Riot Police Deployed to Fake Festival in Brussels
Police used water cannons and pepper spray to disperse a crowd in the Bois de la Cambre in Brussels. (Wikimedia)
Police in Brussels dispersed thousands of people who gathered in a park for a fake music festival on April 1. The event, called “La Boum,” was advertised on Facebook as a music festival featuring live DJs and no enforcement of the government’s social-distancing rules. Nearly 70,000 users indicated online that they were interested in the event, and a crowd of around 2,000 people arrived at the Bois de la Cambre on April Fools’ Day. Police were aware of the Facebook account and ordered the crowd to disperse.
Starting at 5 pm, the police spent hours trying to disperse the crowd, with some would-be partygoers staying in the park past 8 pm. Some attendees began playing music from their own speakers, while others responded by throwing bottles at the officers. The police reported that three of their officers sustained injuries. The police arrested a total of four people in the park.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo tweeted on April 2 that the gathering was “totally unacceptable” and urged citizens to follow the government’s restrictions. “Solidarity now is the key to freedom tomorrow.” Philippe Close, the mayor of Brussels, also condemned the event. “People need to get some fresh air, but we cannot tolerate such gatherings in the Bois de la Cambre,” he tweeted, adding, “Thanks to the police for the hard work and to the people who have been playing by the rules for over a year.”
Authorities were aware of the event prior to April 1 and planned to have police in the park. Both the local government and the organizers of the event posted messages on Facebook explaining that the festival was a prank before it took place. Close even assured members of the city council at a meeting three days before the festival that “the police will be present at Bois de la Cambre and will act with discernment in the event of an actual gathering.”.
Some members of the crowd told local news that they knew the festival was a prank, but they went anyway to protest Belgium’s COVID-19 restrictions. On March 24, the Belgian government announced a set of more restrictive policies to combat the virus. The new rules ban outdoor gatherings of more than four people and reversed the government’s plan to allow outdoor festivals starting in April.
These revised regulations are largely due to the country’s recent rise in COVID-19 cases, the most the country has experienced since its peak infection level last October, when the country averaged more than 17,000 new cases daily. The country now has more deaths from the virus than all but six other countries in the European Economic Area, which consists of the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. Even as countries begin to administer vaccines to their citizens, cases have risen across Europe in the past two months. Belgium had only fully vaccinated 5 percent of its population by the time of the “La Boum” gathering, and like many other countries, it is struggling to roll out vaccines fast enough to keep pace with the number of cases.
Even so, at the time of writing, over 17,000 people on Facebook have already indicated their interest in “La Boum 2,” another music festival to take place in the same park, scheduled for May 1. The organizers of the event, calling themselves “the Abyss,” wrote that the gathering is meant to be a response to what they see as the Belgian government’s harsh restrictions on young people’s social lives.