External contribution

About the draft Walloon « pandemic » decree

Officially concerned with « health promotion and prevention », the Walloon Parliament is preparing this Wednesday 2 to vote « majority against opposition » on a text that the worst totalitarian regimes of the XXth century would undoubtedly not have disavowedcentury, and which looks like a headlong rush towards a techno-sanitary dictatorship.

Indeed, how else can we consider the staggering provisions of articles 16 to 21?

  • The Walloon Minister of Health has full power to decide that any disease « that is life-threatening in the short term or of a highly epidemic nature » will allow the application of the measures provided for, without any scientific evaluation and without defining precise criteria or the terms used
  • Any person « suspected of having a disease » (as described above) may be required to undergo preventive or curative medical treatment: what better definition of mandatory vaccination?
  • The only alternative left to the « suspect » is to ask to be « isolated » and/or to be forbidden to exercise his professional activity and to frequent any community: what is left of the free choice of treatment?
  • « This isolation is carried out, depending on the circumstances, either in a hospital, or at home, or in another appropriate place: what better definition of internment camps?
  • « Hygiene inspectors » (sic) can enter any place frequented by suspects in order to disinfect them, as well as isolate, treat, kill and incinerate suspect animals: how to better legalize home invasion?
  • These same inspectors will be able to order the closure of a place, a space or a facility, and the local mayor will be responsible for carrying out the closure measure: how better to sow division and suspicion within a local community?
  • The Government has full powers to take all « necessary or useful measures » (editor’s note: which ones?) to enforce the above-mentioned provisions: requisitioning citizens, requesting the army, resorting to private security companies?
  • In the event of an « epidemic emergency » within the meaning of the federal « pandemic » law, the Walloon Government can declare a « state of health emergency » and impose the above-mentioned measures on all or part of Wallonia, as well as « all other measures necessary to manage, monitor and control the epidemic », and this with virtually no control by the Walloon Parliament: how to best write a blank check?
  • The execution of the measures decided by the Government can be entrusted to natural or legal persons that it determines: how better to announce the privatization of regalian functions?
  • Any person who does not respect the decisions of the inspectors or who hinders their missions risks a sentence of 8 days to 6 months in prison and/or a fine of 1 to 500 €, imposed by the Police Court, which is synonymous with summary justice.

It is appalling to note that this text only provides for coercive measures and removes any possibility for citizens to resort to treatment other than that imposed by the authorities, which is in contradiction with various provisions of international, European and national law. By approving this text, the Walloon Parliament is clearly moving away from preventive measures to curative ones, even though this draft decree « concerns health promotion and prevention »: it is astonishing to note that there is no mention of general prevention measures that could be the subject of a vast information campaign aimed at the population.

Thus, strengthening natural immunity is considered by a broad scientific consensus to be the best way to avoid the spread of viral diseases: why not promote simple and inexpensive measures, such as a better lifestyle through a healthy and balanced diet, daily physical exercise and quality sleep, reducing the time spent in front of screens, valuing enriching social contacts, etc.?

This way of approaching health does not consider it as a value but as a good that can be acquired but also lost (just like wealth, by the way), which means that everyone is also responsible for his or her (good) health, and that chemical drugs and authoritarian measures will never be enough to guarantee it. 

Instead, it should be noted that in its management of the Covid-19 « pandemic », the Walloon Government — as a good little soldier of the Federal Government — has adopted the opposite point of view. By privileging the exclusive recourse to medicinal (and experimental!) treatments marketed under dubious conditions by pharmaceutical giants, by maintaining an anxiety-provoking climate through fear, shame and guilt, by exhibiting truncated statistics and predictions of doom vomited by obscure algorithms, and by surrounding themselves with so-called experts cut off from reality and with proven conflicts of interest.

It is also to disregard the definition of health given by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its 1946 Constitution:  » a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

In fact, the obsession with preserving physical health « at all costs » has been to the detriment of mental and social well-being: a significant increase in intra-family violence, depression and suicides, a considerable worsening of the problem of dropping out of school, as well as the loneliness and isolation of the elderly, plunging them into despair, not to mention the economic disasters caused to the hospitality and cultural sectors

Finally, why did the Walloon Government take advantage of the simple technical modification of the Walloon Code of Social Action and Health to insert the above-mentioned provisions, which — unlike the federal pandemic law — lack clear and precise definitions, and open the door to all interpretations and therefore to all abuses? Why have the personal data to be processed been extended to 18 elements (e.g. activities carried out, community attendance, pathology, clinical history, etc.), when this sensitive matter was excluded from the federal pandemic law in order to be the subject of a specific regulation?

In conclusion, one has the right to wonder if we are not witnessing a shift in our democratic system, unless we consider, as some people already proclaimed a few decades ago, that Wallonia is the only Soviet republic to survive the fall of the USSR.

Martha

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