Vaccination opponents shock Parliament with statements on Covid vaccination
Five years after the Covid pandemic, a petition was debated in the Chamber on Wednesday. The petitioners attracted attention with questionable statements.
‘An independent commission must collect witness statements and analyse what happened.’ In front of MPs on Wednesday, Amar Goudjil defended his petition calling for such a commission on Covid policy. His petition had already received almost 5,000 signatures in March 2023. However, the debate in parliament only took place on Wednesday.
‘What is your definition of independence?’ asked ADR MP Alexandra Schoos. Amar Goudjil pointed out that ‘a list of duties must be drawn up with disinterested and righteous people’. The Frenchman, who lives in Luxembourg, works as a management consultant and has a degree in demography and sociology.
He explained that he was vaccinated against tuberculosis as a child, but then had to be treated in an intensive care unit for seven weeks. ‘My brothers, who were also immunised, suffered the same fate. This was not the case for my parents and sisters, who had not received the vaccine.’
The petitioner accused the healthcare system of being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry and facing conflicts of interest. ‘It is problematic that the healthcare system in general is completely parasitised by the pharmaceutical lobby,’ claimed Goudjil.
Questionable support
Astrid Stuckelberger, who holds a doctorate in public health from the University of Geneva, supported Amar Goudjil in the Chamber on Wednesday. She accused the WHO of being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, which repeatedly causes the same damage. We need to take a closer look and follow the example of US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who set up a commission of enquiry into vaccine damage. As a reminder, the anti-vaccinationist Kennedy claimed that vaccinations caused autism in children.
The French daily newspaper ‘Libération’ scrutinised Stuckelberger's profile. Among other things, she was involved in the conspiracy film ‘Hold Up’, in which a worldwide ‘manipulation’ of Covid-19 is denounced. ‘Since the beginning of the pandemic, she has stood out with dubious statements that are largely fuelled by conspiracy theories,’ writes Liberation. Among other things, she claimed that ‘children of vaccinated parents are not normal’.
Stuckelberg contributed to several WHO reports. According to the Swiss online magazine Heidi, she has been using this experience since the Covid outbreak ‘to legitimise her claims and give them a veneer of competence’.
Goudjil wants a commission to find out what exactly these vaccines are made of. ‘If you don't find nanotechnologies in the vaccines, I agree to go to jail for two years at my expense,’ Goudjil said. He noted that ‘vaccination in general is a pure scam’ and emphasised that no vaccination has an impact on reducing pandemic waves.
LSAP MP Paulette Lenert contradicted this claim and recalled that vaccination had relieved the pressure on intensive care units during the Covid period.
In response to a question from the former Minister of Health, the petitioner explained that he had filed a ‘complaint for crimes against humanity’ in October 2020. However, Goudjil did not specify who the complaint was directed against in front of the MPs. The complaint was dropped without consequences, and a further complaint is pending at international level, according to the Frenchman.
‘Luxembourg gets off worse than Afghanistan’
‘Luxembourg is not doing so badly, but it was better in Afghanistan because there were no masks and no physical distancing,’ argued Goudjil, calling for the necessary analyses to be initiated in order to understand what could have gone better.
‘I have the feeling that we have different positions and that we will not agree on this,’ said Health Minister Martine Deprez (CSV). She emphasised that she was used to working with facts and recalled that, according to an OECD report from 2022, Luxembourg had coped well with the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic, 1.44 million vaccine doses were administered in Luxembourg. ‘For all these doses, we received 2,500 confirmed adverse reactions, of which more than 70 per cent were not serious, they were minor,’ explains Martine Deprez.
Of the 35 complaints lodged with the Ministry of Health against the effects of the vaccines, four have been dismissed as no causal link could be established. The Ministry of Health is in the process of compensating those affected by two others.
The Minister of Health recalled that a motion was voted on that is currently examining ‘which measures implemented by the individual Covid laws can be included in a public health law’.
Parliament cannot set up a commission of enquiry into vaccines that were not produced in Luxembourg, explained the president of the petitions committee, Francine Closener (LSAP), after the debate. ‘This goes beyond the competences of a Luxembourg parliament and we are not equipped for this’, said Closener.
She assured that both the government and the opposition are interested in drawing conclusions from the pandemic. ‘However, I would also like to say once again that colleagues here are resisting the general suspicion that people from this House have benefited from the pandemic or from the vaccination itself. None of the MPs here want to let that stand,’ emphasised the LSAP MEP.