2023-08-28 10:30:10
The facade of Bruxelles-Midi station, in Brussels, on April 21, 2019. ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Jean Spinette’s motto is “resignation is daily suicide”. The socialist mayor of Saint-Gilles, one of the nineteen municipalities in the Brussels region, therefore affirms that he “won’t let go” in its fight to ensure the safety of users and residents of the Gare du Midi, located on the territory of its municipality.
This neighborhood is once once more making headlines because around ten crimes, some very serious, take place there every day and have ended up worrying the federal authorities. Jean Spinette has been concerned regarding it since the early 2000s and for a long time he felt very alone in denouncing the unsanitary conditions of the premises, the violence that reigns there, the ravages of crack, the shortcomings of the federal police, the absence of services in charge of asylum policy or the dilapidation of justice, which releases the next day offenders apprehended the day before by the local police.
The largest Belgian station, a vessel at the heart of the most important railway junction in the kingdom, was inaugurated in 1869. It takes its name from the Midi line which, from 1840, linked Brussels to France. Brussels-Midi sees some 50,000 people pass through daily and is the gateway for travelers from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands on board the Thalys, Eurostar or ICE, not counting night trains arriving from Vienna or elsewhere.
Tourists, businessmen, international civil servants: not all have learned the rules to follow. Avoid walking alone, watch your wallet and cell phone, do not give in to begging, etc. “I arrive on Monday and rush into a taxi, I leave on Thursday evening and I walk briskly towards the train; I admit, I’m scared”confides this executive of a large French company.
Recently, a visitor unaware of the dire security situation in and around the station was finding his way and walked down what regulars refer to as “the corridor of evil”: “He came out without his money and his papers, but with a black eye”says, half-amused, half-dismayed, Ahmed, from the Taxis Verts company.
Fights, drugs and assaults
“This station is not that of my municipality, but that of the capital of Europe, of a country, of three regions! »gets carried away the mayor of Saint-Gilles, deploring “the political blindness of some and the desire of others to denounce, above all, the alleged failure of the Brussels institutions”. The Dutch-speaking press and politicians are, it is true, never the last to criticize regional management in Brussels. The issue of security in Brussels-Midi was also revived by the story of a family coming from Antwerp and forced to spend the night near the station.
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