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“Belgium is burdened by sharia,” said French radical right-wing politician Éric Zemmour on Tuesday afternoon. “It is once again clear that it is not possible to make a dissident voice heard in Brussels,” said Filip Dewinter (Vlaams Belang). Brexiteer Nigel Farage said that this “undemocratic behavior had now really convinced him that Brexit was the only right choice”. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, tweeted that he was reminded of his fight against the communist regime in the 1980s. “We didn’t give up then, and we won’t give up now! #nomigration #nogender.”

All four would participate in the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon), a two-day right-wing conservative conference, on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. This was initially supposed to take place in a venue in Brussels city, until the manager got wind of the content and canceled the event. The organizers then moved to Etterbeek, where the same thing happened, and were forced to settle in the Claridge hall in Sint-Joost-ten-Noode on Tuesday morning. The manager of that venue said that “after consulting with his lawyer” he had decided that the event could go ahead.

Event not stopped

That was strongly against the wishes of Emir Kir (independent), the mayor of the Brussels municipality, who sent the police to the congress on Tuesday to put an end to it “immediately”. He did this on the basis of a threat analysis by the anti-terrorist service Ocad, De Standaard learns, which warned of a possible disruption of public order – not only by the right-wing conservative event itself, but also by far-left counter-demonstrators. “Racists are not welcome in Brussels, not in Etterbeek, nor in Sint-Joost,” Kir tweeted on Tuesday.

When around noon – Nigel Farage was just giving a speech – a handful of police officers entered the room, the meeting had already been going on for several hours. This literally happened behind closed doors: on the tightly sealed roller shutter there was a note with a telephone number of someone from the organizing Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a right-wing think tank from Hungary.

The police did not stop the event completely. However, a cordon of about twenty riot officers took up position in front of the entrance gate of the hall. Anyone who was outside the room at that time, such as Zemmour, was not allowed back in by the officers. Inside, the congress continued virtually undisturbed.

Posing next to police

If Kir thought that his demarche would be a dampener for the organization, he actually achieved the opposite. In addition to the many strong statements by right-wing leaders about alleged censorship, parliamentarians from, among others, Vlaams Belang and the French Rassemblement National (which until recently was led by Marine Le Pen) were particularly happy to pose next to the riot police.

It was captured by the cameras of, among others, Hír TV – for a long time one of the last critical news channels in Hungary, until the channel was bought by an associate of Orban in 2018. And simultaneously with his statement about Belgium as a “Sharia state”, an image of a muzzled Zemmour was widely shared on social media. “Silenced by a Belgian mayor of Turkish origin,” it said.

But Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) was also critical of Kir’s decision to call in the police on Tuesday evening. De Croo wrote on X (Twitter) that he finds the action “unacceptable”. “Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy, but it can never override the Belgian Constitution. Since 1830, it has guaranteed freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly. Banning political gatherings is unconstitutional. Point.”

Around half past six, about fifty far-left counter-demonstrators tried to get to the event hall, but they were stopped by the police a few hundred meters further, near the Madou metro station. It is still unclear whether the second day of the event will go ahead as planned on Wednesday.