Dozens of people were injured as mass riots were broken up in Brussels' Bois de la Cambre park, where more than five thousand people had gathered as a result of an April Fool's joke on social media about organising a non-existent concert, VRK News reports.
For several hours the police urged those gathered through loudspeakers to leave the park, but the response was chanting of offensive slogans and cries calling for freedom. Those gathered also threw bottles and cans at the police. In the end, by the evening of 1 April, several trucks with police special forces, a water cannon and a detachment of mounted police arrived at the park, after which the police began to push those gathered out of the park.
Young people actively resisted the police, and scuffles regularly broke out in different parts of the park. Those who came to the party threw bottles and sticks at the police. According to preliminary information from the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, police detained about 100 people, several dozen were injured, and several police officers were hospitalised. As of 20:00 (21:00 Moscow time) the park is blocked by police, and its clearing continues.
“People need to breathe fresh air, but we cannot tolerate actions like this. That is why the police were forced to clear the park. Persons who do not follow police instructions face detention and prosecution,” Brussels mayor Philippe Close wrote on Twitter about this.
The situation in the park is calm now, several ambulances have arrived and will take the injured to hospital.
Meanwhile, the Belgian prosecutor's office has already begun an investigation to establish the identities of the organisers of the fictitious festival.
“Our only goal was to make people smile and laugh, to create,” says one of the anonymous organisers, the “laboomers”, on social media.
For now only one thing is clear: the people behind La Boom work in an international event company.
“Everyone is tired of covid and the quarantine measures. Especially we creative people, who need people in order to make them happy. That is our job. La Boom was a successful event. We have 70 thousand people on social media whom we got hooked and called on to laugh. People send us messages and tell us that we made their day! That is proof of our success!” says another anonymous organiser of La Boom.
For her part, Belgium's interior minister Annelies Verlinden also gave her view of what had happened.
“The April Fool's Day that they tried to celebrate in the Bois de la Cambre is a complete lack of respect for all the people who are doing everything they can to comply with the corona measures. I feel compassion for those affected by Covid-19, for the families and loved ones who lost someone, and for the health workers who are again on the brink of saturating their hospitals. Until the virus is brought under control, everyone must keep to the health measures. The fact that police officers were injured while doing their job is unacceptable,” the minister said on the evening of 1 April.
The minister called for more courtesy and a sense of responsibility for the good of all, reminding people that participants in this carefree gathering could themselves fall ill and would then, of course, use the same state hospital bed that would be provided to them.
“I know well that for many people, especially young people, the Covid crisis has been going on for a very long time and that it is not always easy to keep to these measures. Especially at this time, when good weather is coming upon us and we involuntarily want to go out and meet. However, the more consistently we carry out these quarantine measures, the faster we can stop the spread of the virus together. That is how we see the prospect of a new normal life. Compared with our neighbouring countries, things in Belgium are going quite well. Let us continue this path together,” Minister Verlinden stressed.
Ahead of the Easter holidays the Belgian authorities decided to tighten restrictions to avoid a rise in COVID-19 cases. In particular, schoolchildren were switched to distance learning through 25 April inclusive. The ban on tourist trips outside the country, including to neighbouring EU countries, remains in force. The authorities promised to step up border controls, and violators face fines.
At the same time, on the eve a court of first instance in Brussels ordered the state to lift the emergency restrictive measures within 30 days because of “the absence of a legislative basis”. The government has appealed the decision.
