#ecolo j

Today we accompanied Laura to join the Belgium Young Greens Ecolo J at a huge protest against TTIP at the occasion of the European Business Summit which was taking place in Brussels, place Poelaert. The protest, initiated by the collectif D19-20, including among others Ecolo J, was gathering activists from various organisations of the left, the Green party Ecolo and FYEG being of course present there. A peaceful and legitimate citizen-led demonstration which will end up with 250 arrestations, water canons and police brutality : a very promising TTIP indeed !

On the way from Liège to Brussels with Laura and Gio

As we were staying at Laura's place, we had to take the train from Liège to Brussels to join the protest, which meant we had to leave at 6 AM, which was ...pretty hard. But fortunately Gio had the best trick to take me (Marie) out of bed, with the beautiful voice of Conchita Wurst, which made me rise like a phoenix :-) Some growls, and a delicious coffee later, we were in the train,and it was quite a (good) surprise to be surrounded in this very attended train by anonymous and young green activists : at some point one of the young candidates of Ecolo in Belgium took the micro to make a call in the train and to announce the demonstration : quite a great energizer !

The demonstration started very slowly (yes it was 7 AM :-)) with all movements standing on the square, discussing and networking. Around 1000 citizens, syndicalists and associative actors were gathering peacefully, in order to protest against the negotiation of the Transatlantic treaty (TTIP) that was taking place just nearby at this very moment. Some time after, however, the ambiance had changed drastically, after a hundred pacific demonstrators were encircled by the police, and arrested administratively, one after the other. After these many arrestations, the water canons were thrown, and the police encircled and arrested massively other demonstrators from other groups against the walls of buildings nearby. This brutal intervention from the police forces led to the arrestations of several members of Ecolo J, a FYEG ex- co-spoke person and Green MEPs, that were released few hours after... just for demonstrating ! Read here the press releases from Ecolo J, the Federation of Young European Greens and Les Jeunes Ecologistes.

Ecolo J and the Federation of Young European Greens, along with the other activists, denounced the arrestation of all the citizens that were there demonstrating peacefully, asking for their immediate release.