News From Belgium

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a couple of Belgian articles concerning Vlaams Belang.

First, from Filip Dewinter’s website:

Rap singer and co-author of threat against Dewinter sentenced

In the trial in the criminal court in Antwerp of the members of the rap group “The Cicatris”, the singer and co-author of the rap song, Kevin VanBrabant, was sentenced to 80 hours of autonomous community service and must pay compensation of 800 euros. If the community service is not completed, this will be converted into a prison term of 8 months. Because the court, due to technical reasons, chose a split treatment in the judicial process, there is no ruling yet on the other offender, Samir Belasri.

Filip Dewinter: “Strict sentencing is a strong message that death threats and calls for violence are not tolerated.”

Together with 23-year-old Samir Belasri (28-1-1986) of Wielsbeke, 27-year-old ex-Hotelschool Hasselt student Kevin VanBrabant from the city of Peer was the co-author and singer of the rap song in which Filip Dewinter in gross terms was threatened with death. The text of the rap leaves nothing to the imagination: “*** racist with a big mouth, you will die by a fatal gunshot wound”. It further states that “The decisions you make will be paid for with your life, on one day or night they will decline you”, “you will certainly become familiar with a bullet in your head and you cannot help it “, “It is time for riots, time for revolution, death to Filip Dewinter, the words of Cicatris”, and “Shot in the dark, a knife in your back […] Have you learned nothing from Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn?”

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Filip Dewinter is satisfied with the severity of the punishment. “The clear verdict of the court ensures that a strong signal that is sent that death threats and calls for violence will not be tolerated. Obviously, it is the announced intention of such death threats to silence all those who hold politically incorrect opinions. On the other hand, through such calls to violence unstable people are given incentive to add deeds to the word. Creating an environment in which in the long run it is legitimate to murder a controversial politician has nothing to do with free speech, but everything with a call for violence, “said Filip Dewinter.

VH adds this background material:

Samir Belasri in 2005: “In recent years we have been thrown out of almost ten schools’’. Samir Belasri and Karim Ben Ammar: “We once even seized teachers and threw chairs! That we cannot explain away, but on the other hand, we have been constantly challenged by the teachers.” He was then student “Sales” at the Free trade Institute (professional education) in the East Flanders city of Deinze, where the board advocated refraining from traditional sanctions, and sent the culprits to do little jobs in factories for punishment instead. Belasri is member of the immigrant football club Isobar.

Rap critic Leclerc: “I think the lyric goofs by calling the leader of Vlaams Belang “a hypocritical bastard”. You can say a lot about the man, but not that he is hypocritical. Typically a label that fits better with the ruling elite. […] Cicatris of course ultimately remains a little obedient commoner, and kicking against the VB and its leaders is scoring relatively easy in a country where the anti-VB ideology simply seems the obligatory political discourse as imposed from above.”

[See also: “Death Threats for Dewinter”.]

And from the Vlaams Belang website, concerning the continuing immigration into Brussels:
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Demographic explosion in Brussels

Last week VB wrote that partly because of marriage, immigration flow into this country continues unabated, despite the official halt to immigration.

The weekly magazine Le Vif / L’Express wrote in May of this year that the number of cases of family reunification in 2008 has increased by up to 20%. In a subsequent issue Le Vif quoted from a report by demographer Nicolas Perrin, who had calculated that 49% of the inhabitants of Brussels are immigrants or of foreign descent.

In its latest issue the magazine further examines our capital under the microscope. According to the Federal Planning Bureau, the population of Brussels between 2000 and 2060 will increase by up to 38%. In 2020 Brussels will already have added 150,000 new inhabitants. “A phenomenon that is due to the birth rate of citizens foreign descent in Brussels, and the flow of international migration,” Le Vif wrote, and adds that immigration indeed increases even with accession to the European Union. Poland is cited as an example, which since accession has seen five times as many of its nationals move to Brussels than before. So now we know what awaits us if Turkey becomes a member of the EU…

The Vlaams Belang proposals on immigration issues can be read here.