Belgium’s failure to offer the parents of a two-year-old girl shot dead by police the right to stay in the country has been described as “unbearable” by a former prime minister as anger grows over the case.
The funeral of Mawda Shawri, an Iraqi Kurd killed two weeks ago as she sat on her mother’s lap in the front seat of a Peugeot van carrying 26 adults and four children, is due to take place on Wednesday.
The vehicle in which she was travelling was being driven by suspected people-smugglers at 55mph (89km/h) during a 37-mile chase near Belgium’s border with France. Police initially, and falsely, denied an officer had been responsible for the shooting.
The Belgian government has not clarified how long the grieving parents may stay in the country, beyond saying it is a “very difficult decision”, but they will not be removed while an investigation into police conduct is undertaken.
In recent days Bart De Wever, the leader of the nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which is part of Belgium’s governing coalition led by the prime minister, Charles Michel, blamed Mawda’s parents for her death.
He said they had previously travelled illegally through Germany and the UK. “Speaking of these people as mere victims, I do not think that is correct,” De Wever said.
The former prime minister Elio Di Rupo, who is now the mayor of Mons, a city near the site of the shooting, said: “Bart De Wever spoke as we know. He said that parents were not only victims but they are responsible for the death of their child.
“They are words of terrible inhumanity. They are pretty ignoble. Bart De Wever dishonours us. Whether one is Flemish, Walloon or Brussels, one bows to the death of a child and one brings all possible support to his parents. This is a Kurdish family escaping terror.”
Speaking to the Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir, he said: “As a former prime minister, I can assure you that, in the face of a tragedy like this, I would have immediately granted a renewable five-year residence permit to the family, to allow them to mourn and to recover.
“The circumstances are exceptional, the answer must be too. Parliament is the guardian and architect of the rule of law. Charles Michel can go to parliament, but he does not dare because there is the N-VA.”
This week Mawda’s parents, Shamdine and Ako, who also have a three-year-old son, gave an account of the events that led to their daughter’s death. They said the van was chased by four police vehicles – one on either side and two behind – and the shot came from the car to the left of the van.
Although officers tried to treat the child, who had been shot in the cheek, it was said to have been some time before she was taken to hospital.
