Sexual violence: in Brussels, women called to boycott bars and clubs

Published on : 11/12/2021 – 6:41 PM

“Evenings are for fun, not to be drugged and assaulted!” In Brussels, women are called on to boycott clubs and bars on Friday, November 12, to denounce the sexual abuse and rape suffered in these establishments, and the passivity of the authorities accused of not taking complaints seriously enough.

For the past month, numerous testimonies from women, drugged and then sexually assaulted in bars and nightclubs, have been pouring out on social networks under the hashtag #BalanceTonBar, following previous movements such as #MeToo or #BalanceTonPorc.

At the call of the feminist collective “Les sous -endu · e · s” and the Brussels art space “That’s What x Said”, united within the Self-managed Intersectional Feminist Union (UFIA), a rally is planned at 8 pm, place de l’Albertine in Brussels, so that women can create their own “safe night”.

“The only way to make you react is to touch your wallet”

“We demand to live without the weight of being in perpetual danger and in all places. We want a radical and immediate change, because this scourge has raged for too many centuries and we can no longer tolerate it”, writes the collective in its communicated. These activists, defending women and gender minorities (LGBTQIA +), asked, in a letter addressed to the 19 mayors (mayors, editor’s note) of the Brussels region, for the support of the judiciary and the nightlife to fight against this which they present as “systemic sexual violence” in the bars and clubs of the Belgian capital.

The authorities must in particular be able to “identify, file and systematically sanction problematic establishments and staff members” as soon as a report of sexual violence is provided to them, estimates Ufia.

In a video posted on its social networks, the collective justifies the call for a boycott on Friday. “The only way to make you react is to touch your precious wallet”, declares an activist to the address of a bar owner.

“We are tired of what we experience on a daily basis, but there is also the hope of a real start,” said Anna Toumazoff, Friday on Bel RTL. Co-organizer of the bar and club boycott movement, the French feminist activist adds that this action affects the portfolio of tenants in order to make them react. “Not all tenants are responsible, of course, but we do have to bang our fists on the table.”

“A demand for political responsibility”

“#BalanceTonBar is not an emotional reaction, but a demand for political responsibility”, reacted, Friday, the Belgian deputy Margaux De Ré, evoking the urgency of making the fight against violence against women a reflex in all public policies.

The movement, born in early autumn in Belgium when several cases of attacks against women were made public in two bars in a student district of Ixelles, then spread to the United Kingdom and France. Several accounts, aimed at collecting testimonies of victims from Lille, Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse and even Nice, were then created.

Among the testimonies collected, those of women suspecting their alleged attacker, bartender or staff member, of having drugged them without their knowledge before taking action. Some mention GHB (commonly known as the “rapist’s drug”). In England, the police are investigating several cases of women who presented traces of injection.

In the Belgian capital, several complaints have been filed, said the Brussels public prosecutor’s office last month, which opened an investigation.

As with every complaint concerning sexual offenses, the investigators work in a “thorough and meticulous” manner respecting the presumption of innocence of the suspect (s), the prosecution had to justify in a statement on October 20. Justice was then already accused of not treating complaints seriously enough.

With AFP