Mothers Rally in Brussels Against Police Violence Toward Youth

White flowers scattered through the crowd, mothers in white t-shirts, large white banners with the slogans "Angry Mothers" and "Stop police violence on our children." The demonstration mainly emphasized the ease with which errant police officers are whitewashed and sent back to the streets to continue to abuse young people, reports bx1.be.

In the many speeches given, the speakers stated that the judicial system favored impunity and that this had to change. The protesters mentioned Adil and Ibrahima, two young people who died during police interventions. Other names of young people who were abused and will forever bear the scars were cited. At the enumeration of the names of victims of police violence, white balloons were released into the sky.

The crowd chanted the slogan "Police everywhere, justice nowhere." "We created our collective in 2018 to react to police violence against our young people," explained Latifa Elmcabeni, a member of the madrés collective. Regarding the young people who throw projectiles at the police, she believes that "some police officers breed hatred in our neighborhoods, it can only go vice versa. That’s why we need to do a lot of awareness work with the police, the young people and the residents to establish a dialogue."

Several associations such as "La Monnaie occupée", as well as members of the shield parents collective, formed via Facebook for the Boum 2 of May 1st, were present at the rally. "We must demonstrate our anger against the repression of young people," estimates one of the associations. "We have to let the young people have fun outdoors. That way, they will gather a little everywhere in the parks and they will stop creating big concentrated events."