Out of a crowd of some 200 protesters, gathered in two public squares in Brussels, nearly 150 were arrested after Brussels Police and various other law-enforcement agents violently put an end to the demonstration. The protesters by all accounts were peaceful, mostly just standing around in the square, surrounded by a massive police presence, including riot police, police on horse-back, water-cannon trucks, dogs and police in "Combat" gear. The police, by some accounts, outnumbered the protesters by 3 to 1.
There was no violence, they didn’t wear combat boots, they didn’t carry any sticks, there were no baseball-bats, they didn’t wear face-masks, and they didn’t rip open the pavement, no window-panes shattered, no refuse-cans were lit. The demonstrators just voiced grievances. They may not have shaven their heads, they didn’t wear orange, or off-white sarongs, they didn’t fold their hands in front of them, and they didn’t seek any of their heads to forcefully meet with truncheons, yet…
For some or other reason police made a dash towards selected demonstrators and singled out those, who for all intents and purposes didn’t in any way seem ‘aggressive’. All those that were brutally manhandled suffered the hyper-adrenaline anger of some eager roughshot-riding police, and although they put up with the assault, they didn’t as such retaliate. Although they did not quite “resist” the person in authority. One was hard pressed to tell whether the struggles that ensued, were not caused by the ‘brutal way’ in which they were thrown to the ground, or it just may be they simply wanted to prevent their three-piece suits from being torn.
And when they voiced their disagreement with the way they were manacled, they were manhandled. Some protesters even involuntarily ran in to 2-foot truncheons, that happened to be in the way. This was not a violent or aggressive protest, It was several hundred like minded individuals gathered in a group talking about their frustrations and disapproval at the Islaminization of their country, before they were violently attacked.
I guess we can summarize from this response by the police, in a supposed democratic society, who really runs Europe, and it isn't the Belgian citizens!
In the video, The grey-haired man whom we see being attacked by the police first is Luk Van Nieuwenhuysen, the Vice-President of the Flemish Parliament. Shortly afterwards we see the police maltreating Frank Vanhecke, a member of the European Parliament and the party leader of the Vlaams Belang. We see how he is handcuffed and pushed into a police bus. Afterwards we also see the police "taking care" of Filip Dewinter, the VB group leader in the Flemish Parliament. We see how his arm gets caught between the closing doors of the bus. An Italian MEP and a French MEP were also arrested. The demonstrators were kept in cells for seven hours and released this evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment