Dead pigs reportedly dumped outside refugee site following Dutch Pegida rally

The group’s leader Edwin Wagensveld was arrested at the rally for refusing to remove a pig hat

Edwin Wagensveld of the Dutch branch of the anti-Islam group Pegida is arrested by police during a demonstration in Ede (EPA)

Two dead pigs have reportedly been found dumped at a potential location for a refugee centre in the Netherlands.

Dutch News reports the dead animals were found on Sunday by a group of scouts, who immediately reported the incident to authorities. Eating pork is considered haram in Islam, meaning it is forbidden.

The potential new refugee site targeted is located in the Dutch city of Ede. A day earlier the anti-Muslim group Pegida had staged a protest in the city, where its leader Edwin Wagensveld was arrested at the protest on Saturday for refusing to remove a children’s hat shaped like a pig.

Mr Wagensveld’s wife had apparently worn the hat first and been instructed to remove it by police, at which point the leader had taken the hat and placed it on his own head claiming that it was not offensive because it bore no text.

Police said Mr Wagensveld had been engaging in “provocative behaviour” by refusing to remove the hat, The New Observer reported.

The protest was reportedly attended by a “few-dozen” people and had been staged in demonstration against the plans to accommodate 1,400 refugees in the city by building a number of centres.

The incident involving the dead pigs follows a similar one carried out in a village in Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands, last month.

Two dead pigs were reportedly removed by police from a site that had been earmarked as an area for a new refugee centre in Brabant in January.

One pig had been hung from a tree and another placed on top of a building in the village of Heesch, which is set to take 500 refugees for up to 10 years at the new centre. Signs near the dead pigs had read ‘The people say no to the [asylum centre]’ and ‘500 is too many’, according to Dutch News.