New shooting in Antwerp: this is how Belgium wants to fight against drug trafficking
©Belgaimage
Tonight, the tranquility of the station district in Antwerp is broken. Shots hold back. A new shootout stands in the heart again, gunshots. This Thursday morning, two individuals are arrested in the port city. The investigation still in progress will have to determine the motive for this new violent contest.
But already, elements stand out. The prosecution indicates that a suspicious container was intercepted in the heart of the port. Were there drugs inside that container? Is the brawl related to this seizure? There is nothing to exclude it. Last week, it was several explosions that woke up the Antwerp district of Borgerhout when 120 kilos of cocaine were seized in a container by customs a few days earlier.
Already huge seizures in 2022
The violence escalates. The means become extreme. And Antwerp is moving like a little Far West, taking on reliefs from Chicago, setting itself up as a zone of lawlessness governed by an ever more prolific drug market.
“And it’s only growing“, confides the director general of customs Kristian Vanderwaeren, looking at the figures. Over the first six months of the year, nearly 36 tonnes of drugs were seized in the port of Antwerp alone. This is far from the 57 tons from 2021, of which the Sky operation alone had made it possible to get hold of more than 24 tons. But except for this exceptional year, the level of seizures is the highest of the last ten years. 90% of the dredge seized turns out to be cocaine originating mainly from South America.
For the time being, only 1.5% of containers are analysed, ie more than 800,000 per year out of the 12 million unloaded in Antwerp. ” It is estimated that between 10 and 20% of the cocaine passing through the port is interceptednotes the DG. But every year the traffic increases. We do not have the means to meet the growing needs.“
A plan of struggle
Extending over almost 130 km/sq, the port of Antwerp is particularly difficult to control. But in an attempt to stem this traffic which has become endemic, Belgium has just released a budget of 70 million euros to strengthen its controls. Ten new scanners will be installed by 2024 with the aim of controlling all containers from Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, Panama and Colombia.
Human resources will also be greatly increased since 108 new customs officers will perhaps join the team of 300 customs officers already in place in Antwerp. “It is a cross-cutting policy that we must initiate. You have to fight fraud – that’s what we do – but you also have to tackle traffic, demand… It’s complex“, notes Vincent Van Peteghem, Minister of Finance and initiator of this new plan.
In Europe, 29% of the population aged 15-64 regularly use drugs. While 22 million of them claim to smoke cannabis, 3.5 million ingest cocaine.