a rally in Brussels to denounce sexual violence in the nightlife

Several hundred people demonstrated in Brussels (Belgium), Friday, November 12, after a feminist collective called for an evening of boycott of bars and nightclubs, accusing this sector of inaction in the face of sexual assault. “Bar bosses, do we really need to attack your wallets to make our voice heard?” said Maité, one of the organizers of the Balance ton bar movement, at the microphone, in front of the audience gathered in the center of the Belgian capital.

She welcomed the “speech liberation”, faced with the wave of testimonials published on Instagram for a month, and the scale of the movement. The latter has spread to France and also affects the United Kingdom. It was triggered in Belgium after several sexual assaults in bars in a student district in Brussels. Some women suspect their abuser, bartender or staff member, of having drugged them without their knowledge (by slipping substances into their glass) before taking action.

“Tired of the bar owners who say ‘We didn’t know’“, denounced the French feminist activist Anna Toumazoff, present at the rally. “The bars to whom? The bars to us”, “Victim, we believe you! Rapist, we see you!” chanted the demonstrators, mostly women, who carried signs calling for “sound the death knell for patriarchy”. “We are strong, we are proud, and feminists, and radical, and angry”, also sang the crowd between two public interventions. Several victims took the floor to recount their assault.

The collective Self-managed Inclusive Feminist Union (Ufia), at the origin of the rally and the call for a boycott, wrote to the mayors of the Brussels region. He demands in particular that the authorities can “systematically identify, file and sanction problematic establishments and staff members” as soon as a report of sexual violence is provided to them.