Brussels Demonstration Update
Hugo Coveliers, the lawyer of the organizers of the pan-European anti-Islamization demonstration which is planned to take place in Brussels on 11 September, is taking his appeal against the ban of the demo by Freddy Thielemans, the mayor of Brussels, to another court. Earlier the organizers brought an appeal case before the Council of State (CoS), Belgium’s highest administrative court. Last Wednesday the CoS refused to overrule the ban, claiming that the organizers are unable to prove that their interests have been harmed by the refusal to demonstrate on 11 September.
Mr Coveliers has now decided to bring the case before a civil court. He is going to argue that the “subjective rights” of the organizers have been denied. If the court agrees with that argument there is a possibility that the organizers can claim damages from the Brussels mayor if he does not allow the demonstration to go ahead.
Mr Coveliers, a member of the Belgian Senate, was shocked at the CoS ruling. Freddy Thielemans, the Brussels mayor, is a Socialist. Judge Roger Stevens, the chairman of the three CoS judges who refused to overrule his ban, happens to be the co-author of a book with Johan Vande Lanotte, who until last June was the party leader of the Socialists. Judge Daniël Moons, one of the two other judges who ruled in the case, was appointed to the CoS in 1997 by the same Mr Van de Lanotte, who was Belgium’s Vice Prime Minister at the time. The superior of the three judges, the recently appointed CoS president Marie-Rose Bracke, is the sister-in-law of former Socialist minister Luc Vanden Bossche and the aunt of Freya Van den Bossche, the current Belgian Budget Minister, also a Socialist. As TBJ reported earlier, the lawyer of the Brussels mayor is Marc Uyttendaele, the husband of Laurette Onkelinx, who is the Belgian minister of Justice. Mrs Onkelinx, a Socialist, is responsible for appointing, promoting and suspending judges in Belgium.
In Belgium the ban of the demonstration has led to widespread indignation among non-Socialist citizens. A student organization linked to the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Verhofstadt, who is governing in a coalition with the Socialists, is calling its members to “go for a walk” in the European district of Brussels around noon on Tuesday 11 September. “Freedom loving citizens should agree that banning a peaceful demonstration, every demonstration, violates the principles of our free democracy and the rule of law, hence it is totally unacceptable,” the students write.
Owing to what seems to be a lack of coordination between the British-Danish-German organizers of the banned demonstration it is not clear where the demonstrators are expected to meet. Some say that people should assemble in front of the European Parliament (EP) at the Luxemburg Plaza, others are distributing maps indicating the back entrance of the EP at Wiertz Straat, yet others are telling us to come to the Schumann Plaza in front of the headquarters of the European Commission.
Perhaps, since all these places are within walking distance from each other, Europeans who are concerned about the Islamization of their continent should just stroll from one place to another. Stay on the footpaths and behave as if you are a tourist, but wear a white ribbon or white shirt or hat, or carry a white balloon, white banner, anything white, to make clear that in post-democratic Europe politicians and judges no longer allow citizens to speak their minds. Demonstrators are advised to come to Brussels by train or plane. The Belgian police might intercept buses, especially convoys of buses from the Netherlands and Germany, on the highway and prevent them from driving on.
Meanwhile, following the example of The Wall Street Journal and my own piece in The Washington Times, major international media such as the BBC, The International Herald Tribune (via Associated Press), Polish radio, the Italian paper Il Giornale, the Czech newspapers Hospodarske noviny and Lidove noviny, the [British] Muslim Weekly and even The China Post have begun to mention the banned demonstration.
For the Chinese Communists it must be a consolation to learn that the jackboot Socialists in the capital of Europe also ban demonstrations.
Recent comments
11 hours 31 min ago
11 hours 56 min ago
13 hours 19 min ago
14 hours 47 min ago
15 hours 16 min ago
15 hours 54 min ago
16 hours 15 min ago
16 hours 39 min ago
20 hours 33 min ago
23 hours 33 min ago