At the beginning of February, we learned of the death of Baudouin Pandikuziku. Baudouin had been the victim of a violent police attack as a passenger on a Brussels Airlines flight last December*. Today, there is every reason to believe that there is a direct causal link between the violence suffered two months earlier and the sudden death of Baudouin, who was not suffering from any known medical condition. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have been done by the judicial authorities to determine with certainty the cause of death.
In a press release* published following the announcement of the death, Baudouin’s family recalled the facts: ‘On 4 December of last year, Baudouin Pandikuziku boarded a Brussels Airlines flight bound for Kinshasa. What should have been a simple journey turned into a nightmare when a flight attendant asked him to put his shoes on. Baudouin Pandikuziku had taken off his shoes to help him cope with the flight because of the water retention he was suffering from. His immediate inability to comply with this request led to a rapid escalation of the situation. The flight attendants contacted the police. […] The police intervention that followed was extremely brutal and something he hadn’t experienced before.”
The video taken during the operation contains some very violent images. In a testimonial, Baudouin described the serious after-effects he has endured since then: pain, a double fracture in his arm, bruising to his eye affecting his eyesight, as well as constant anxiety and night terrors linked to the psychological trauma.
The crushing police force at work
The facts are not limited to this single incident. Although he was determined to denounce the violence he had suffered, Baudouin discovered that he himself had been accused by the perpetrators of the violence. The police accused him of ‘unarmed rebellion, air law violations, racism and discrimination’. According to the police officers who carried out the operation, despite the filmed images and the multiple traumas suffered by Baudouin, he was the ‘suspect’.
Police cynicism knows no bounds, and Baudouin found himself face to face with one of his assailants at the hearing to which he was summoned as a ‘suspect’. This cast doubt on the supposed ‘impartiality’ of the judicial system.
The reversal of guilt is a well-known police practice. Take, for example, the judicial and media treatment of the case of Mawda, the 2-year-old Kurdish girl killed by a police bullet to the head during a chase in 2018. At the time, the authorities’ initial versions (which were shamefully misleading) put the blame on the parents for the tragedy, denying that a police bullet had clearly caused the death. The victims were portrayed as the culprits.
We also remember the young racialised people from working-class neighbourhoods who were killed during police interventions: Adil in 2020, Mehdi in 2019, Sabrina and Ouassim in 2017, etc. In each case, the police’s defence was based on the idea that the victims were guilty to justify the violence of their interventions. The media portray these young people as criminals.
What we are used to hearing described as a police ‘blunder’ seems in reality to be quite the opposite of a ‘regrettable error’ or ‘gross misconduct’, but rather examples illustrating the mechanisms of police impunity.
Brussels Airlines: a company with colonialism in its DNA and the federal police as its armed right hand
The events to which Baudouin Pandikuziku was subjected took place on board of a plane belonging to Brussels Airlines, a company well known for its involvement in racist migration policies. Although the company claims to be a ‘specialist in Africa’, it is just as much a specialist in deportations. The company regularly deports people held in closed centres, usually with force. Victims of these deportations report widespread physical and psychological abuse by the federal police and the active complicity of the airlines. Some testimonies reveal that airline employees sometimes go so far as to visit the detention centres in order to put pressure on the detainees so that they do not resist their deportation.
The airline’s involvement in Belgium’s detention-expulsion system comes as no surprise when you look at its history. Brussels Airlines was founded as a successor of Sabena, a company that had been part of the Belgian colonial enterprise since 1923. It was also on a Sabena plane that Semira Adamu lost her life in 1998, suffocated by the gendarmes escorting her on her sixth expulsion attempt.
Brussels Airlines already had blood on its hands. On 4 December 2024, the company was once again complicit in racist state violence.
Our thoughts and support go out to Baudouin’s family. Like all the other victims of police violence, he will not be forgotten. We do not forget, we do not forgive.
Together, let’s march in Brussels against the violence and repression committed by the police: see you on Saturday 15 March (2pm, Place du Luxembourg), for the international demonstration against police violence*.
#DownWithInjusticeDueToPoliceViolence
#JusticeForAll #NoToPoliceViolence #15March
