Unauthorised Dieudonné performance in Forest stopped by police

A performance by the controversial French comedian Dieudonné on Sunday evening in Forest was shut down by police because no permission was asked nor permit filed.

Dieudonné was originally due to perform in Charleroi. However, that city also never received an application for the event, meaning it was effectively unauthorised.

After the event tried to move to Forest at the last minute, also without permission and in a venue without an operating licence or a fire safety report, Forest’s mayor Charles Spapens (PS) ordered it to be shut down.

Authorities became aware of the illegal event early in the evening, when several reports came in about a crowd that had gathered outside a private building, some of them carrying chairs.

The police went to the scene and established that a Dieudonné performance was due to take place and that there were about 300 people present.

Spapens criticised the fact that the performance was to take place in a “clandestine venue without an operating licence or fire safety report”.

No permission had been sought from the municipality in advance and the organisers had not put any safety measures in place. The mayor therefore ordered the venue to be cleared.

Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala has been convicted on numerous occasions in Belgium, France, Switzerland and Canada, notably for incitement to discrimination, hatred and racist and religious violence, as well as for defamation, racist insults, Holocaust denial and the glorification of terrorism.

Photo: Tilly antoine/Wikimedia. Licensed under Creative Commons