Security heavy for Pope

Press, 10 May 1985, Page 6

Security heavy for Pope

NZPA-AP Amsterdam

Pope John Paul H’s fiveday tour of the Netherlands has spawned the biggest security operation in the country, where his visit, which will start this weekend, has been widely criticised and satirised.

Large elements of the liberal-minded Dutch Catholic Church are in open rebellion against his attempts to make them toe the Vatican line, and are using the trip to publicise their conflict with the Church leadership.

Officials view radical activists as the No. 1 security threat during his visit. Public threats against the Pope have been more virulent than against any other world figure visiting the Netherlands in recent years. The first Papal visit to the Netherlands will start against a background of

four centuries of hostility between Dutch Catholics and Protestants, which had its roots in the War of Independence fought from 1568-1648 to oust their Spanish overlords.

One of Pope John Paul’s big disappointments on his visit will be the refusal by representatives of 40,000 Dutch Jews — 100,000 were killed by the Nazis — to meet him because the Vatican does not recognise the State of Israel.

About 10,000 police — one-third of the nation’s force — will be mobilised to provide security during the seven-city tour, says the Dutch Interior Ministry.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said that special Dutch security units, several of them helicopterborne, would guard the Pope, who has been the target of posters calling for his assassination, as well as

calls for rioting against his visit.

The police would watch known activists to foil any attempts to disrupt the visit, said an Interior Ministry spokesman. “They keep all kinds of radical groups in Amsterdam under surveillance whenever there is a visit of someone with the stature of the Pope,” said an Amsterdam police spokesman.

Protesters showed their greatest strength during the coronation of Queen Beatrix in Amsterdam in 1980. The ceremony was overshadowed by pitched battles, which injured 200 people, fought by clubwielding police and stonethrowing rioters. The potential security threat in Amsterdam was not a factor in excluding it from the Pope’s itinerary, said an archdiocesan spokesman. Other cities had been chosen instead because

they had larger Catholic communities.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said that the most serious threats to the Pope had come in the form of posters, which began to appear last month. Four suspects were arrested on April 17 after hanging posters in Amsterdam offering a 15,000guilder ($9206) reward to anyone who “liquidates” John Paul 11.

The posters, which accused the Catholic Church of being “a criminal, fascist organisation guilty of torture, inquisition and stealing from the poor,” carried the names of three radical Dutch splinter groups, the Independent Militant Front, the Northern Terrorist Front, and the Autonomists 80 group. A poster calling for rioting with molotov cocktails against the Papal visit appeared in Amsterdam.