Dutch police estimate that between 150 and 200 people were arrested for trespass on Friday after protesters broke into the construction site of a Microsoft data centre in Amsterdam, climbed a crane and the roof of the unfinished building and clashed with riot police.
Activists from the Dutch direct-action group Geef Tegengas cut a hole in the fence at the site on Plimsollweg, in the Sloterdijk area of the city's western port, during the morning. They hung banners, set off flares and sprayed slogans on the concrete foundations before riot officers used batons and pepper spray and cleared the site, according to the Dutch news agency ANP and the public broadcaster NOS.
The break-in was the most confrontational of a series of protests held across Europe on Friday by the Stop Dirty Data Centres coalition, which says it brings together more than 100 groups in 15 countries and is demanding a halt to large new facilities. Its website states: "We're calling for an immediate moratorium on large data centres in Europe!" The campaign targets the electricity and water the centres consume, and in Amsterdam protesters also accused Microsoft of supplying services to the Israeli military.
An Amsterdam police spokesperson told the regional broadcaster NH Nieuws that one person was arrested early in the day for obstructing work and one officer was lightly injured. Police later said dozens were being held, then gave the estimate of 150 to 200 suspects detained for trespass, a figure the spokesperson described as probable rather than final. A spokesperson for the data centre said it intended to take legal action, including for trespass, and police laid on city buses to move those detained.
A Microsoft spokesperson told the trade publication DatacenterDynamics: "We understand that people feel strongly about the project, and we respect their right to express those views peacefully. However, we do not condone any actions that are unlawful or that put people's safety at risk." The company told the Associated Press and NOS that it was aware of the demonstration.
Estimates of how many protesters entered the site vary. Reuters put the number at about 100, while NOS and ANP reported that dozens got through the fences. Organisers told the local paper De Westkrant that about 200 people took part in the wider demonstration, which had been due to begin at noon under the banner of the climate group Fossielvrij NL. Al Jazeera reported that several hundred activists occupied the site, a figure also reported by AFP.
NOS reported banners reading "Microsoft is genocide", while Reuters reported one reading "Microsoft powers genocide" and chants of "Free Palestine" and "Microsoft has got to go". ANP reported a banner on the crane reading "Down with data centers, fuck AI." Microsoft has not addressed the genocide allegation in the statements it has issued.
Nathan Timmer, a spokesperson for Geef Tegengas, told the local broadcaster AT5 that the demonstrators were occupying the site to stop construction. Protesters told an ANP reporter the facility would "consume as much energy as all the households in Amsterdam combined," a comparison the group has not substantiated and which has not been independently checked.
The data centre is being built by the developer Pure Data Centres Group, with Microsoft as its sole tenant, a position Microsoft confirmed to the Dutch newspaper NRC earlier this year. Pure DC says the complex will comprise three 85-metre towers with a combined capacity of 78 megawatts and nearly 100,000 square metres of floor space, which the Dutch Data Center Association says will make it Amsterdam's largest by power capacity. According to DatacenterDynamics, the project was approved before Amsterdam and the Dutch government restricted new data centres and has been allowed to continue.
Geef Tegengas occupied the same site in June and Extinction Rebellion targeted it in July.
Al Jazeera reported that about a dozen protesters gathered outside a data centre on the outskirts of Berlin on Friday. The trade publication Capacity listed further actions outside the Polish parliament, in Dublin, at a Microsoft site in Denmark and in east London, with a second day of protests planned for Saturday and a march to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh scheduled for 14 November.
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