Liege Occupation Free, based in Liege, Belgium, issued a statement and spoke out at a public rally against the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, particularly the forced starvation and human-made famine imposed upon the Palestinian people of Gaza. In their statement, they also raised their voice against the threats of the right-wing federal Belgian government to criminalize and ban organizations they deem “radical,” including Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, as well as organizations like the environmental activists Code Rouge, or Stop Arming Israel. The right-wing “Arizona” government included a pledge to ban Samidoun in its government program, and recently began proposing a draft law to allow for organizations in Belgium to be banned solely on the basis of their political expression without a court judgment. The Liege Occupation Free statement follows:
Gaza has reached Level 5 famine according to the international IPC classification.
It has been 657 days that Gaza has been crushed under bombs,
over 21 months of massacre.
Two years of war crimes filmed in plain sight.
If Gaza has reached this point, it is not just a simple humanitarian crisis.
Palestine has been resisting colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing for over 77 years.
No, what is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis — it is a political choice!
It is the logical consequence of 77 years of impunity in which our governments are complicit.
After 77 years of Palestinian resistance, the occupation is now using the deadliest weapon — famine. Official. Organized. Deliberate.
Gaza is at Phase 5, the highest level of humanitarian emergency.
This is not just a number, not a theory. It is a sentence of collective death.
In Gaza, we see skeletal children — so emaciated by hunger that only skin remains on their bones.
Where is international law? Where is the United Nations? Are they waiting for permission from the Zionist regime — guilty of these war crimes — before acting? They do not defend human rights — they defend only Western interests!
The West — which we know is deeply racist!
When white people die, sanctions are imposed.
When it’s Black people, Arabs, Palestinians… they tell us it’s “complicated”?
But they forget that here in Belgium, we know all too well what colonization is. It’s part of our history. And there is nothing complicated about it. Everything is clear.
Today’s Belgium would make Leopold II proud.
The inaction of our government — worse, its complicity — especially in Liège, cradle of the Belgian arms industry, is just the 2025 version of our colonial history.
Our so-called right government is merely the Overton window of the far-right.
But it’s not too late — not yet… while they in their parliaments try to pass laws that even the farthest right wouldn’t dare propose, we have the streets!
While they try to intimidate us, silence us, criminalize us — we have the streets!
A Belgian government that is currently preparing a bill to authorize “home visits,” knowing full well it violates Article 15 of the Constitution!
A Belgian government actively working on a law to ban or dissolve organizations without going through the courts!
The Palestinian prisoner solidarity network, Samidoun, is the first target. Why? For having supported and highlighted Palestinian political prisoners, like our comrade Georges Ibrahim Abdallah — finally freed after more than 41 years in prison, though he was eligible for release since 1999!
The banning of Samidoun is an attack on freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the right to protest!
Today it’s Gaza, it’s Samidoun… but tomorrow, it will be you, it will be us!
What if in situations like this, history had shown us that only one legitimate response would remain — civil disobedience.
And let’s be clear: it would not be violent. It would not be illegal.
It would be a duty.
A duty in the face of complicit institutions.
A duty against governments who would condone this.
A duty when the political bourgeoisie tries to crush us, silence us, make us believe that “everything will go back to order.”
But their “order” would be silence around the crime.
And we, today, by being here, have chosen the disorder of a people rising up.
Listen to the speech (in French with French and English subtitles):
Discover more from Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
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