#106: Epilogue to a tragedy
Brussels struggles to process the death of a child
I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here.
A week on from the tragic events of 2 June in Parc Elisabeth, I’m giving over the newsletter to voice of two mothers who have summarised better than I could the grief and the anger many are feeling in the city.
It has been a long, complicated and difficult week for Brussels, one bookended by protests. We started the week with the final - and largest - of three memorials for Fabian, the 11-year-old-boy run over and killed by a police car in Parc Elisabeth on 2 June. And we ended the week with dueling protests in front of Brussels’ Palais de Justice - one a gathering of police in defence of their colleague who was driving the car that killed Fabian, and who has since been placed under arrest, and the other a protest against police violence and the death in police custody of Sourour Abouda in 2023.
The city’s nerves have already been badly rattled by the escalation of drug violence - shootings, stabbings, assaults - across Brussels in the past 18 months. The aftermath of Fabian’s death has only heightened tensions. Sunday’s memorial - a vigil to be followed by a “white march” - was of a different tone than the ones that had proceeded it on Tuesday and Thursday last week. Where the first two were attended for the most part by residents from the streets around Parc Elisabeth - were shocked that something so unthinkable could happen so close to home, and haunted by the thought that it could have one of their own children - by Thursday and certainly by Sunday, the ranks of mourners had been swelled by people with looser connections to our neigbhourhood. By Sunday some of the same faces who’d been to the previous vigils were in attendance were missing. In their place were angrier Bruxellois, people who’d lost family members or friends in incidents with Brussels’ police and activists who - it was clear from their slogans, their outfits, and their anger - were regulars attendees of anti-police violence protests.
As a microphone was passed around attendees, it became clear there was a tension between those who had come to mourn the death of a child from their community, and those who were attracted by the potential for a protest against police violence. With his family returned to Moldova for the funeral, there were fewer contributions about Fabian himself - who he was, what he liked, the incomprehensibility of his death - and more angry demands for retribution against the police, the judicial system, the government, and the media. At one point, a contributor who had been shouting into the bullhorn for several minutes was angrily interrupted by an older man who, in gesture and in loud Romanian, was clearly asking him to shut up and move on.
Towards the end of the vigil, the microphone was passed to a trio of extremely upset children who attended the same school as Fabian. Through tears, they talked about how they had all been looking forward to a school trip, Fabian most of all, and how devastated they all were by his death. Only, it was hard to hear what they had to say, because they were drowned out by announcements that the march was due to start. I didn’t join the march; by that point L and the kids had returned home, alienated by the aggression of some in the crowd. We had understood it to be a silent walk around Parc Elisabeth - attendees had been asked to wear white, evoking the landmark White March that followed the arrest of serial killer Marc Dutroux in October 1996. But when it became clear that the march was instead directed towards the police station in Molenbeek, and would not be silent, I disengaged and went home.
But in the course of Sunday’s memorial, there was one speech that stood out to me for its clarity of thought, and its plea for change. With the permission of the two women who wrote it, I am reproducing it here in full. We are still processing what the impact of Fabian’s death will be on our city; and as we do, we could do worse than read the words of Floor and Silke - since reproduced in De Morgen and Le Soir - so powerfully read out at the spot where he was killed 11 days ago.
Restore justice, restore trust
Mr. Minister of the Interior, Mr. Quentin,
Mayors of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Jette, Ganshoren, Sint-Agatha-Berchem and Koekelberg,
Those responsible for our police zone,
Brussels is in mourning. Our neighbourhood is deeply affected, traumatised.
In the park where Fabian lost his life after a collision with a police car, families, children and neighbours come together every day to support each other. Because this cannot just happen. Because this must never happen again. We residents, mothers of Brussels, express our solidarity with Fabian's family and loved ones. Their pain is essential, their anger legitimate. We share their sorrow and feelings of injustice, of powerlessness and fear. These do not ask for framing, reinterpretation or minimization. They must be heard. Even if the anger sounds louder than the sorrow that lies beneath it.
With this letter we do not request reconciliation or mediation. We expect this institutional violence to be called by its name. That the underlying mechanisms that made the death of a child in broad daylight in a park possible be questioned and stopped.
This drama is not just a “tragic accident”. It is part of a whole series of practices that have become the norm. We urgently question this normalisation, this banalisation. Today we are asking simple questions, to which we have not yet received answers:
Who makes the decision to initiate a police chase, in the middle of a busy public space, where children also play?
What training do police officers receive in proportionality?
What happens if the legal framework is not respected by law enforcement agencies?
Who bears political responsibility here?
But also: What does your silence and lack of transparency mean for the children growing up in Brussels? What signal does this send to them, to us?
Since 2017, at least seven people have lost their lives after a collision with a police vehicle in Brussels. This list should not be any longer. But it does exist. It is just not discussed for what it actually reveals: a structural dysfunction and an institutional failure.
In our neighbourhood and in our park, patrols and identity checks are a common practice. But not everyone experiences them in the same way. A white ket will generally be spared from having to constantly identify themselves to police officers. Yasser, Maalik and Duante (aliases) are not. They grow up in this constant tension. And their experience is not the exception: it is a collective experience that is widely shared in the working-class neighbourhoods of Brussels.
These children do not learn that the police are your friend. They learn to distrust them. This is not an isolated phenomenon either, it is the logical consequence of a system.
In 2018, the two-year-old toddler Mawda was killed by a police bullet during a chase. The judgment acknowledges that the Belgian state made a mistake here. Seven years later, we still do not know what has really changed to protect our children from police violence.
On 5 June, Minister, you stated: “Emotion alone will not help us move forward.” We respond: denying it only creates an even greater gap between citizens and the police.
This emotion does not come as a sudden outburst. It translates a keen awareness of injustice. It is the key to understanding what is needed to restore justice and trust. From here, we have formulated several requests:
Recognise our collective trauma
Provide transparency about the facts and the decisions taken
Suspend motorised patrols and pursuits in busy areas until strict and clear public regulations are in place
Establish an independent audit of police practices in public spaces, with an emphasis on the impact on children, young people and working-class neighbourhoods
Formulate a clear answer to the question of who bears responsibility here
This letter is a request to be heard, but not merely to be heard. This letter is a record of what is happening here and will be an indelible memory in our collective memory. It carries the message that we cannot accept this silence, nor the erasure or rewriting of what happened. We are direct spectators of institutional failure, and we testify to this loudly.
Fabian was 11 years old. A child has died. A neighbourhood deeply affected. Time passes inexorably and does not play in favour of the justice we are waiting for. We residents, mothers of Brussels, stand up and make our voices heard, not to defend our emotions, but our rights.
Floor Michielsen
Silke Van Herrewegen
Solidarity Mothers of Brussels/Collectif des madrés/Front de Mères