Belgian authorities decided this Thursday (10) to ban the so-called Freedom Train from entering Brussels next Monday, a demonstration by truck drivers against health restrictions due to the coronavirus and which tries to replicate the blockade that the Canadian capital, Ottawa has been suffering for days.
Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, Brussels Minister-President Rudi Vervoort and the capital’s mayor Philippe Close announced the launch of a series of measures to prevent a similar situation.
Brussels and also Ghent, where the march was scheduled for this Saturday, join other European cities, such as Paris and Vienna, which announced bans in the same direction throughout the day.
“To face the ‘Freedom Train’, which has not yet been allowed to manifest because no request has been sent, Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, Minister-President Rudi Vervoort and Brussels Mayor Philippe Close are putting in place federal, regional and local resources to bypass the Brussels-Capital region lockdown,” the three said in a joint statement.
The trio of authorities specified that the Federal Police will control motor vehicles that come to demonstrate in Belgium on the main roads leading to the Brussels region and will issue decrees to prohibit truck demonstrations in its territory.
In practice, the police areas responsible for the capital will divert, with the help of the Federal Police, trucks that arrive in the capital despite the ban on special parking lots.
“This collaboration between the three levels of government aims to minimize the impact on public order in the capital,” the statement detailed.
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