Chinese students have been targeted by vandals who scrawled racist graffiti and smeared excrement in the lift of a block of flats in Wageningen.

The slogans in the tower block in Bornsesteeg included ‘Die Chinese’ and ‘Chinese corona’. Urine and faeces were left on the floor and a Chinese flag was torn from the door of one student’s apartment.

One resident told AD he heard banging on doors and windows over the weekend, but did not know if the incidents were connected. ‘The people who have done these dreadful things live among us and are trying to destroy the normal lives of all tenants,’ he said.

Police said they were investigating the incident and the university and student landlord Idealis have also been informed. In a Facebook post Wageningen’s police division called for anyone with information to contact them by private message or use the non-emergency hotline 0900 8844.

Meanwhile, an online petition denouncing discrimination against Dutch people of Chinese origin has attracted 24,000 signatures, 19,000 of them from the Netherlands, since it was launched on Saturday.

The organisers of the petition said jokes and insulting remarks had been directed against people with an Asian appearance since the outbreak of the coronavirus, including a song broadcast on Radio 10 with the title ‘Voorkomen is beter dan Chinezen’ (Prevention is better than Chinese).