About 500 people demonstrated in Brussels on Sunday in memory of Sanda Dia, a mixed-race student who died following a hazing in 2018, denouncing the lenient judgment from which they saw the members of the student circle at the origin of the tragedy.
“Justice for Sanda”, “silence kills”, proclaimed the signs held up by the demonstrators, mostly students and families, according to an AFP photographer.
One of the organizers of the rally, Jean Kitenge, denounced “class justice”. “Would the sentence have been the same if the authors had been black or North African like me?”, he questioned, also calling for “more frame for student folklore”.
This Belgian-Congolese student, saying he was personally affected by the case, recalled that Sanda Dia, an Antwerp resident born to a Mauritanian father, was not from the same social background and the same skin color as the organizers of the hazing. , from the Reuzegom circle. Sons of the Flemish “elite”, according to him.
The rally was symbolically organized in front of the Brussels Courthouse, nine days after the judicial epilogue, in Antwerp (north), of this file which had a big impact, particularly in Dutch-speaking Belgium.
In December 2018, Sanda Dia, who was then beginning her engineering studies at the prestigious Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven), had suffered a three-day hazing with two comrades.
He had to swallow a phenomenal quantity of alcohol, without being able to hydrate himself to lower his blood alcohol level, then stay in an icy hole of water from which he emerged in hypothermia.
The 20-year-old “hazed” had also been forced to drink a very salty mixture of fish oil. A sodium overdose caused cerebral edema from which he did not survive. He died in hospital two days after being admitted to intensive care.
A total of eighteen of his fellow students, members of the Reuzegom fraternity, were sent to trial to answer in particular for manslaughter, degrading treatment and non-assistance in person in danger.
On May 26, the Antwerp Court of Appeal sentenced the 18 students to community service lasting between 200 and 300 hours, and fined 400 euros each. At the hearing in March, the prosecution had asked for sentences ranging from 18 to 50 months in prison.
In the press, Ousmane Dia, the victim’s father, denounced a “disrespectful” decision, and criticized KU Leuven for not having sought “the truth” by renouncing to file a civil action.
04/06/2023 17:48:25 – Bruxelles (AFP) – © 2023 AFP