April 17, 2024 (EIRNS)—Mayor Emir Kir of Brussels municipality Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, ordered the shutdown of the National Conservatism Conference today on the claim that the municipality had “to guarantee public security.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had been prevented from participating, denounced the move as a violation of freedom of speech: “The Belgian police decided to shut down the [National Conservatism] conference in Brussels, just two hours after it started. I guess they couldn’t take free speech any longer. The last time they wanted to silence me with the police was when the Communists set them on me in [1988]. We didn’t give up then and we will not give up this time either! #NoMigration #NoGender #NoWar,” Orbán said on X.
Later in the day, the political director of Orbán’s office, Balazs Orbán, issued the following statement on social media: “Brussels is not the capital of freedom anymore, but a tool for left-wing, progressive, liberal oppression, therefore changes are necessary. The elections to the European Parliament on June 9 can lead to such a shift. The national conservative forces are united by being fed up by Brussels’ superstate, fed up with a failure policy of the Brussels leadership, which causes a collapse of Europe.”
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also denounced the shutdown of the meeting as “unacceptable” and accused the municipality of not having the right to “overrule the Belgian constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and peaceful assembly….”
