Thousands gathered in Brussels to protest police violence, demanding justice, systemic change, and an end to racial profiling and discrimination.
To observe the International Day Against Police Violence, on Friday evening, a large protest was organised in the streets of Brussels to pay accolades to the victims of police violence in Belgium while asking for justice and respect for people’s human rights.
The organisers placed the number of demonstrators at 2,500, while the Brussels police expressed it was 900 people who paraded in the capital. By 18:00, the gathering had gathered at Place du Congrès, a stone’s throw from the police station where Ilyes Abeddou, Mohamed Amine and Sourour Abouda were killed.
“Stop police repression. Justice and truth for all”, read a massive banner. After speeches and a minute’s silence, the caravan headed for the police station at 5, rue du Brabant, before dragging on to the Nouveau Marché Aux Grains. Organised by the self-managed cooperative Utils solidaires contre les violences policières (OSVP), the protest was intended to appeal “systemic change, justice and truth” for victims of police abuse.
“Police violence in Belgium is still mostly invisible because of the government’s reluctance to produce statistics. 2023 alone counted no fewer than ten deaths connected to police intervention”, the organisers claimed.
The demonstrators express this is the “tip of the iceberg”, and have different demands. These include calling for corrective procedures to be made automatic in the possibility of deaths involving police officers, and for the offences of hatred and rebellion to be abolished “to protect the right to freedom of expression”
The number of deaths in police custody or during police investigations and interventions has increased in recent years. Liga voor Mensenrechten and the Ligue des Droits Humains publicised an interactive map displaying the people who died during or as an outcome of a police operation (stop, detention, chase, etc.), how this occurred and the judicial handling of these cases. The ethnic origin of the targets is specified to underline racist discrimination: more than 90% of the prey are non-white. Police in Belgium, particularly in Brussels, have a history of using brutality as well as racial profiling and other forms of discrimination.
The stats go back 25 years, documenting all “known” deaths since 1998, the year in which Semira Adamu, a young Nigerian asylum pleader, was strangled by a cushion during forced repatriation while being accompanied by five police officers. The human rights organisations emphasised that the data available is not comprehensive but “aims to compensate for the lack of official statistics” on police brutality and to make these deaths visible to “better combat police violence”.
“Often the hardships of access to justice, the prospect of bringing a civil action, precariousness and the worry of reprisals prevent the conditions of the extra mortality of non-white people in Belgium from being elucidated,” the organisations stated. This is particularly the case when they are undocumented.
The leagues condemn the continued impunity and quietness about police violence in Belgium. They are also casting a podcast that will highlight the effort that families of victims of deadly police brutality face within the Belgian legal system. An out-of-court compensation is almost always ordered, suggesting police officers involved rarely have to respond to a criminal judge and families are left with a sense of impunity.
