About 400 demonstrators gathered on Wednesday evening around 6:30 PM on Bethlehem Square, a few dozen meters from the conference hall where an MR meeting would take place an hour later. The protest was peaceful. It was frequent “They will not pass” shouted, a speaker accused the MR of fascism, sexism and transphobia. “The MR despises the poor, hates foreigners. Their project is neo-fascist. They now even want to ban radical organizations,” it said, among other things.
The street where the meeting would take place was closed off with Frisian riders and police officers. About 150 officers had to try to keep everything under control. Still, the procession of demonstrators managed to get there. However, they did not reach the location where the MR gathered. In the meantime, the crowd mainly shouted curses at President Bouchez, whose name in French rhymes with funeral pyre (pyre). They also held up a banner with “Saint Gilles piss off GL Bouchez”.
The demonstrators then held a spontaneous march through the streets of Sint-Gillis. They also brought Bengali fireworks, eggs and firecrackers and took the opportunity to tag walls and throw rubbish bins. Belgian to establish. When they arrived at the town hall around 7:30 p.m., they were cut off by the police, after which a cat-and-mouse game began. At Bareel, a demonstrator threw a glass bottle at a police car, shattering the patrol car’s windshield. The demonstration ended around 8:15 p.m.
Unseen police escort
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The MR meeting itself could start without many problems. Chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez told how he finally got there with a police escort of two cars in front and two behind him and some motorcycles. “Crazy”said Bouchez. “We did the tour of Brussels.”
© Kristof Vadino
He acknowledged that it is a rarity for a party chairman to receive such an escort, but that it is his democratic right to hold such a meeting and that it is a shame that the climate is so polarized that it apparently has no other option. “Am I far right? For a group, everything that is not left is immediately far right. It is not my fault that so many police are needed. It is as if you blame a girl who is being raped because her skirt was too short,” Bouchez said.
Two ministers and a chairman
The meeting had been eagerly awaited for several days. Not that Sint-Gillis had a scoop. The MR has been holding meetings in Wallonia and Brussels for weeks, where leaders, together with Chairman Bouchez, explain the Arizona policy to the local departments. Sometimes with a focus on education, sometimes on safety or other government decisions that the party is proud of. Sint-Gillis was spoiled, because in addition to chairman Bouchez, the MR also sent two federal ministers: David Clarinval and Bernard Quintin.
These meetings have sometimes been disrupted by Gaza demonstrators in the past, but tonight is special. Sint-Gillis was recently described in this newspaper as the municipality where the extreme left is almost a form of idealistic folklore. Groups such as Classe Contre Classe, Front d’Action Revolutionaire, Antifa Brussels and Organization Communiste Révolutionnaire are strongly present. Antifa even has a headquarters two hundred meters from the place where the MR is gathering tonight. And Chairman Bouchez is now calling for a ban on Antifa.
Bouchez made this call when pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Liège thoroughly disrupted an MR memorial ceremony for Jean Gol. The demonstrators also included members of the socialist union and Antifa members. They all chanted slogans that the MR is a group of fascists, and Bouchez in particular. The demonstration then degenerated, making it a perilous undertaking for visitors to the academic session to get into the hall. Bouchez even had to climb in through a window to stay out of sight of the demonstrators. Twelve police officers were injured in the melee.
In recent days, posts on social media have multiplied calling for the MR meeting to be disrupted. For example, the Front d’Action Révolutionnaire called on demonstrators to bring rotten fruit, just like in Liège, but also to bombard the organization with telephone calls and emails asking for the event to be canceled.
Provocation
To avoid all the misery, the PS mayor of Saint-Gilles, Jean Spinette, seriously considered banning the meeting. “It is not in my nature to ban an event, especially if it is a democratic meeting organized by the local branch of a political party. But for this I have to assemble a large police force who actually have other cats to flog in my municipality,” he said in advance in the media.
But the MR dug in its heels, partly through their Minister of the Interior Quintin, responsible for the police. “If a democratically elected party is not allowed to meet because the extreme left does not like it …” The party rejects the accusation that the MR chooses Sint-Gillis to meet as a provocation against the left and the extreme left. “We have been doing these kinds of theme evenings everywhere in Wallonia for some time, and now we have been invited to Sint-Gillis.”
“The MR is the largest French-speaking party and must visit its local branches. That is important for those branches, especially here in Sint-Gillis where the majority often approves motions against the policy of the Arizona government,” local party leader Olaf van der Straten said on Wednesday. The evening.
