Action group pelts n-VA floats with glass bottles during Brussels Pride: « Absolute shame » (Brussels)
The Brussels police arrested two people on the Brussels Pride because they threw paint at the N-VA floats. About twenty activists were removed from the procession. « This is a shame, this should be the feast of the togetherness. »
The Brussels Pride brought around 70,000 people together in the center of Brussels on Saturday. The event was mostly peaceful, but around 4.45 pm the floats of the N-VA on Muntplein was targeted. « At a certain moment an action group has placed itself between the floats of N-VA and Les Engagés, » says party leader in the Brussels Parliament Gilles Verstraeten. « They then thrown at us with glass bottles and tried to smear our car with paint. LED screens were killed, but luckily no one was injured. We then continued our journey. »
Not the first time
Verstraeten cites that it is not the first time that the N-VA is being targeted at the Brussels Pride. « Also in 2018 it became violent, but every year we feel hostility here. That is an absolute shame. The Brussels Pride should be a celebration of tolerance and inclusiveness. But now we have to experience every year how radical-left activists are visiting ourselves. How can I ask our young members-who are not a guarantee here?
Gilles Verstraeten. – © N-VA
He does not want to express himself at the moment whether N-VA will still be present next year. « We are stubborn and we don’t let ourselves be pushed away. It is also not if you are a right-wing party that you cannot defend the LGBTQIA+rights? We strive for the rights of this community. If I have to believe the activists, I would even protest against myself. I am very angry and deglayed, who says I am homo.
« If I have to believe the activists, I would even protest against myself. I am extremely angry and degraded »
Gilles Verstraeten
Group leader N-VA in Brussels Parliament
According to Verstraeten, the violence against his party is encouraged by part of the LGBTQIA+community in Brussels. « Some members do not feel safe in some places in Brussels, purely because they have a party card from the N-VA. They therefore avoid those places, but that should not be the intention in a community that strives for inclusiveness. »
“Absolutely reprehensible”
Frank Schellings of the Rainbow House Brussels strongly condemns the action. “This makes me really angry. N-VA, just like the other parties present, is very welcome at the Brussels Pride. N-VA is also the party that opens the transgender rights openly. It is absolutely reprehensible to attack people at the Brussels Pride physically and we find it very unfortunate that this happened. It is people who have no place in this Brussels.” ””
