Why Brussels Persecutes “Racists”

Following Prof Glenn Reynolds’ appeal to the American blogging community to write to the Belgian Embassy and protest the harassing of The Brussels Journal, Prof Kenneth Anderson wrote to the embassy in Washington DC. This is the answer he got:

Dear Sir:

In response to your mail I wanted to inform you that Belgium is a democracy in which the freedom of expression and a free press are guaranteed by the constitution and the legal system.

However, expressions of racism are a punishable offense in Belgium. An Act of Parliament created the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism in 1993. A task of the Centre is to promote equality of opportunity and combat any form of distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, skin color, descent, origin or nationality. The Centre offers the possibility to internet users to complain about the racist content of web sites. These complaints are evaluated in a serious manner. Most cases are solved through giving information or through setting up a mediation process. Only in a small number of cases, the Center proceeds to legal action. More information on this program is to be found on http://www.cyberhate.be.

The Belgian government and people oppose manifestations of racism and intolerance and intend to fight these through education and the application of the law. For further information on issues regarding racism in Belgium you can go to the following web site: http://www.antiracisme.be/.

I remain at your disposal for further information.

Best regards.

Geert Criel
Minister Counselor
Embassy of Belgium

Our website appears to be one of the “small number of cases” in which the Belgian authorities “proceed to legal action” by sending the police to our door in order to question us. Stanley Kurtz at National Review has also spoken out in our defence, saying: “Let the public decide whether to visit The Brussels Journal and how seriously they wish to take its reports and arguments.  That is the way to handle disagreements, and infinitely preferable to shutting down the site. [...] In other words, it would be a crime against the principle of free speech – and against the interests of Europe and the West – to shut down The Brussels Journal, particularly at a moment of such danger, testing, and decision for the West.

Belgium, however, is one of the European countries where freedom of speech is most restricted, as is also evident from the prosecution of Father Samuel, a Belgian priest of Turkish origin, who is standing trial because he warns that Christians will be persecuted in Europe once Muslims become a majority.

Perhaps the priest is wrong (let us hope so, because Muslims are becoming a majority in Europe), but if Father Samuel, who speaks from personal experience, feels that he should give his warning, why would any country that claims to be “a democracy in which the freedom of expression and a free press are guaranteed by the constitution and the legal system” prevent him from doing so? I see only one reason: because the country in question is being governed by appeasers of islamo-fascism.

Our case has nothing to do with racism. Belgium is following an old tradition which, in the fall of 1939, led Brussels to introduce an “administrative censorship” which prohibited “anti-German and unpatriotic publications.”

The “anti-Germans” of the 1930s are the “islamophobes” of today.

Kop-in-de-grond

@ pvdh

It is a sad sight to see you put your head in the sand like that.  If you think that a little bit of a 'joke' and some sarcasm is a proper response to violations of the constitution in Belgium, then you are sadly mistaken.

But then, observe the absurd behavior of a "Minister Counselor" of a Belgian embassy.  He begins his letter by stating that there is a constitutional right to "freedom of speech and free press" and asserts that Belgium is "a democracy".   And then he goes on in the next paragraph to state that parliament has seen fit to take away this 'Constitutional' right in cases of something totally arbitrary and subjective as "racism".   Did the Belgian Constitution get 'amended' in the proper (very complex and politically-difficult) way, or did parliament act in an unconstitutional manner in some of its 'gewone' legislation? I do, of course, realise that the "Minister Counselor" gets paid to defend the indefensible. Perhaps, he even believes himself what he writes, although I have some faint doubt about that. At least, I can hope that the miseducation in Belgium hasn't progressed that far yet among intelligent people.

If a "Minister Counselor" and even the Belgian parliament seem to be rather 'cavalier' about democracy and the Constitution, then why shouldn't a PVDH?  And, it is true, Belgium is not yet exactly comparable to those other great 'democracies', like say North Korea or Congo/Zaire, who also seem to have a need to affirm their "democratic" character in the face of manifest counter evidence.

stop prosecution!

"Let the public decide whether to visit The Brussels Journal and how seriously they wish to take its reports and arguments. That is the way to handle disagreements, and infinitely preferable to shutting down the site."

I completely agree. By prosecuting them, you only provide free publicity. A website with a constant flow of complaints, and doom scenario’s about our society becomes very boring otherwise. Even VB-apparatchiks like Jurgen Verstrepen understand that you need something entertaining to get people visiting your website. By lack of a prosecution, he uses pictures of “babes 18+” and sexist jokes, along with the usual mocking hate mail against everything that’s left of VB, (all the rest of the country, actually). It is a bit curious for a party that attracts the conservatives of Flanders, but it’s surely effective.
If we want to see babes on the Brussels Journal, we have to stop prosecuting.

Same canned email

I got the same response from the Brussels US embassy.  Better to be murdered than speak ill of Muslims.

 

 

"That's right, I said it"

what a police state

where they come kocking on your door and request that you would come to the local police office at your convenience.

