As a guest on Café sans filtre on Tuesday 23 September on LNRadio/LN24, Diana Nikolic, group leader, looked back on last Thursday's incidents in Liège.
“I saw activists being booed, sometimes physically attacked, simply because they were paying tribute to a liberal. We are facing a polarisation in which some, on the left of the political spectrum, are stepping up attacks to give a distorted image of the MR.”, she said.
The MP denounced comparisons between the MR and the far right, speaking of a “complete misunderstanding of what the far right actually is” and a desire to “stick a label on it to discredit”, by “people who have no argument at all against the political action of the MR, which is a democratic and liberal party”. Without “lumping all protesters together”, this was violence perpetrated “by far-left extremist groups”.
As for the comments made by a former Ecolo Secretary of State who expressed delight at seeing Georges-Louis Bouchez climb in through a window during these incidents: “That is unworthy of a political representative. This is an attack on the MR's freedom of movement and expression.” While on the same day Jean Gol's grave had been desecrated, “Sarah Schlitz sank even further into disgrace.”
As leader of the Liège liberals, both in the City and in the district, Diana Nikolic calls for de-escalation and urges democrats to defend the fundamental values and freedoms of our society, including freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
The calls to demonstrate had been announced as peaceful, and the Liberals wanted to believe it. Yet what followed revealed violence unprecedented in modern political history. To now suggest that the event should have been moved or cancelled would, according to Diana Nikolic, set a dangerous precedent. “As democrats, we cannot accept a change of location on the grounds that some people object to the holding of an event, a tribute, I remind you. Silencing through fear is a method used by totalitarian and fascist regimes.”