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Your representatives at work – On municipal sanctions against Amnesty International
Each month, at the municipal council, we raise questions and put forward concrete proposals for a greener, fairer municipality.
Oral question from Ms. Audrey Petit regarding municipal administrative sanctions
At the end of February 2025, the press revealed that the French-speaking police court of Brussels had annulled an administrative sanction imposed by the municipality of Etterbeek on Amnesty International. Many of us discovered, through the media, that at the end of 2023 the municipality had issued this sanction against the human rights organization.
The reason? Posting, without authorization, an Amnesty International poster on a municipal panel. Unable to identify the person who put up the poster, the municipality chose to pursue the organization directly. The poster called for the release of Olivier Vandecasteele, a Belgian humanitarian worker who was then imprisoned in Iran, convicted of “espionage,” and welcomed back to Belgian soil by Minister Hadja Lahbib upon his happy return.
In its publicly released ruling, the court rejected the municipality’s claim, considering that an administrative sanction against an organization promoting ideals and causes would constitute a violation of freedom of expression.
This is not an isolated case. Last year, the municipality also imposed a €44,000 fine on the PTB youth movement, RedFox, for stickers that were indeed “wildly” placed in public spaces. The police court recently annulled this municipal administrative sanction for the same reasons: violation of freedom of expression and, in any case, the impossibility of identifying the actual perpetrators.
In light of these elements:
- Can you provide us with an inventory of legal proceedings in which the municipality was involved—whether summoned or initiated—during 2024 in similar cases (municipal administrative sanctions)? Are there others ongoing in 2025?
- Can you specify the cost of these proceedings for the municipality? In other words, could you clarify how much the proceedings related to the “Amnesty International” and “RedFox” cases have cost Etterbeek?
- On February 26, an article published on the Bx1 website [1] mentioned the following regarding the possibility for the municipality to appeal the police court’s decisions: “Contacted, the municipality of Etterbeek specified that it had not yet taken a position on the possible follow-up to this case, but that the issue was on the agenda for a meeting scheduled this Wednesday.” Could you inform us of the decision(s) taken at that meeting?