Members should support the following petition regarding saving the Brussels Army Museum display and technical departments.

Here is a link, and following that, details from FESAC’s email about the event at the Museum on the 19th January at which we expect to be represented.

https://www.change.org/p/au-gouvernement-f%C3%A9d%C3%A9ral-hold-up-op-het-legermuseum-sur-le-mus%C3%A9e-de-l-arm%C3%A9e-on-the-museum-of-the-armed-forces

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Derek Stimpson
chairman@hbsa-uk.org

Message from FESAC Chairman, Stephen Petroni:-

I have just received some disturbing news from our friend Paul Dubrunfaut, who has been curating the arms at the Brussels Military museum for several years. Paul gave us his full support when we were under attack by the EU Commission, having agreed to my proposal to host a number of IMCO MEPs to the museum and visit the reserve collection to make the understand the importance of conserving firearms in their original working condition. It is Paul who now needs our support. Let me quote what he has told me after I responded to his first email.

"Since the 1st of May 2017 the Belgian Government has decided to create a new parastatal organisation called the "War Heritage Institute" to absorb our Royal Military Museum and other federal institutions as the Fort of Breendonck (a WW II Memorial), The Institution for War Invalids etc. This to limit the cost to only one organisation and at the same time to diminish the importance of the scientific job done by the curators of the former Military Museum (they want to control everything we'll do in the future i.e. research, publications, acquisitions, conservation etc.).

I have started an action towards the Constitutional Court of Belgium to contest the law creating this new WHI. My solicitor is Marc Verdussen, a very well-known teacher at the Louvain-la-Neuve University and we have good reasons to believe in a positive result but it will take time!

Actually the most important thing to do is to preserve the two oldest galleries in our Museum. Therefore we need international support. We hope that the more signatures we have for our petition the more the politicians will understand that we are ready to fight until the end! We keep in touch and I will inform the organisers of the conference that we can count on your support.”