Charleroi’s municipal council on Monday adopted a motion to make it “an anti-fascist city." The motion also enshrined the existence of an “anti-fascist coalition” composed of the town’s political parties, trade unions, associations and members of civil society.
This “anti-fascist coalition” is the result of discussions that started amid a general rise in far-right ideas and following the incidents that occurred on 25 January 2020 in Charleroi around the mobilisation of an anti-fascist front against the holding of a meeting of a new far-right party in the metropolis.
On that day, according to the anti-fascist demonstrators, the police had used sprays, fire pumps and even batons to disperse them. This caused a certain amount of commotion, including within the city’s political class.
The motion gives the coalition some general objectives, such as “to prevent by all legal means the dissemination of statements inciting hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, discrimination related to sexual orientation” or “openly fascist and xenophobic, on the territory of Charleroi.”
Another objective is to relay information “when it concerns an event likely to incite hatred, racism, anti-Semitism [or] sexism,” or “openly fascist or xenophobic.”
