The basilica of Koekelberg has been the subject of heavy acts of vandalism for the past fortnight. Director General Martine Motteux-Abeloos appeals to the public authorities. She describes daily acts carried out, either by very young teenagers on scooters, or by adults in black cars. “who throw cobblestones through the windows of their vehicles”. This little game of very poor quality has been going on for a fortnight. “We picked up 35 cobblestones, that’s 35 broken tiles”she laments.
“The first time, it was a cobblestone in the concierge’s door. The next day, cobblestones were found on the dining table in the refectory used by the employees. Last week, bricks were found in the factory room church and in another rented in the Holy Sepulchre… This weekend, around twenty panes were broken! Including the one in my office. Usually, my little girl sometimes comes to play in the middle of the office. had been there, she might have been killed! For the past two weeks, I have been calling the police almost every day to see the damage.”
The general manager called her insurance for the damage. “We collected the bricks and cobblestones in a crate, it’s quite impressive.” According to her, these are necessarily young people from the neighborhood. “The police come by regularly but nothing helps, they come between two rounds. There are surveillance cameras too, but obviously they know where they are.” The younger ones now come in the middle of the day. Last week, sextons came out to meet the young people. They were insulted, the young people ran into the doors with their scooters.
Acts of vandalism on and around the basilica are not recent: obscene graffiti on the façade, urban rodeos and controlled skids on the listed esplanade in front of the basilica, drug deals and consumption behind the bushes, since carved out by Brussels Environment (in charge of site management, editor’s note). But they have largely intensified in the past two weeks. “Only yesterday, they emptied their fire extinguishers from the construction site next door (the Annie Cordy tunnel construction equipment is stored in the parking lot of the basilica, editor’s note) on the construction site containers…”
“We suspect that these are probably young people from the municipality or from Brussels. As the police, we believe that it is important to solve this problem, but this is not possible without communication and cooperation. Collaboration with the church, with the community guards and with the young people”declared the spokesperson for the Brussels West police zone, François Ganzeman, to our colleagues in Bruzz.
Martine Motteux-Abeloos has an appointment with the regional administration and the mayors of Koekelberg and Berchem-Sainte-Agathe at the beginning of April. Hoping the vandalism doesn’t escalate by then. One of the tracks mentioned: the closure of the site to the public.
