Dutch government to ban police officers from wearing religious symbols as part of uniforms in public

After a heated national debate which lasted the best part of a decade, the Dutch government is to ban police officers from wearing any religious symbols as part of their uniforms in public.

“The religious neutrality of the police should be explicit,” said minister for justice Dilan Yesilgoz, on Thursday, after the announcement that the ban would include crucifixes, kippahs often worn by orthodox Jewish men, and headscarves worn by observant Muslim women.

The only relaxation of the rule would be in non-public parts of police stations, for example, where wearing a headscarf would be acceptable. In such circumstances, she said, officers could judge for themselves.

Critics of ban

Understanding that distinction between public and private was crucial to the success of the ban, said the minister, who was born in the Turkish capital, Ankara, has a Turkish-Kurdish background and moved to the Netherlands as a child.

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“Critics of this ban say it is discriminatory but I believe it is exactly the opposite: it is about inclusivity,” Ms Yesilgoz argued.

“The police are an inclusive organisation and work hard every day to be even more inclusive. That’s why in contact with the public they have to present a united front. They represent the government. They have to look the same in public, wherever they are.”

Among the government’s harshest critics is the national co-ordinator against discrimination and racism, Rabin Baldewsingh, who accuses prime minister Mark Rutte and his justice minister of being “hard of hearing” for failing, as he sees it, to draw the right messages from a series of town hall meetings.

“It’s a political choice”, he said. “We already have a shortage of police and, more than that, a shortage of women in the police. Politicians are holding back the inclusiveness they preach about. Just because you wear a headscarf doesn’t mean you’ll treat people any differently.”

Debate nothing new

Mr Baldewsingh — who arrived in the Netherlands from Suriname at 13 — maintains the Muslim community in particular feels “shut out” by the minister for justice.

“She’s not even prepared to discuss this any further. You’re not serving society if a whole section of that society is needlessly prevented from paying its full part.”

This debate is nothing new but it is extremely polarising. As far back as 2017, Amsterdam’s police commissioner, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, was on the verge of allowing female officers to wear headscarves as part of a recruitment drive to diversify law enforcement in the capital.

“The make-up of Amsterdam’s population is changing,” he argued, noting that although 52 per cent of the city’s residents had non-Dutch backgrounds, in the police the figure was just 18 per cent.

He was blocked at the time by all the main political parties. That opposition remains as strong today.