Polish restaurateur beaten in Brussels after false racism claim during education protest

A chair taken, a crowd turns

On 7 June, as protests against education cuts swept through central Brussels, Michał Mytkowski was preparing his restaurant Lil Bao for lunch service. From the terrace on Rue Haute he saw two men taking a chair. Fearing they would throw it at the police, he ran after them. The men, he later told RMF FM, were of North African appearance. Immediately, the accusation of racism was shouted. A crowd gathered and grew hostile.

“They saw a white man and instantly the cry went up that I was a racist. Calls for a boycott of my restaurant started right away.”

The attack

Mytkowski was quickly surrounded. Several people beat and kicked him. One assailant hurled a table into the restaurant's window. Onlookers did not intervene; some, Mytkowski says, egged the attackers on. Help came only from owners and staff of neighbouring businesses, among them a Polish woman named Angelika.

“There was absolutely no chance to talk. They shouted 'racist' and 'boycott', painting me as the bad person in this story, even though I was the one attacked.”

Multicultural credentials

Mytkowski, who moved to Belgium from Poland with his parents when he was three, runs a multi-ethnic team. His wife, Hsuan-Jia Lin, is Taiwanese. The restaurant specialises in vegan Taiwanese bao and enjoys strong online ratings. The false racism charge, he believes, was a pretext to justify the crowd's aggression and inflame the mob.

“The accusation of racism was completely absurd. I have a multicultural team. I had never faced such a baseless charge before.”

Police response and aftermath

Police arrived after the attackers had dispersed. Officers warned Mytkowski that the group might return. In the days since, local outlets including Sudinfo, Nieuwsblad and Bruzz have picked up the story. Mytkowski says he grew up with his father's advice never to answer prejudice against Poles with aggression, a lesson he now has to lean on.

Violent backdrop

That week, Brussels saw large protests against budget cuts to French-speaking education. The Walloon parliament had already passed the package, which unions said would gut youth support services. Police used water cannon and tear gas; teenagers were arrested carrying Molotov cocktails. A separate controversy erupted after an officer was seen wearing a "Deus Vult" patch on his uniform, which in Belgium is taken as a far-right symbol.