‘Victims twice over’ decry lack of support
Belgian government doing everything to correct the situation, interior minister insists
For Philippe Vansteenkiste, whose sister was killed in the Brussels attacks one year ago, the suffering is made worse by the battle with the Belgian authorities for support.
“We are victims twice over,” said Vansteenkiste, mourning his sibling Fabienne, 51, a check-in agent at Brussels airport. She had stayed on after her shift to help colleagues and died when two suicide bombers blew themselves up there on March 22, 2016.
After battling to get support from a labyrinthine Belgian bureaucracy, Vansteenkiste founded an association, V-Europe, to help all victims receive adequate medical and psychological care as well as proper financial and moral assistance from the authorities and insurance firms.
“It was like we had to get down on our knees to receive minimum compensation to be able to continue,” Vansteenkiste said at his home outside Brussels, where he and his family moved to be closer to his ageing parents after the tragedy. Unlike in France and some other countries, those affected by terrorism in Belgium do not receive a document officially recognising them as victims of an attack, he said.
Financial straits
In France, he added, the government arranges for the victims to receive the document within 30 days.
In financial straits himself, he said it is also “extremely urgent” for the state to provide a lump sum of tens of thousands of euros so victims can meet the initial costs of things such as medical treatment and accommodation.
Vansteenkiste said he was also shocked when the airport’s insurance firm gave him €250 ($270) compensation for his sister’s iPhone but nothing for the loss of his sister. “How human is this?” he asked.
Nicolas de Lavalette, a 56-year-old Franco-American English teacher, criticised the Belgian bureaucracy about the help for his 18-year-old daughter’s recovery after she lost both her legs below the knee in the airport attack.
“I wish there was in Belgium a structure which takes care of victims from A to Z,” Lavalette said. “There is no overall organisation to handle something of this magnitude.”
The married father-of-three, who is also a member of VEurope, said he was worried whether the Belgian authorities would follow up Beatrice’s file when the family goes back to live in the United States.
Belgian authorities insist they are not letting down victims a second time.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon said “we have understood well that there were things we could improve” to help the victims, and that the government was now doing everything to correct the situation.
A teacher