"Madrid has gone too far. Where is Europe?" This is the question asked by Belgian interior minister, Jan Jambon, in an interview with television station VTM NEWS on Sunday, where he asserted that "beating peaceful people and imprisoning members of a government is going too far".
According to the minister, the Catalans have not done anything serious enough to deserve the treatment they are receiving, since the politicians "have carried out the mandate they were given by their voters". For those reasons he doesn't understand how Europe is staying silent on the matter, because "if the same thing happened in Poland or Hungary the reactions would be very different".
Although Jambon explained that the Belgian federal government had agreed not to make any public statements on the situation of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, the interior minister said he had not been able to avoid condemning the Spanish state's attitude.
Finally, he concluded that the international community "needs to watch over the affair to ensure that Puigdemont and the other ministers receive a fair trial". He stressed that the Catalan president was subject "to Spanish law, but also to international law, the European Convention on Human Rights, which is above the law of any member state".