The conference had previously been canceled in several other Brussels municipalities and had been moved to the Claridge events hall in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode. To prevent disruption of public order, police officers from the area have been instructed to “immediately” go to the location and execute the order.
This concerns the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon), a meeting to which about forty prominent figures from the conservative, religious and extreme right are invited. They include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman, former European Parliament member Nigel Farage, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and French writer and politician Éric Zemmour. European Parliament Member for Vlaams Belang Tom Vandendriessche was also on the speakers list.
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After police arrived at the event venue, Braverman took the stage to say the event was being shut down. Nigel Farage, known as one of the proponents of Brexit and who spoke before Braverman, stated shortly beforehand that the police had turned away because of the cameras, The Guardian reports. “This is what we are against. We have to deal with an evil ideology. We are facing a new form of communism,” that British newspaper quoted Farage during his speech. According to The Guardian, officers also reported that they would not drag anyone out of the room, but would also not let anyone in.
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In the above video on “I had my reservations about the way the [Britse] Conservatives have handled Brexit. If there is anything that convinced me that we made the right choice, it is what happened here today,” he says.
Advice from OCAD
The controversial conference first had to move from the Concert Noble in Brussels to the Sofitel Brussels Europa hotel in Etterbeek. But after the meeting could not take place there either, the organizers moved to the Claridge event hall in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode. The conference started there on Tuesday morning around 8 am.
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This was much to the dismay of Mayor Emir Kir, who immediately made it clear that he would do everything he could to have the meeting canceled. “There is a risk of disruption of public order if this conference takes place,” Kir said. “Based on the advice of my police chief and the OCAD (Coordinating Body for Threat Analysis), I have decided to issue a police order to ban the event with immediate effect,” the mayor added.
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Police officers from the area have been told to “immediately” go to the location to execute the order and thus put an end to the conference.
The organizers of the event would now look for a new location, where the NatCon, a two-day event anyway, can still take place on Wednesday.
Farage during his speech. — © BELGA
Diplomatic incident
Vlaams Belang demands an explanation about the suspension of the conference. “Socialist and liberal mayors actively work together to silence opposition. This is state violence to curtail the fundamental rights of free citizens,” says European Parliament Member Tom Vandendriessche (Vlaams Belang). “This is not only a mockery of democracy, but also a major diplomatic incident. The whole world can see how the Belgian political system deals with freedom of expression. It is unheard of for a mayor to stop a summit conference with even a foreign government leader such as Viktor Orbán.”