Peace demonstrator arrested in Brussels sunday night.

After demonstrating with 1500 people sunday noon (october 7th), it was jazztrumpettist Bart Maris in Brussels café Dada who told me the American government had launched airstrikes on Afghanistan.
Although this appeared inevitable, everybody was shocked; the freejazz from the André Goudbeek Kwartet was filled with moments of intense silence.
When the gig was over, Bart drove us to the embassy of the USA, near the Belgian parliament.
Police officers and barbed wire kept us from the embassy, US soil. Only the sound of a trumpet and a guitar maybe reached the americans doing overtime.
A car with 2 BOB-officers (secret police) stopped and threathened us: go to sleep, last chance, or you'll sleep in jail!
We stayed a while, said bye to Bart and Thomas (math-brain with nastiest shoes of VUB), and Rudi (Ché vive!!) and i met
Josef and Nico, a Tsjech and a German. We went back to the embassy, but were threathened away again.
Around the corner, we saw TV camera's and we asked for news. Just then, Louis Michel, minister of foreign affairs,
came out of a crisis-meeting. I took the opportunity to ask him to do everything to stop the unnecessary killing of a suffering people. Mr Michel listened to me and asked me what else you can do against Bin Laden. I replied that it is an opportunity to focus on the real causes of problems like terrorism. Causes like hunger, despair, having no chances at all make people turn to extremism. I asked him why there is the will to use violence against innocents and not the will to stop hunger and poverty, having all the mony, means and even more food than we need. He agreed there is a difficult problem and asked me to let him go to sleep. I said he should do that to have a clear head, needed for wiser decisions. After this intermezzo, i returned to the embassy, alone, and played some guitar, asking the cops in vain to let me ring the US-bell just one time. At about 2am i took off to have a pint and some sleep, but a car stopped and before i knew it i laid on the ground and was pulled by my hair into the car. Not very gently i was thrown in a cell. The chap who released me at 9.30 was a lot friendlier, and so were a lot of Arab people i met in the streets of Brussels: "Ah, c'est toi l'Flamand avec Louis Michel, tu le lui as bien dit! Tu as du boulot, d'argent? Sinon on veut faire tous pour toi! Voilà,un joint et une bière!"
So, two weeks before leaving Babylon a while to work as volunteer in Ethiopia, i take the opportunity to cry even louder: we do not need no more trouble, all we need is love sweet love!

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)