Police move to shut down conference due to hear from Braverman and Farage
Authorities in Brussels have ordered the closure of a right-wing conference that was due to hear from British politicians including Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.
Emir Kir, the mayor of Brussels district Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, said he had issued an order banning the National Conservatism conference from taking place on Tuesday “to guarantee public safety”.
He added: “In Etterbeek, in Brussels City and in Saint-Josse, the far-right is not welcome.”
The conference had already struggled to find a venue, with two event spaces cancelling the National Conservatives’ booking in the face of public pressure – leading organisers to accuse Brussels mayor Philippe Close of seeking to “cancel” the event.
According to a report on social media, police arrived while Mr Farage, the honorary president of Reform UK, was addressing the event, giving attendees 15 minutes to leave the venue.
Footage later showed police officers entering the venue.
However, officers did not appear to force the event to shut down and speeches continued.
Legal challenge
Conference organisers said they were launching a legal challenge to Mr Kir’s order, adding: “There is no public disturbance and no grounds to shut down a gathering of politicians, intellectuals, journalists, students, civic leaders, and concerned citizens.
“The police entered the venue on our invitation, saw the proceedings and the press corps, and quickly withdrew. Is it possible they witnessed how peaceful the event is?”
They added that police were preventing people entering the venue and blocking delivery of food and water to the conference.
In a video on social media, Mr Farage said the Brussels authorities were behaving “like the old Soviet Union”.
He said: “At the meeting, over the next two days, you’ve got the prime minister of Hungary, you’ve got a bishop, you’ve got members of the European royal families coming, well-known international businessmen and women, politicians, leaders of parties that will win European elections in countries this year in June.
“And yet, because they are questioning ever-closer union, because they are questioning globalism, they are literally being shut down.”
Viktor Orban
The conference had been due to hear from two Conservative MPs, Ms Braverman and Miriam Cates, later on Tuesday, before hosting a speech by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday.
Rishi Sunak had faced pressure to block Ms Braverman’s attendance at the conference, with shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth urging the Prime Minister to stop the former home secretary “giving oxygen to these divisive and dangerous individuals”.
Under Boris Johnson’s government in 2020, Conservative backbencher Daniel Kawczynski was reprimanded for attending a National Conservatism conference in Rome, with a Tory spokesman condemning the views of some other speakers, including Mr Orban.
Both Ms Braverman and Ms Cates addressed the National Conservatism conference in London last year, which was disrupted by protesters.
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Great couple of mug shots here of two people guilty of crimes against morality. Nice to see that the joint was busted whilst one of them was in full flow. Result!
Oh come on, Sunak didn’t mean that sort of hate gathering, he meant the other hate gatherings.
Much as the extremism of the right is to be deprecated as is that of the left it doesn’t look good for democracy. Also driving these people underground means that we don’t have the opportunity to hear what they are saying and to prepare for the consequences.
Braverman and Farage have said enough already. We know what they are.
False equivalence. The number of incidents involving the far left are vanishingly small unless you’re one of those morons who consider anyone slightly to the left of Blair as ‘far left’. It’s also worth considering that the far-right are a darned sight closer to being in government that any so called ‘far left’. Some idiots even considered Jeremy Corbyn as ‘far left’! Disrupting far-right gatherings isn’t ‘driving them underground’ but is fragmenting the movement and making it difficult for them to organise. Their very existence should be sufficient so that we know what they’re about and are prepared to counter… Read more »
We missed a chance with Jezza Diane Emily and John. Instead we goy Boris.
A couple of days ago, a conference on Palestine in Berlin which forcibly shut down by several hundred police. Yaris Varoufakis was banned from entering the country to deliver a speech at the conference, as was a British surgeon who had worked in Al Shifa hospital. He has held at the airport for three hours and then deported. Both have been banned from entering Germany and Varoufakis has been banned from delivering speeches – even on zoom! A Jewish attender at the conference was arrested and taken away by the police for holding a banner saying “Jews against genocide”. Banning… Read more »
I’m glad to see opposition to these national socialist – sorry ‘conservatism’ – extremists. And yes there is a direct comparison with that organisation of 1930’s Germany. In the 1930s extreme nationalism was allowed to grow and we all know what happened next – it can’t be allowed to happen again. Farage and Braverman, amongst others, spout division and hatred, feeding off current issues, such as the cost of living crisis and the fear of immigrants. Listen to them and we’ll all end up even worse off than we are now.
I deplore the rhetoric of people like Nigel Farage et al. However, what is happening here to free speech?
As this is going on, there are extremists marching through European cities (including Cardiff and London) calling for the destruction of a whole country (Israel), with their right to be heard being defended by some. Meanwhile this event was stopped.
Don’t get me wrong, I strongly deplore both of those views, but where does the censuring end? Could a march or event for Cymdeithas or Yes Cymru be censured at some point too?
I would like to add that I think those hate marches calling for the destruction of Israel, that I mentioned, should be stopped.