Chained at hospital St John of Bruges

Jacqueline de Coÿ - 9 mars 2009

Marcel Vervloesem is so weak that he cannot lift a glass of water; so weak that he had not realized having a foot ringed by a light shackle attached to a heavy chain. He just had an open-heart operation to cauterize four wounds at his cardiac valves. He is under oxygen, soaked of fever. Spasms deface him, and slight coughing makes him suffocate ounce in a while. The hospital and him are victims of the war between the doctors who want to cure the prisoners and the Belgian ministry of justice who wants to repress the "dissidents".

The false Russian miscarriages of justice have a better press, perhaps due to the fact that the Strasbourg based European Court of the Human Rights grants it more importance. It has intervened three times in two years, of which last December, to ask for the release of Vasily Alexanian from his Russian jail, but did not yet find time to lean on Marcel Vervloesem's emergency procedure in nearly seven months.

The Belgian man has denounced the industry images of torture and pornography of children, implying a higher French magistrate. He was then condemned for rapes that medicine recognizes him unable to have carried out. The Russian man had denounced the theft of an oil company by a financial montage. He was then imprisoned for fraud and money laundering.

Marcel Vervloesem and Vasily Alexanian both were victims of the same parodies of justice, then imprisoned in spite of a health condition which did not allow them to survive the prison. They both have cancer. They both made hunger strikes and became temporarily blind. Moscow and Brussels declared identicaly, that the health conditions of their respective prisoner, "did not justify hospitalisation". They both where finally hospitalised in critical conditions, and chained to their hospital bed.

The press and the humanitarian organisations denounced the Soviet "repressive poutinian system", but not the Belgian one. They widely denounce the judicial drifts in the USSR, which cause to destroy those who hinder the enrichment of the least scrupulous people. The system is identical: the constitutional law is denied, to eliminate the bothers, by declaring them guilty of facts they reproach to the opposing party.

Chaine such as used to tie prisonniers to their hospital bed in Belgium

Since Marcel's last hospitalization, the link of the traditional shackle was replaced by a heavy metal chain such as this one, approximately 1.5 cm large.

The Russians victims are called political prisoners in honour to the cold war, whereas Europeans ones are described as victims of "miscarriages of justice", if they reach Strasbourg.

The Belgian Senators answer that politics cannot do anything. Only a higher authority can help. Unfortunately, the judicial traffic-jam in Strasbourg causes an important delay as regards of the treatment of European affairs. Some of these dossiers were rejected, without even having been open, so that many victims think that the expense is useless.

Meanwhile, Vasily Alexanian would be a horrible character who stole the poor Russian people, according to the Soviet press, but an unfortunate political prisoner "tied like an animal", according to the international press. Marcel Vervloesem, who brought more than 100.000 photographs of pornography and torture of children to justice; is described as a "self-declared paedophile hunter" and "child abuser", by hiding his state of health and a judgment in absence of 37 parts of his judicial dossier. Only one of his six hospitalisations in emergency was relayed, adding "that his lawyer could not confirm he was in intensive care." Silence was kept over the shackles on the operating table. Silence will now remain on the chains.

In Russia at least, to believe Vasily Alexanian’s lawyer, the prison warders have the right to remove the chains of the hospitalized prisoners when they receive visits. This is not the case in Belgium, where only the prison warders can appear embarrassed by delirious conditions that the Ministry of Justice imposes to the prisoners.

The man responsible for the size of the chains used to tie the prisoners to hospital beds is Doctor Van Mol, chief consultant of all the Belgian prisons, under the direct authority of the Minister for Justice: Stefaan De Clerck. This is a very original way to start the electoral campaign for the next elections!

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Chained at hospital St John of Bruges