Scuderi and Guarda manhandled by the Belgian police. AVS: Tajani must demand urgent explanations from his Belgian counterpart

Brussels – “The Brussels police prevented me from walking freely as a citizen on the street, a few hundred metres from the European Parliament, where a right-wing demonstration in favour of remigration was taking place.” MEP Benedetta Scuderi of the Greens/Left Alliance wrote this yesterday (15 July) on social media. “I was told I couldn’t walk on a public street, even though I was on my way back to my office and there were no demonstrators on those streets. I was grabbed and forcibly moved aside, even though other people were walking around me,” she explained. “Perhaps it was the peace flag I was holding that frightened the police? When I asked for an explanation, I was met with aggressive and peremptory demands that had no substance,” she said. “It is absurd that in Europe, in Brussels, in front of the Parliament, such scenes should take place, while on the other side of the road a few dozen people are protesting in favour of the deportation of human beings, racism, and violence. Why do the neo-Nazis have the power to take away even our freedom to walk? Whose side was the police on?”, concluded Scuderi. 

Today (16 July), the leaders of AVS, Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni, have called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, to seek an explanation from his counterpart. “Yesterday, Benedetta Scuderi, a Member of the European Parliament for the Green and Left Alliance, was stopped, manhandled and forcibly removed by the Brussels police while she was simply walking with a peace flag in her hand near a neo-Nazi-inspired sit-in. In the same context, the MEP from the Alliance of Greens and the Left, Cristina Guarda, was removed by the police while holding a “United in Europe” placard to protest peacefully outside the same demonstration,” emphasised Bonelli and Fratoianni. “This treatment is completely unjustifiable, and we are calling on Minister Tajani to intervene urgently with his Belgian counterpart.” The two leaders pointed out that “it is appalling that people—regardless of whether they are MEPs—are prevented from walking freely on a public street or from peacefully expressing dissent, and that force is even used against them.” Moreover, “the fact that this is done to Members of the European Parliament in front of the very institution they represent gives even greater cause for concern about the state of our democracies,” “while, in the area opposite, a group of neo-Nazis chant in favour of deportation, forced repatriation, and racism: this calls into question the most fundamental freedoms of the individual. Minister Tajani must demand an explanation for these regrettable events from his Belgian counterpart as a matter of the utmost urgency,” they concluded.