Hundreds of vehicles participating in anti-vaccination pass convoys, including many from France, were preparing to head for Brussels on Monday, despite the ban, to protest at European level after a first attempt in Paris.
The Belgian authorities reminded the participants of the convoys on Sunday that it was forbidden to demonstrate on Monday in the capital. This did not prevent around 1,300 vehicles, according to the French police, from stopping in the evening near Lille, not far from the border.
Arrived in a concert of horns, in a parking lot ten kilometers from the metropolis of northern France, the participants demonstrated there in the evening to cries of “We don’t let go”, “Freedom freedom”, brandishing many French flags.
“We will go to Brussels to try to block, to fight against this policy of permanent control”, affirmed to AFP Jean-Pierre Schmit, a 58-year-old unemployed man from Toulouse (south-west) who demonstrated on Saturday in Paris.
“The program is little by little going to see all the European institutions (…), we don’t know how far we are going to go but we are moving forward and making our voices heard”, explained to AFP Sandrine, a 45-year-old production manager from Lyon (center-east) and refusing, like many, to give her name.
– “Prevent blocking” –
The Belgian authorities have banned all demonstrations in the capital “with motorized vehicles” and announced that they have taken measures “to prevent the blocking of the Brussels-Capital region”.
The Brussels police have posted instructions on social networks in four languages - French, Dutch, German and English: ban on demonstrating with vehicles, advice not to go to Brussels by car, channeling of convoys in a parking lot from the exhibition center, on the outskirts of the city, “the only place where static action will be tolerated”.
Some participants in a similar demonstration organized in The Hague also announced their intention to travel to Belgium.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo had however advised the demonstrators on Friday to give up coming to Brussels.
“I say to those who come from abroad: look at the rules in Belgium. We never had rules that were too hard and we don’t have so many anymore. So complain at home,” he said. spear.
Checks are planned at the border and vehicles coming to the capital despite the ban will be diverted, warned the Belgian authorities.
Brussels airport advised travelers to take precautions on Monday and come by train for fear of blocking access routes.
Coming from all over France, anti-pass convoys, self-proclaimed “freedom convoys”, like the convoys in Canada which paralyze Ottawa and have been emulated in several other countries, converged on the weekend towards Paris.
But, if the police had counted 3,000 vehicles for 5,000 demonstrators around Paris on Friday evening, not all of them finally reached the capital.
On Saturday, more than a hundred vehicles finally managed to reach the very touristy Champs-Elysées, before being gradually evacuated with tear gas.
In Canada, where this roadblock movement was born, the police finally dislodged on Sunday the demonstrators who had occupied a strategic border bridge with the United States for a week, without discouraging the protesters throughout the country and especially in Ottawa. .
The French movement brings together opponents of the vaccine pass which reserves access to people immunized against Covid-19 to a good number of places welcoming the public but also demonstrators with social demands.
The latter relating to purchasing power and the cost of energy are similar to those of the great popular protest movement of “yellow vests” which had shaken France for several months from the fall of 2018.
burx-ob / roc