The White Marches were a series of mass demonstrations held in Belgium during October 1996, sparked by the removal of investigating magistrate [[Jean-Marc Connerotte]] from the [[Marc Dutroux]] case. Connerotte had been replaced after attending a public function in support of Dutroux's victims, where he ate a plate of spaghetti, an act his superiors used as a pretext to remove him on the grounds that he had compromised his impartiality by socializing with victims' families. The transparently political nature of this decision ignited public fury, leading to the largest protests Belgium had seen in decades. ### Scale and Character of the Protests Up to three hundred thousand Belgians dressed in white took to the streets in cities across the country, transforming the color into a symbol of mourning and moral outrage. The demonstrations were not limited to symbolic gestures; they included widespread labor union strikes and direct actions such as fire crews turning their hoses upon the courts of justice. The crowds demanded an end to what they perceived as a systematic cover-up of connections between Dutroux's criminal network and powerful individuals in Belgian society. Many protesters believed that the judicial apparatus was actively protecting high-ranking figures implicated in child trafficking and abuse. ### Connerotte and the X-Dossier Jean-Marc Connerotte was a magistrate with a reputation as a crusader, having previously been removed from the investigation into the 1991 assassination of former deputy prime minister Andre Cools in circumstances widely seen as a cover-up. In the Dutroux investigation, Connerotte had appealed for victims of a suspected elite child sex trafficking network to come forward, and eight people identifying themselves as victims had responded, becoming known as the X-witnesses. In September 1996 Connerotte assigned a team led by prosecutor [[Michel Bourlet]] to compile the highly classified X-Dossier, containing witness statements and investigative findings. The X-witnesses, including [[Regina Louf]], provided testimony describing extreme acts of sexual violence against children committed by politicians, magistrates, and members of the Belgian nobility. When Connerotte was removed, the X-Dossier team was subsequently accused of fabricating evidence and silently replaced as well, ensuring that the explosive allegations within the dossier would not receive official judicial scrutiny. ### Aftermath and Leaks When the protests subsided, the replacement of the X-Dossier team meant that the classified material compiled by Bourlet and his investigators was buried within the bureaucracy. However, the dossier was leaked to Flemish journalists in 1997, and details were published in a 1999 book entitled The X-Files: What Belgium Was Not Supposed to Know About the Dutroux Affair. A further book published in 2001 led to a lawsuit brought by King Albert II, the same monarch whom [[Michel Nihoul]] would later boast of having photographed jumping on a naked sixteen-year-old girl. A summary of the X-Dossier compiled for Dutroux's 2004 trial was subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks and published without redaction in April 2009. The White Marches thus represented a rare public eruption of anger against a protected criminal network, an anger that the Belgian state successfully managed to contain through bureaucratic obstruction and the systematic removal of honest investigators like Connerotte. [^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). *Eye of the Chickenhawk*. United States: Thehotstar.