Piet Vermeylen (8 April 1904 inUccle – 30 December 1991 inBrussels, also calledPierre Vermeylen by some Belgian French sources), was a Belgian lawyer, andsocialist politician and minister. He was the son of theFlemish politicianAugust Vermeylen.
In 1924, Piet was one of the founders of a Flemish study group at theUniversité libre de Bruxelles. In 1933, Vermeylen was one of the judges at the London Counter-trial of theReichstag fire. In 1938, together withHenri Storck andAndré Thirifays, he founded theCinémathèque royale de Belgique.
After his father's death, Piet succeeded him in the Flemish socialist politics ofBrussels. Notwithstanding what German occupiers had done to his father, he vehemently protested the execution of Flemish collaborationistAugust Borms. From 1947 to 1949, he was Minister for Internal Affairs. He again became a minister for Internal affairs in 1954 and for four years had to defend the secularist school policies of the Liberal-Socialist coalition under Prime MinisterAchille Van Acker in the face of Roman Catholic opposition, at one time controversially forbidding Belgian Radio to report on a large-scale demonstration against the new school laws proposed by Education ministerLeo Collard.
From 1961 to 1965 he was Belgian Justice minister underThéo Lefèvre. In 1961 he proposed the first law onamnesty for those who hadcollaborated withNazi Germany during thesecond world war. In April 1964, after unsuccessfully trying to soften the wrath of many Belgian doctors over a speech by the Prime Minister and so preventing the ensuing notorious "doctors' strike", he lent his support to thecivil mobilization of all hospital doctors and of doctors who were members of the Belgianreserve army.
When in 1968, French-speaking socialist politicians in Brussels (led byHenri Simonet) arranged the Brussels party list to ensure Piet Vermeylen,Hendrik Fayat and other Flemish socialist politicians from Brussels,Halle andVilvoorde werevirtually unelectable, Vermeylen took the unprecedented step of splitting the party and forming a rival Brussels Flemish Socialist Party, called "Red Lions". After his surprise re-election, he became the first Belgian Minister of Dutch Language Education in the new government, led by Christian Social Prime MinisterGaston Eyskens. When armies of theWarsaw pactinvadedCzechoslovakia in August 1968, Vermeylen, who was secretly visitingBrno as a simple tourist, barely managed to escape toAustria. He stayed on as a minister until 1972, and soon after quit active politics. In 1984, he wrote an autobiography.
