"... a foreign government using local police to eject reporters over a single question from a public space turned private at the will of the American government is not a minor diplomatic awkwardness."

The fact it's a public space is kind of irrelevant here, if the landowners (the city council, I guess) decide to temporarily allow private use.

If some roads had been closed for film production use etc, the police would similarly be involved in removing people who interfered with the proceedings and didn't leave when asked to. The land owner has given the company exclusive rights to the space for the duration of the event.

Whether ejecting someone from a press event for asking a question you don't like is right or not (I personally think it's not) is irrelevant. At the point they ask you to leave for whatever reason and you don't comply, then it becomes trespass and the police can be asked to remove you.

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cassepipe 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you speaking from the perspective of US law or are you familiar with belgian law ?

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vanviegen 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> At the point they ask you to leave for whatever reason and you don't comply, then it becomes trespass and the police can be asked to remove you.

According to the journalists' account, they were never asked to leave.

Though I agree with the rest of your reasoning.

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watwut 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1.) The journalists were invited.

2.) The ambassador told the cops the journalists are an active threat. That was straightforwardly a lie.

This was not "trespassing" event at all.

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ralferoo 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't particularly want to argue, but even if they were invited, if they were asked to leave it would still be trespassing.

We also only have their word for it that that's what they told the cops. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, there's no way of telling from what they've have chosen to present us.

Personally, I think it's suspicious that the interviewer was clearly recording their conversation on his phone that's inches from them, but we can't hear either the question or the response from the guy who seems to be asking them to leave them alone, we can only faintly hear the woman saying "no cameras, no cameras". The video then cuts and switches to the interviewer saying "well, no comment", but there are different people in frame, and personally I'd wonder how long they continued following and asking questions, and whether they were in fact asked to leave the event.

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6jQhWNYh 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You misunderstand how trespassing works here. Civil law, as used in Belgium and most of the world, is completely different from Common law used in English-speaking countries.

Trespassing (lokaalvredebreuk or huisvredebreuk) has a much narrower definition focused on squatting for the former, or entering a home for the latter. A fenced-off party area in a public space is neither. Even if it were trespassing, police can't just force people to leave on the spot because someone asked them to.

The whole issue is that the lawful basis for ejecting the journalists is very unclear, and the initial complaint (active threat) certainly wouldn't play in Freedom 250's favor if it reached a court.

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watwut 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They were not asked to leave by organizers.

> We also only have their word for it that that's what they told the cops

This part is about what cops told to them. They cops were told they are active threat, the cops disagreed with that assessment and did not detained them.

There is nothing suspicious about anything here, except your intention to twist what was written in the article into something else.

	▲	ralferoo 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have no intention to twist anything. I'm just saying that we only have their side of the story to say that that's what happened. They are the only source for what they claim the cops said or that they weren't asked to leave. If they wanted to prove that they weren't asked to leave, the could share the unedited footage from before they approached the group right up to him doing his piece to camera, and sharing the audio from the phone so we know what was actually said. I have no reason to twist anything here. I have no idea who these 2 journalists are. I've never heard of them or The European Correspondant, who they seem to work for. [1] My gut feeling is that if these were the only people asked to leave this event, then there's a reason why they were targetted and none of the other journalists. I'd wonder if maybe they were trying to provoke the person they were following to get a clickbaity article, or maybe editing out what actually happened to try to present themselves as innocents and stir up a diplomatic situation. As I was writing this, I though I actually checked myself and thought it's a bit cynical to think they'd just do this for clicks. So, I checked them out and the two guys are apparently the "Editor in Chief" and "Defence Editor and video journalist". It seemed kind of unlikely for an Editor in Chief to be out doing interviews, so I popped onto a couple of different traffic estimation websites, and their monthly traffic before today seems to be in the order of a few thousand visits per month. I guess their sensationalist article has got the viral publicity their company clearly needs now it's on HN. [1] As a side note, the first 3 paragraphs being in the present tense no longer feels correct now I've looked them up before writing the last paragraph, but it feels wrong to go back and change that

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unethical_ban 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Bad take. They didn't refuse to leave. The problem is they were asked to leave at all.

>Whether ejecting someone from a press event for asking a question you don't like is right or not (I personally think it's not) is irrelevant.

That's the core issue. It isn't irrelevant.