Police told to shut down right-wing Brussels event

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BRUSSELS — Brussels police have told the BBC they will enforce an order to close down the National Conservatism Conference.

Organizers said the event in the Belgian capital is continuing, but guests are no longer allowed to enter.

Local authorities raised concerns over the safety of the public, saying the conference should not go ahead.

The conference aims to bring together right-wing politicians across Europe, including Nigel Farage and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and far-right French politician Eric Zemmour were also listed as keynote speakers.

Organized by a think-tank called the Edmund Burke Foundation, the National Conservatism Conference is a global movement which espouses what it describes as traditional values, which it claims are being “undermined and overthrown”. It also opposes further European integration.

The conference said it aimed to bring together “public figures, journalists, scholars and students” who understood the connection between conservatism and the idea of nationhood and national traditions.

But in a message to organizers, the area’s local mayor Emir Kir said some of the attendees of Tuesday’s conference hold anti-gay and anti-abortion views.

Kir wrote on X: “The far right is not welcome.”

“Bearing in mind the aim of this event is to bring together personalities from the media, academic and cultural world, as much as political figures who share a so-called ‘national conservative’ vision towards society; that among these personalities there are several particularly from the right-conservative, religious right and European extreme right,” his statement said.

The National Conservatism Conference reportedly started around 08:00 (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday and carried on for three hours until police showed up and asked the organizers to make attendees leave.

Later, organizers wrote on X: “The police are not letting anyone in. People can leave, but they cannot return. Delegates have limited access to food and water, which are being prevented from delivery. Is this what city mayor Emir Kir is aiming for?”

Nigel Farage, who took to the stage this morning, told the BBC the decision to close down the conference because there were homophobes in the audience was “cobblers”, and that he condemned the decision as an attempt to stifle free speech.

“Thank God For Brexit”, he said. Farage left the venue, saying he was making a “discreet exit”.

French far-right politician Eric Zemmour, arriving for the conference after police had blocked the entrance, told journalists that Kir was “using the police as a private militia to prevent... Europeans from taking part freely”.

Organizers said Zemmour was not allowed into the venue and that his address would be postponed. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki were due to speak tomorrow.

Earlier, the organizers said on X that they would challenge the order to shut the conference down.

“The police entered the venue on our invitation, saw the proceedings and the press corps, and quickly withdrew. Is it possible they witnessed how peaceful the event is?,” they wrote on X.

The Claridge event space — located near Brussels’s European Quarter — can host up to 850 people. Around 250 people were in attendance on Tuesday afternoon.

It is the third venue that was supposed to hold the event, after the previous two fell through. Belgian media reported that one venue pulled out after pressure by a group called the “Antifascist coordination of Belgium”. — BBC