Jan Munneke (77) is already busy on Saturday morning on his farm on the edge of the Groningen village of Krewerd. Around the farm, built in the Amsterdam School style, was a corset of 63 struts that held everything together. In 2015, the building turned out to be uninhabitable and Jan and Liefke Munneke moved to a two-room flat in a senior citizens complex, 10 kilometers away. Every morning Jan comes to take a look at the farm, which has been partly demolished and is being rebuilt. “Make coffee, sweep things up and when the construction workers have finished their work around half past four, I will also leave,” says Jan.
Read also:Reconstruction of Groningen gas extraction: how Jan and Liefke Munneke fought against NAM and the Dutch state
Jan and his wife have been committed to the interests of the duped Groningen residents in the gas extraction area for years. They were regular attendees at residents’ meetings, traveled to The Hague to attend debates and litigated before the Council of State against the high level of gas extraction. Liefke did not shy away from the cameras of the press. She expressed in plain language what the people of Groningen know: the state and gas companies are letting us down.
The parliamentary committee of inquiry also visited the farm, where Liefke grew up as a child. That visit touched committee chairman Tom van der Lee (GroenLinks), he said on Friday afternoon during the presentation of the report in the Zeerijp earthquake area. The characteristic farmhouse was completely destroyed. For years, Jan and Liefke fought for that building, in a place that has been inhabited for a thousand years. Shortly after the visit of the committee of inquiry, Van der Lee heard that Liefke was terminally ill. Now there is a rebuilt front house, with a characteristic Groningen hood on the chimney since this week – in memory of Liefke. “That makes a big impression,” said Van der Lee. “That really hits you.”
A day after the presentation of the parliamentary inquiry, Jan Munneke expresses what Groningen thinks. “It is positive what it says, but there was no other outcome,” says Munneke. “We have known for years that gas extraction was more important than the interests of the people of Groningen.”
Looking away ministers; senior officials entwined with the gas world; a profit-maximizing Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), of parent companies Shell and ExxonMobil, together with the Dutch state; the failing scientists and an invisible Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) – they all get it in the report of the committee of inquiry.
But Munneke still sees a white spot among “those who have patronized us here for years”: all those companies, experts – often self-proclaimed – and lawyers who “joined the interests of NAM and earned a lot of money from it.”
This “systematic misunderstanding” of the Groningen victims, as the committee calls it, continues to this day, dairy farmer Leon Klijn from Godlinze experienced a day before the presentation of the report: during a hearing with the government agency IMG, which assessed the damage deals with buildings in Groningen, he was told for the umpteenth time that the damage to his house and manure cellar was caused by everything – except gas extraction.
“Again we were told that we had built incorrectly, again they came up with a report that is full of errors and again we were faced with so-called experts who never had the balls to even come and have a look,” says Klijn on the phone on Friday . “What good is such a report from that committee of inquiry, if the problems that are going on now are not solved?”
Only one question prevails among the duped Groningen residents: “And now?”
Read also how victims of natural gas extraction bureaucracy, burnouts and anger had to overcome.
Uncertainty
On a residents’ evening in Delfzijl on Friday evening, organized by the residents’ organization Groninger Soil Movement (GBB), many are still emotional and moved after the presentation of the report that same afternoon. “It is a celebration of recognition,” says GBB board member Cis van Aken at the beginning of the evening. “And at the same time there is the wry feeling that it is really true, which happens to all of us.”
For a moment it talks about possible criminal prosecution of top officials, who time and again deliberately withheld crucial documents from their ministers. But soon the evening meanders into a conversation about several batches, WOZ values, foundations and building guidelines. Each and every one of these questions arises from the lack of clarity that to this day still preoccupies duped Groningen residents every hour, every minute.
And of course it is about the political consequences of the report. Former minister and former National Coordinator Groningen, Hans Alders (PvdA), did not want to pass judgment on whether or not the cabinet would resign on Friday. But, he said in Delfzijl, if you compare this situation with crises around Srebrenica and the Supplementary Affair, for which cabinets have resigned, “this report covers a much longer period, in which – knowingly – at least 200,000 people have been left out in the cold.” Alders said. “Then I am very curious how all those ministers will read the report and the deliberation will take place. No one can say: we didn’t know. You are ashamed.”
Almost everyone is clear about one thing: Rutte must resign. Because it was he who was responsible for the “unprecedented system failure” during the past four cabinets as prime minister. Despite repeated apologies and visits to Groningen, he made no difference. And then he also came with a short press conference on Friday, in which he did not want to discuss his own role and did not want to answer questions, to the anger of the Groningen people.
In Zeerijp after the presentation of the report, in Delfzijl on the residents’ evening and in the weekend on the regional radio, calls for Rutte’s resignation are heard everywhere.
More money to Groningen
But then the question remains: what now? Recognition is one thing, to do justice to Groningen, a lot has to change. Everyone agrees on one thing, including the committee of inquiry: much more money needs to go to Groningen and the distrust of administrators and gas collectors against the residents – visible every day in countless legal proceedings – must end.
That must change quickly, says Albert Heidema, who assists dozens, perhaps hundreds, of residents in Appingedam with his foundation Ons Laand Ons Lu. “People are no longer irritated, no longer angry, but are becoming cynical,” says Heidema. “And that is really dangerous. I know of several situations where people need help now, because they are mentally exhausted.”
One of them is Guus Claessens, the initiator and positivo of the Krewerd project, a unique residents’ initiative in which 43 of the 45 houses and all streets in the village are tackled in one go. He has been committed to the project for six years, which has been continuously delayed – a day before the presentation of the survey, the residents received yet another letter that the project has been delayed by several weeks. “Our lives have been at a standstill for five years,” says Claessens.
He has put his house in Krewerd up for sale. Solidarity in the village has disappeared, now that it is known who will get what kind of house: one will have a completely new house, while a neighbor will only be renovated. “This government policy sets people against each other,” says Claessens. And that leads not only to anger against the government, but also to mutual jealousy. “Suddenly in this village people are talking behind each other’s backs and there is envy. We no longer go to village meetings and the annual Christmas celebrations,” says Claessens, who used to visit everyone in the village.
For his own health – Claessens has heart problems – and the future of his daughter Liefke (7) (named after fellow villager Liefke Munneke-Bos), the family has decided to leave for Spain. But then there must be a buyer for their home. “And interested parties only want to buy this property if they are certain that it will be safe later, that certainty is always not there,” says Claessens.
Who does return to Krewerd is Jan Munneke. The facade of his completely rebuilt front house shows the year 2022, but – contrary to expectations – it is not yet finished. “There should have been 2023,” Munneke points to the facade. “But hopefully I can get in in the summer.”
Also read this analysis:Consciously looking away from the problems in Groningen is symbolic of the Rutte era
#wry #feeling #prevails #Groningen