BRUSSELS -- It started as a Saturday trip to Belgium's coast, a chance to escape a heat wave and coronavirus restrictions for a while. As the tide came in, the beach got crowded. Someone complained about the music being too loud. The mood quickly turned ugly.
Within minutes, dozens of people were battling it out on the sands. Some beachgoers threw bottles and umbrellas at police officers who intervened.
By Sunday, a "gang of outsiders" was being blamed, and two coastal communities had banned day trippers from the city. Officers stood ready at railway stations and blocked traffic, turning away people who can't afford to live, work, or pay for hotel reservations in the area. Three teens, shirtless, still in their swimming gear, were charged with "armed rebellion."
On Tuesday, Belgium's interior minister was trying to explain how it all happened, summoned to a hearing by the main populist party and a far-right nationalist faction. Civic groups called for action, urging people from poorer neighborhoods -- among the hardest-hit by the virus -- to find lawyers if they felt harassed by police "racial profiling" or by zealous officials protecting wealthy holiday-makers at well-to-do beach communities.
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This is Belgium, a country that still has no full-time government 18 months after the Cabinet resigned -- a country with one of the highest covid-19 mortality rates in the world per population where restrictions are testing people's patience.
At the seaside resort of Knokke-Heist there was ample room to stretch out on the beach early this week. Local authorities have prohibited people from making day trips to its 10-mile stretch of beach until the heat wave is over. Those banned include many members of minority groups from Belgian cities or France.
Temperatures in the region have reached 97 degrees Fahrenheit.
On a tree-lined street, at a home that he says dates from Napoleonic times, the mayor -- Count Leopold Lippens -- told The Associated Press that Knokke-Heist is an exclusive area prized for its many shops, restaurants and art galleries, and that only law-abiding people should bother to go there.
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"We are here in a country called Belgium, where the law is the law," Lippens said. "We want the rules to be followed, and if the rules are not followed, well, we will use our police force to have them followed."
"People who don't do that, they will be eradicated from this place," he said.
Asked if he worried that banning ordinary people from spending the day on the beach might tarnish the image of his town, the mayor said: "People come because they like it, and they like it because it's quality. We don't want quantity, we want quality."
That view grates with Thierry Dupiereux, information officer with Belgium's League of Families, a social organization aimed at helping families in need and that lobbies for policy change. He says the beach bans deprive people of "a safety-valve that helps them unwind."
Almost 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Belgium, a country of just 11.5 million.
Dupiereux said the travel restrictions are "a social injustice" aimed at a part of society that has been hardest hit by the disease and the job losses that followed; people "who have little money, who can't afford a week's vacation at the beach or holidays abroad."
The coast is just a 90-minute train ride from the capital Brussels. Other places where people without cars could get away and cool off are poorly served by public transportation. Many youths boarded trains in Brussels on Tuesday, but the Knokke-Heist station was almost empty.
At first, the national rail service SNCB resisted calls to cut the number of beach-bound trains, but caved in as political pressure mounted and will now provide fewer this weekend. A number of lawmakers urged Interior Minister Pieter De Crem to rein in the SNCB, notably Bjorn Answeeuw, from the populist N-VA party.
Belgium's last government collapsed when the N-VA pulled out. The party is too big to ignore and has been central in talks to form a new administration over the 14 months since the previous election. During that time, the N-VA has routinely criticized the interim government installed to manage the covid-19 crisis. Fears over migration have proved a vote winner for the party.
"Going freely to the coast is a right that we all have. Being beach day-trippers does not make us terrorists for a day," De Crem said. For people like those involved in Saturday's beach riot in Blankenberge, De Crem suggested setting up a register -- similar to ones used for soccer hooligans -- and banning those on it from going to the coast.
In a sudden about-face a few hours after speaking to AP, and after the parliamentary hearing, Lippens announced that day-trippers could return to Knokke-Heist as of Wednesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Carlson of The Associated Press.
