During a citizens' meeting on the regional Good Move mobility plan at the Ixelles city council on Thursday night, the spokesperson for the campaign against the new circulation plan created an uproar by comparing Good Move to the Holocaust.
The meeting was attended by around 100 people, with an approximately even split between supporters and opponents of the plan, according to Ixelles Councillor for Mobility Yves Rouyet.
"The room was restless and when a supporter of the plan spoke, they were immediately drowned out by boo calls," Ivica Lekic, who attended the meeting, told Bruzz, adding that it was an "embarrassing display."
Most notable, however, was the intervention of Roxane Henry, an Ixelles resident who started a petition against the Good Move plan in the Flagey neighbourhood. In her speech (in French), currently circulating on Twitter, she compared the circulation plan to the Holocaust.
"Are you planning to stick coloured stars on our vehicles so that we can identify the 'foreigners' of the neighbourhood? The invaders, those who should be deported somewhere else? Someone had the same idea in the 1940s," the last part of her speech reads.
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Afterwards, Ixelles Mayor Christos Doulkeridis immediately responded that debate is always welcomed and even encouraged, but that Henry "overstepped boundaries when she compared the circulation plan to the darkest period of history."
At the end of the meeting, Henry said that she did not want to shock anyone, but stated that she was only saying what those opposing the Good Move plan are thinking. She did not apologise.
