The Brussels mayor said he exceeded his authority by ordering police to shut down a conservative rally and that today’s rally would take place without any hindrance, citing the country’s constitutional right to freedom of assembly. The court’s judgment was handed down.
The national conservative conference in Brussels, the heart of the European Union, was shut down by police on Tuesday, with police blocking the entrance and preventing speakers, including a French presidential candidate and a member of the European Parliament, from entering. Bully tactics by the city’s mayor, who has boasted of using security concerns to drive conservatives out of the city, have echoed other left-wing local mayors, with the conference having already pulled out of two venues in less than a week. It continued. I was pressured into canceling my reservation.
But now, in an “emergency late-night ruling”, Belgium’s highest court has ruled that the actions of socialist mayor Emile Kiel violate the constitution, and campaigners and lawyers have criticized the decision. It is hailed as a victory for freedom. The court found that if there was a risk of violence, it was caused by the counter-demonstrators, not the meeting itself, and it would be disproportionate to cancel the meeting.
Today I returned to Brussels for the first time since leaving the EU.
After 20 years, this was probably my most successful day ever.
This moment will be a huge boost for all Eurosceptic campaigns in June. pic.twitter.com/6CkL9W7lEX
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) April 16, 2024
Today’s conference will feature speakers including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Hans-Georg Maassen, a former German spy chief turned conservative rebel.
The International Union for the Defense of Freedom, which provided legal support to the conference, said on Wednesday that the conference was “free to convene” following a ruling by the Conseil d’Etat, Belgium’s highest court on administrative matters. Confirmed overnight. . ADF reproduced the judgment and revealed that the judge found:
…The court ruled that Article 26 of the Constitution. [of Belgium] The mayor has the power to enact police ordinances in the event of a “serious disturbance of the peace or other unforeseen occurrences,” which “entitles all persons to peaceably assemble.” There was no threat of violence sufficient to justify this. The court reasoned that “from the impugned judgments it appears impossible to infer that the peace-destroying effects were attributable to the conference itself.” Rather, as the judgment states, “the threat to public order appears to arise purely from the reactions that the organization may provoke among its adversaries.”
The tribunal praised the court for affirming “fundamental human rights” and “common sense and justice”, but said the entire case was nevertheless “a stain on European democracy”. They said: “No official should have the power to shut down a free and peaceful assembly simply because he or she disagrees with what is being said. Why should Brussels officials only allow one side of the European conversation to be heard? Can Brussels claim to be the center of Europe?
“The kind of authoritarian censorship we have just witnessed belongs to the worst chapter in European history.” Lawyer Wouter Farsen, who supported the case, further argued: “This should never have happened, especially in Brussels, the political capital of Europe.
“The free and peaceful exchange of ideas and fundamental freedom of assembly are hallmarks of democratic Europe. It is shameful that this kind of legal challenge was necessary just to come together as a peaceful conference. We must passionately protect fundamental freedoms so that censorship does not become the norm in a society that is supposed to be free.
“Our ideological enemies have shown us all at once that the left is in fact intolerant and repressive, a threat to democracy, and an authoritarian risk to freedom. And now the national conservative Ism has become a force of resistance.”
–@Melanie #nutcombbrussels2 pic.twitter.com/zIiyd5p2RA— National Conservatism (@NatConTalk) April 17, 2024
Several officials asserted that the incident was a public exposure of the dangers of free speech and the intolerance of the far left, and that the entire incident was highly counterproductive to the left-wing mayor. Nigel Farage, one of the speakers at Tuesday’s meeting, slammed the attempt to shut down the meeting as a “huge own goal” for the mayor.
Even Gai Verhofstadt, a veteran Eurocrat and enemy of Brexit and the Hungarian prime minister, spoke out, calling the fiasco a “ridiculous own goal” and saying the left should fight the right with better arguments, not censorship. He said we should try to defeat it. He previously denied that the conference was a meeting of “Putin’s far-right friends in Europe.”
Today’s speaker, British journalist Melanie Phillips, reflected: He “even criticized the Belgian prime minister.” [the mayor ordering police to shut down the conference]…Let’s talk about own goals! Our ideological enemy has shown all at once that the left is in fact intolerant and repressive, a threat to democracy, and an authoritarian danger to freedom, and that national conservatism is now in resistance. It has become a force. ”
John O’Brien, a spokesperson for the Matthias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) in Brussels, which co-convened the conference, also spoke about the idea in comments to Breitbart News yesterday, saying that a police-forced shutdown would be a big no-no for mainstream journalists. He said it was shocking. Cover the event. “It’s garnered media attention, but some of the journalists here today may not share the speaker’s views,” he said. [but they are amazed at what has happened]…A lot of people may not have cared, but I think it’s an Orwellian thing to do – and I don’t like throwing that word around lightly – against conservative causes. Even the most unsympathetic journalists see serious overreach by leftists and leftists. By anti-democratic forces.
“I think this shocked the sensibilities of people who would otherwise have ignored the idea of ‘cancel culture’ or ‘wokeness.’”
Exclusive: French lawmaker blocked from meeting in Brussels by police says he feels Europe is ‘like communist China’https://t.co/MLjtpH7yDP
— Kurt Zindulka (@KurtZindulka) April 17, 2024
In further comments to Breitbart on Wednesday after the court’s ruling, O’Brien said the ban was a sign of how Europe must work to undo the damage of recent years and “restore tolerance and freedom.” He said that it shows. He said: “This incident shows how extreme the woke left has become, and how we must restore tolerance and freedom. We must remove their hold on free speech. must be released…if it were not for our determination to find and maintain a third venue to object.” If the police order our meeting to end, freedom of speech is nullified. It would have been. Not enough, Belgium. ”
As previously reported, an unusually wide group of influential politicians voiced their protest against the censorship actions of Mayor Kir, a traditional Turkish politician. The ADF had claimed that Mayor Kir was expelled from Belgium’s mainstream left-wing party because of his ties to Turkish extremists. political faction.Belgian business newspaper record report In 2020, Mayor Kir was accused of hosting “a Turkish mayoral delegation that included two members of the far-right party MHP, which is close to the gray wolves,” at São Jose City Hall.
Gray wolves, banned in several countries as a dangerous extremist group, have been blamed for extremist marches in Europe, and an Austrian government minister received death threats from the group in 2020. He was then placed under police protection.
At Wednesday morning’s meeting, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that attempts to cancel the event, organized by the now-ruling Fidesz party, which was founded in 1988, were met with pressure from the Hungarian government. compared it to the era of the death of communism. The government was similar to that experienced in Belgium.
He is reported to have said: “We founded Fidesz as a young political organization in 1988. We started organizing meetings. It was not as harsh a dictatorship as before, but they did everything to prevent it from happening. – Free expression of our opinions.
“We rented a place in Budapest, but a few hours before the meeting we were told it wasn’t available. We looked for something else. In the late ’80s, similar pressures were very common. In the end, we won.”
Orbán Farage meeting in Brussels shut down by police, sparking condemnationhttps://t.co/Vp3I38Q242
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 16, 2024
