On the eve of the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Cornelia Ernst, coordinator of the GUE/NGL for the Committee on Counter-Terrorism, comments:

“Our thoughts and solidarity are not only with the relatives and the victims of the terrible acts of March 22, 2016; we still have the day and emotions in mind. Nobody should have to experience such suffering, nowhere. My solidarity goes out to all those who faced and face physical and mental injuries that changed their lives forever because of that Tuesday morning in 2016. I feel with all those who through this crime have lost a person close to them, who have lost their partner, mother, father, brother or sister or friend. We condemn such cruel attacks unequivocally. Nobody has the right to assassinate innocent people indiscriminately. No purpose can justify that.”

“It must be the central and most important task of the political community to provide the victims and relatives with all the care and assistance they need, and that means proactively, victims must not be made supplicants. Too many hurdles stand in the way for adequate access to medical and psychological support. As long as such brutal attacks are still remembered, we must live up to our social responsibility to the victims.”

“Victims and individual destinies must not be abused to drive a political agenda. Terrorism is not prevented by curtailing our personal freedoms. Right across the EU, we are seeing today how anti-terrorism legislation is being continuously expanded. In doing so, proven legal principles are being thrown overboard mindlessly without it being possible to prove the effectiveness of new measures. However, the guiding principle of a democracy must be: an infringement of fundamental rights for some is an infringement of all our rights.”