The Belgian authorities recalled Sunday to the participants of the convoy that it was forbidden to demonstrate Monday in the capital.
Le Monde with AFP
Hundreds of vehicles participating in the Parisian “convoy” against the vaccinal pass, prepared, on Monday, February 14, to head to Brussels, despite the prohibition, to protest at European level after a first attempt in Paris .
The Belgian authorities recalled Sunday to the participants of the convoy that it was forbidden to demonstrate Monday in the capital. What has not stopped about 1,300 vehicles, according to the French police, stopover in the evening near Lille, not far from the border.
Arrived in a horn concert, on a ten-kilometer parking of the northern metropolis of France, the participants manifested there in the evening in the cries of “we let go”, “freedom freedom”, brandishing many French flags.
“We will go to Brussels to try to block, to fight against this permanent control policy,” said France-Press (AFP) Jean-Pierre Schmit, an unemployed of Toulouse (Southwest) of 58 years that demonstrated Saturday in Paris. “The program is gradually going to see all the European institutions (…), we do not know how far we will go but one’s way and we make our voice heard,” explained to AFP Sandrine, a 45-year-old production charged from Lyon (center-east) and refusing, like a lot, to give his name.
“Prevent the blocking”
The Belgian authorities have prohibited any manifestation in the capital “with motorized vehicles” and announced having taken action “to prevent the blockage of the Brussels-Capital Region”.
The Brussels police on the social networks of the instructions in four languages - French, Dutch, German and English: prohibition of manifesting with vehicles, advice not to go to Brussels by car, channeling convoys On a parking lot of the exhibition grounds, on the outskirts of the city, “only place where a static action will be tolerated”.
Some participants in a similar event organized in The Hague also announced their intention to travel to Belgium.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander of Croo, however, had advised Friday to the protesters to give up coming to Brussels. “I say to those who come from abroad: Look at the rules in Belgium. We have never had rules too hard and we do not have so much. So complain about you,” he has launched.
Controls are provided at the border and vehicles that would come to the capital despite the prohibition will be diverted, warned the Belgian authorities. The Brussels Airport advised travelers to take their precautions on Monday and come by train, fear of accessing access routes.
From all over France, the self-proclaimed “Convoy of Freedom”, like the convoy in Canada that paralyzes Ottawa and have emulated in several other countries, had converged at the end of the week to Paris. But if the police had identified Friday night 3,000 vehicles for 5,000 protesters around Paris, all finally not rallied the capital.
Saturday, more than a hundred vehicles were finally managed to join the very tourist Champs-Elysées, before being gradually evacuated with tear gas strokes.
In Canada, where this road blocking movement was born, the police finally dislodged the protesters who occupied a strategic border bridge for a week with the United States, which was able to reopen, without discouraging the protesters to throughout the country and especially in Ottawa.
The French movement brings together vaccine opponents who reserve for people immunized against CVIV-19 access to many public places but also social demand protesters. The latter relating to the purchasing power and the cost of energy are similar to those of the great movement of popular protest of “yellow vests” which had shaken France for several months from the fall of 2018.