Brussels Commemorates Attack Anniversary With Both Silence and Noise
"That was a lesson for European democracy." In a powerful
and defiant gesture, the Brussels transit authority called for commuters at the Maelbeek station to applaud and make noise at 9:11 a.m., the time when the bomb ripped through the station a year earlier.
By DAN BILEFSKYMARCH 22, 2017
Belgians of all political stripes and backgrounds united in their small, divided country on Wednesday to commiserate and remember the coordinated suicide bombings
that struck Brussels one year ago, killing 32 people and injuring more than 320.
Le Soir, a leading daily, referred to "that day in March where we lost our innocence." In Belgium, a country divided into Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north
and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, the commemoration was a rare moment of the two communities coming together.
Titled "Wounded but Still Standing in the Face of the Unthinkable," the 66-foot-long sculpture consists of two stainless steel slabs, crushed
and pocked with holes, bending upward toward the sky in a gesture of hope.
Among them were a Belgian filmmaker, a Swedish illustrator, a Congolese business school graduate
and father of two young girls, a Chinese entrepreneur, a Belgian Muslim teacher and mother of three, and a couple from the United States who had come to Europe in search of adventure.
President Trump once publicly called Brussels "a hellhole,"
but the city has shown resilience over the last year, even as the scars from the attacks exposed endemic weaknesses in Belgian law enforcement and a lack of social cohesion.