Please, get real.

problem implies solution

I have to share the following suggestion i recieved from Dr F Dolittle PhD MD:

"The following can be inferred from the logic behind this dastardly eurocratic plot:

1: All racism is evil

2: All intolerence is evil

conclusion: Belgian government is evil, if one assumes as a fact that they are intolerant of open discussion.

 

Solution (interim):

restrict the use of all dialects in flanders and reduce the vocabulary of the nederlands taal to a few words.  As a suggestion:

bad becomes ungood.  Really bad becomes double plus ungood. 

 

Applying this Orwellian newspeak principle to the language in Flanders will drastically reduce the startlingly high incidence of thoughtcrime here in Flanders.  If my program is adopted by the legislative and executive arms of the brussels political beast which is known in aboriginal australian dialect as guvment, I predict that it will be impossible to prosecute Mr Belien or this website as the crimes will be impossible to commit.  BB rules. 

 

"
BTW What is a minister counsellor? Is it the name for an advisor, or for the minister's personal mental health pratitioner?

Both Greece and Italy have

Both Greece and Italy have attempted to prosecute people under blasphemy laws in the last year or two.  One would think that freedom of speach would be essential to any democracy but then again I don't think that democracy is what the euroelites really want.  Regarding Lou's comment I also find is amazing that one could go to jail for decades merely for growing plants such as cannibus on their own property in Texas.  If you dare pick the numerous mushrooms that grow in cow pies there they would probably throw away the key after 30 years.  No country in the world really has the concept of liberty and freedom down quite right.

What's Good for the Goose....

What would prevent Paul and others in Belgium from contacting the police regarding any of the Jihadi sites in Belgium. Or for that matter any of the radical imans who preach "death to Israel and America". I mean if Islam or a Muslim practicing Islam is considered a race what is Israel and the Jews and Arabs and Christians that live there? Also, America is made up of just about every race and religion known to mankind. What is the difference? This kind of high-hypocrisy and extreme political correctness is like living in an alternative universe. Whatever became of common sense and calling a spade a spade. Its like living in the 1930's all over again.

Jack Lillywhite

I don't know what keeps Mr Belien

But I know of at least one case that has been brought against a group in Brussels that preached jihad.

Me personally, I don't think to push for such cases is a good strategy because it validates the laws that make some free speech a crime.

Nothing but a con game

It's pretty clear that the Belgian system for rooting out 'racist' speech is being gamed and hijacked by one group and turned into a tool for intimidating and silencing its critics.

Flooding the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism with allegations of 'racist' speech, each of which must be taken seriously, is a game any group can play -- especially when it is backed by the implied threat of violence.

It seems that in any dispute with the West, its antagonists know the drill: howl with faux outrage and indignation, demand prostration in the form of apologies or compensation, and hint that consequences may result if demands are not met.

Our flaccid elites -- far more interested in being liked and avoiding media censure than in doing the right thing -- fall for it every single time.

Which make Paul Belien's stand all the more impressive.

This will not be getting any better

I am sorry that you are being harassed by the authorities, Paul. Unfortunately, based on demographics the situation in Belgium will not be improving. I can't imagine living in a place that arrests people for saying words that offend others. To me that is very Orwellian. The fact that so few people in Belgium (you included, of course) see this seriousness of this tells me Belgium is doomed.

So What Am I???

Call me racist or whatever, but know that all terrorist attacks in the past and current terror are being commited by so-called peaceful Islamists. That you cannot deny. Eurabia continues (with the help of the leftest media) to put the blame on foreign policy, the U.S., Israel, Iraq, blah, blah, blah. It is so easy for the nitwits in Brussels to blame everything and everybody except for the evil Muslims who commit murder of innoncent people.

For the idiots who continue to blame the current terror on 9/11 and Bush check out the dates in the following stats.

http://patriotpost.us/news/profiling.asp

The official harassment of Paul Belien

When president Bush used the term "Islamic fascism" I told my wife: finally! If I would dare to express myself in these terms, I would, indeed, and as Paul experiences, be persecuted by the Belgian federal dummies.

I work for a non-Belgian social security office, as a medical doctor/advisor, for more than 4 years now. Morroccans present themselves always as the sufferers. And if contradicted, I am a discriminating racist.

I oppose that easy-going point-of-view. I am not a racist, I want everyone being the same when facing the law. That's exactly what Paul wants: equal treatment for equal people.

That means we should support him. And his wife. And his children.

That also means that we should denounce the actual federal meanstream-attitude, not based on liberalism, but on socialist fascism.

The official harassment of Paul Belien #2

The only way this will change is through the "voice of the voter" . They need to vote out of office the "established left wingers", get rid of the "Cordon Sanitaire" and make the media independent from the politicians instead of having the politicians controlling the media to their likings......This is indeed Socialist Fascism.
Right wing movements s.a Vlaams Belang are contineously the target of governmental intimidation.

Bush

This means that, among a majority of other Americans, President Bush is already no longer allowed to express his opinion in Belgium.