Hundreds of events venues have come together to press the Belgian Government to put a permanent end to the Covid Safe Ticket they say amounts to nothing short of "blackmail".
The call by some 350 venues and 750 signatories from the arts sector is timed for the country's hoped-for passage in early March from orange to yellow in terms of virus-driven public restrictions.
The Belgian authorities should "finish with the CST, once and for all," they argue. "The CST serves only as a tool for social control and to push vaccination, using key sectors as instruments of coercion along the way."
'Prejudicial' imposition
"The CST was sold to us as the only alternative to closure, but it is never acceptable to resort to blackmail... Doubly so when this blackmail is also an injustice given events venues had to impose CST entry conditions when other sectors did not."
The signatories claimed that the "prejudicial" imposition flew in the face of international evidence and demanded the "total and definitive" withdrawal of the pass.
The letter is published as Belgium moves from a pandemic stance towards Covid-19 management to treat it more as an endemic.
