Mural of Sanda Dia Sidney Cortez, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How to get away with murder
29 February 2024
Sanda Dia was a 20-year-old student in the third year of his engineering degree when he decided to join a fraternity. In the obligatory hazing to join the club, his fellow students had forced him to drink copious amounts of alcohol and fish oil, dig a hole in the freezing cold while wet and half-naked, and eat a live goldfish. After two days in hospital, Dia died from salt toxicity in what seems to be a case of class discrimination.
As the students were prosecuted over his death, they remained unnamed by the court and media. Their identities were protected in the name of their promising careers; as sons of judges and politicians, many of them were on track to become doctors and lawyers. Some of the convicts had family connections in the Antwerp court, which ultimately decided on their fate.
Every single one of the eighteen complicit students avoided prison. They were given a €400 fine and 200 to 300 hours of community service.
Outrage grew across the country, with many claiming it was a typical case of class justice: selective justice that disadvantages someone who isn’t part of the ruling class and favours those who do belong to it.
A YouTuber decided to take justice into his own hands. Nathan Vandergunst, known online as Acid, exposed the identities of some of the fraternity members in a video. One of them took Vandergunst to court for defamation. The court ordered him to pay €20,000 in provisional damages and gave him a suspended prison sentence of three months.
 | Belle de Jong Belgians wonder whether it was a coincidence that the one black student in an elitist fraternity died. Would this have happened if his father wasn’t a refugee from Senegal but a lawyer in Antwerp, who had also been part of a fraternity? Would the murderers have gotten away with it too? Belgium’s youngest generation has little faith left in the country’s justice system, outraged at the fact that a YouTuber naming the convicts received a higher sentence than those responsible for the crime. Acid embraced the anti-establishment sentiment: “Compensation of 20,000 euros? That is money that I would have preferred to see appear on the account of Sanda Dia’s family rather than on the account of the family that had a stake in erasing traces after the student hazing. But money always wins in Belgium.” Within 24 hours of the verdict, Acid collected €130,000 from his fans to pay the compensation, the surplus of which will go to the Sanda Dia Foundation. If money does indeed talk, Belgium’s youth is paying for justice. |
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