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