By Le Figaro
Posted 5 hours ago, updated 1 hour ago
An action against homophobia at a university, organized with the help of the city of Genk, was disrupted on Thursday by students shouting “Allah Akbar”.
“There is no place for homophobia in Genk,” the Genk City Hall (in the Limburg province of Flemish Belgium) and the Atlas College reacted unanimously after an incident on Thursday. While the school, with the help of the city, was organizing a workshop on combating homophobia in the schoolyard, dozens of students gathered around the booth of the LGBT association “Ook Genks Wel Anders” and violently attacked the agents in front of the city hall and a volunteer from the association with “ Allah Akbar” shouts.
A video widely circulated on social media shows a group of hostile students wreaking havoc at the booth. On the Dutch-language information site VRT News, an employee of the town hall present next to the club says: “A group of young people started making fun of us. More and more students came, in the end there were about a hundred. They yelled at us, threw bottles at us and spat on the rainbow hearts displayed at the booth.
This volunteer states that the teachers at the college then tried to intervene until the end of the break, but that calm could not return until the students went back to class.
The mayor of Genk, Wim Dries, has announced that he will file a complaint with the police. “The attack on our staff and the OGWA volunteer is unacceptable. There should always be respect, even if we disagree,” he said. The general director of the university, Christel Schepers, was “shocked” by this “unacceptable” approach and promised the city a dialogue with the students.