“Freedom convoys” now converge on Brussels
The vehicles of the anti-sanitary pass convoys were redirected to a parking lot outside the city center of Brussels, on February 14, 2022. AP - Olivier Matthys
Text by: RFI Follow
4 mins
After Paris, hundreds of vehicles participating in the anti-vaccination pass convoys, many of them from France, were preparing, on Monday February 14, to head for Brussels, despite the ban on demonstrations in the Belgian capital where the European institutions are located. .
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"Freedom convoys"
are expected this Monday, February 14 in Brussels.
These citizens from different European countries intend to protest against the vaccination pass, the health restrictions due to Covid-19 and they sometimes have other more social demands.
The Belgian authorities were expecting vehicles from Germany and especially from France and the Netherlands, the two countries where the mobilization has really reached a certain extent.
Convoy vehicles began arriving in the Brussels region early Sunday evening.
They tried after dark to cross the border in small groups to converge on the European district of Brussels.
The initial objective was to converge there on February 7, but the date was postponed by a week in the hope of allowing convoys from all over Europe to gather there.
"
Brussels
is where
there are all the big heads, where there is everything that can make this situation work out
"
A dozen cars and motorhomes are parked in a large parking lot outside the city center of Brussels.
The Belgian police are there to control the comings and goings, reports
our special correspondent,
Murielle Paradon
.
There are mostly French people from all over France, like Nolwenn, a student.
She has just spent several nights in her car to be in Brussels on Monday.
"
We left Bayonne on Wednesday morning and we followed the" freedom convoy "to here with the others, all united, always present, always there against health restrictions
", explains the young woman.
Belgian police forces in front of a building of the European institutions, February 14, 2022. © REUTERS / Yves Herman
Why Brussels?
“
Because that's where there are all the big heads, where there is everything that can make this situation work out,
she develops.
Give us back our freedom!
»
Vehicles directed to a parking lot outside Brussels
As of Thursday, the authorities had warned that the convoy for freedom would not have authorization to assemble in the Belgian capital.
The planned device is a kind of funnel which ends in the north of Brussels at the Heysel exhibition center, very precisely on parking C. It has ten thousand parking spaces and a static demonstration is authorized there.
A few cars and motorhomes were escorted there by the Belgian federal police.
Those who want to avoid finding themselves surrounded in this way have gathered elsewhere to spend the night, for example near La Louvière in Belgian Hainaut, south of Brussels.
Belgium had distributed leaflets before the borders to detail the police control system to the vehicles of the convoy.
A device that has not been sufficiently dissuasive despite controls at the borders and on the roads as well as mousetraps in place since the afternoon at the entrances to Brussels.
Denis is 58 years old and comes from Alsace.
He is busy in his van to prepare coffee for the other demonstrators.
A worker from father to son, he comes to Brussels to defend purchasing power.
“
I'm a worker, my parents are workers and there it is, it's tradition, we have to fight, we have to defend our rights!
He testifies.
I'm not only here because I'm not vaccinated, but also because the cost of diesel is increasing, the cost of living, etc.
»
These first demonstrators hope to be joined by citizens from all over Europe.
Their intention: to leave the car park where the police took them to walk towards the city center of Brussels where the European Council sits.
►
To read also: "Convoys of freedom": Paris still under high surveillance
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