The Liège Criminal Court convicted seventeen ABVV-FGTB union members, including chairman Thierry Bodson, for malicious obstruction of traffic. A Liège hospital had filed a complaint in 2015 after a patient died because a surgeon was late due to a strike blockade. The union is appealing.
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During a strike day on 19 October 2015, about 300 protesters blocked the E40 motorway viaduct in Cheratte, a district of Visé in the province of Liège. That action had major consequences. For example, the viaduct was destroyed and a surgeon on duty from the Center Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHL) unsuspectingly drove into the traffic jam caused by the blockades. He could only start an operation after an hour, the patient died.
“We are not saying that the patient died from that blockage, but that the operation was clearly less likely to be successful,” a spokesperson clarified after the facts. The hospital decided to file a complaint against strangers.
Seventeen convictions
Initially, nineteen people were charged, the majority of whom actually had to appear in court to answer for facts of malicious obstruction of traffic. The court did not consider the destruction and possible death of patients by doctors trapped in traffic. The suspects are trade unionists such as workers from FN Herstal, deputies and administrators such as Thierry Bodson. The public prosecutor’s office demanded two months in prison and fines of 800 euros. On Monday, the court cleared all suspects of malicious obstruction of traffic through the use of various objects, but convicted the seventeen suspects for malicious obstruction of traffic by their own presence.
Six union directors, including ABVV chairman Bodson, were sentenced to one month’s suspended prison sentences and suspended fines of 600 euros. The eleven other protesters were sentenced to 15 days in jail.
Right to strike under discussion
In the meantime, the union has announced that it will immediately appeal the verdict. The court’s decision is completely inadmissible. He does not try to find out whether or not the suspects participated in an organized blocking action, but only notes that they were there on that day (and not necessarily at that time), in order to deduce that they are responsible for what happened ‘, it says in a statement. “It becomes completely impossible to carry out any form of protest action on the public road.”
ABVV regrets that some activists, including Bodson, are considered more ‘responsible’ for this action than others. According to the union, the verdict is also part of a larger body of decisions that call into question the right to strike in Belgium. The union therefore wants to organize a general protest action on December 1, in a form to be determined.
Hour late
The surgeon was called in after a 74-year-old Danish woman was brought in with internal bleeding. She needed urgent surgery, but the surgeon at the hospital was operating, so a surgeon on duty who specializes in blood vessels was called.
The man can normally be at the hospital in fifteen minutes, but unsuspectingly got stuck in the blockade. He got stuck between trucks. A road police motorcyclist who happened to pass by was allowed to escort him to the hospital. It eventually took the man an hour to get into the operating theater. He started his operation at seven o’clock, but he was unable to save his patient. She died during the operation.
“We want to open the discussion about the limits of the right to strike,” said a spokesperson for the Center Hospitalier Universitaire de Liège (CHL) hospital group after the facts five years ago.
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