By Paul Belien
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Today the Belgian Council of State (CoS) ruled to maintain the prohibition of an anti-Islamization demonstration on 11 September. Three weeks ago the demo was banned by Freddy Thielemans, the mayor of Brussels. Thielemans's party, the Parti Socialiste (PS), caters for the many Muslim inhabitants of Brussels, the "capital of Europe." Udo Ulfkotte, a German citizen and one of the organizers of the demo, who intended to bring 20,000 demonstrators to Brussels, decided to appeal against the mayor's verdict before the Council of State, the highest administrative court in Belgium.Yesterday, the Council of State postponed its ruling because it said it had to decide first whether the appeal could be made in Dutch or should be presented in French. Today, however, the CoS cut the case short and ruled outright to maintain the ban. According to the CoS Udo Ulfkotte cannot prove that his interests have been harmed by the mayor's ban.
This verdict may sound nonsensical to non-Belgians, but in Belgium it is not considered harmful to have one's political freedoms restricted. In Belgium it is also considered quite normal that the lawyer representing Mayor Thielemans before the CoS is Marc Uyttendaele. The latter is one of the most expensive lawyers in the country. He is also the husband of Laurette Onkelinx, the Belgian minister of Justice, who is responsible for appointing, promoting and suspending judges.
The forbidden demonstration was an initiative of Danish, British and German organizations that wanted to protest in front of the European Parliament in Brussels against the introduction of Sharia laws in Europe. They chose to do so on the symbolic date of 11 September, which would allow them to end their demonstration with one minute of silence for the victims of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks in America.
Mayor Thielemans banned the demo precisely because the organizers picked 11 September as the date for their protest. The mayor wrote: "The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand. [...] Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the European legislation. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly pronounced judgments condemning this type of acts." He told The Wall Street Journal: "I won't have Brussels regarded as the capital of racism." Obviously, Brussels as the 'capital of socialism' or 'capital of Islamization' will do.
Over half the inhabitants of the Brussels region are of foreign origin, many of them from Morocco. Thanks to the Muslim vote Mr. Thielemans's PS is the largest party in Brussels. Ten of the 17 PS members on the Brussels municipal council are Muslims. As it lost its appeal among native Belgians, the PS began to court the Muslim vote. One of the most outspoken proponents of this policy is Justice Minister and prominent PS politician Laurette Onkelinx, the head of the Belgian judiciary and the wife of the lawyer opposing Mr Ulfkotte before the judges of the Council of State.
Meanwhile the Belgian media are reporting that all sorts of far-right and neo-Nazi groups are calling their members to come to Brussels on 11 September. The media say they want to join the anti-Islamization demo, but given the sympathy of neo-Nazis for anti-Semitic Islamists, they might come to cheer the Brussels mayor, a fellow totalitarian.
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