With the Antwerp governor Cathy Berx speaks for the first time a parent of a giant member.
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Joachim Meeusen, the son of the Antwerp governor Cathy Berx, was a member of the Antwerp student club Reuzegom. Against Smoke she tells how her son is still devastated by the death of Sanda Dia, the student who died in December 2018 as a result of a badly out of hand student baptism from the club. Meeusen was not present at the baptism: he was on a foreign internship. He will not be prosecuted. Eighteen members who were involved in baptism appear before the council chamber.
Meeusen and Dia have known each other for some time through the Edegem football team Ik Dien. Berx told him the news himself on the phone. “Joachim came home in seven haste, completely broken,” Berx says Smoke. “He paid a contribution to decorate Sanda’s grave. He later also came over from Paris to attend the funeral, and played in the memorial match. Sanda’s obituary is still standing next to his bed. ‘
Berx tells how she and her husband (Johan Meeusen, full professor at the University of Antwerp, ed.) talked extensively with their son about why he wanted to join Reuzegom. “We still don’t understand,” she says. But Joachim belongs to a different generation. He makes his own choices. (…) What happened to Sanda could have happened to him too. That’s what I say to him now: “For the same money it would have been you.”
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