The photo appeared on Twitter on Sunday afternoon, where someone wondered “what drives such a police officer”. The message provoked hundreds of reactions.

    A little later, a cut-out of the photo begins to circulate on social media and all that remains is the cop, the father and the child. The photo is stripped of the context of the Scheepvaartmuseum and the traffic situation.

    Independent member of parliament for Vlaams Belang, Dries Van Langenhove, among others, shares this cut-out and claims that “a policeman forbids a father without a QR code to let his child watch the arrival of the Sint. This has nothing to do with health. This is just to bully people who do not want to participate in the QR identification requirement (and the social credit system that will follow).”

    Van Langenhove cleverly plays on the growing discussion on vaccination. He immediately suggests the (conspiracy) theory that our society will follow the Chinese example where the Covid Safe Ticket will one day become a compulsory QR identification code, linked to the social credit system as they know it in China. Van Langenhove’s message provoked hundreds of angry reactions that supported his argument and the message was shared a lot.

    It could have been true, but as often happens, it is not. The photo has been taken out of context. The scene is indeed taking place at the Scheepvaartmuseum, but according to the Amsterdam police it has nothing to do with vaccinations and QR codes.

    “We have contacted our colleague pictured in the photo,” Amsterdam police spokesperson Sara Tillart tells us. “Everything has to do with an unsafe traffic situation. The man and his child are standing on a small pavement with a two-lane bus lane behind them. Too dangerous to stand. There were also other people standing nearby. They were all asked to leave and look at the Saint a little further on. It is true that if you wanted to enter the grounds, you had to have a ticket and a valid coronapas. People who didn’t have that could look elsewhere, from a distance. But again, everything had to do with an unsafe traffic situation.”

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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    “Fake news VRT”, huh?

    Reason for sharing since it’s Amsterdam: a Member of our Chamber of Representatives is using this as an argument against CST use in Belgium.

  3. Dries morgen na de gewoonlijke backlash: Ik heb helemaal niets op Twitter gezet dat kan gezien worden als opruiende taal tegen een Covidmaatregel om zo tweedracht te zaaien, u heeft geen recht om mijn woorden uit de context te nemen.

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