Belgium // Current

The ghettos of Brussels

A couple of weeks ago the leader of the Dutch green party spoke critically of how Islam is affecting her multicultraul neighborhood. Now it's the turn of a Flemish parliament member for the Groen! party, Luckas Vander Taelen, who wrote an editorial in De Staandard about the situation in his own neighborhood:

''I live next to a neighborhood in Vorst, from the Merodestraat to the Brussels-South station (Gare du Midi/Zuidstation), that even with the most multicultural bias you can't describe as anything but a ghetto.

My daughter long ago gave on on going into that neighborhood. For she's too often just called many bad things . I bike through there every day and experience more and more a different adventure. Double parked cars, drivers who block a junction in order to speak with each other, youth hanging about who look at you as if you've entered their private domain.

In particular don't try to say anything if you're run over again: the last time I did that, a bystander not even 16 years old heaped abuse on me, and ended his insulting tirade with a message that I won't translate: 'Nique ta mère.' [fuck off] That was not as bad as the previous time, when another young Magrebian driver felt insulted by my behavior: I had dared to take my right of way. His honor was so offended that he could apparently only rectify that by spitting in my face...

Thus: keep silent. Because if you try to make it clear that 70 km an hour is too fast in a 30 zone, then you immediately have a right to a confrontation with the sense of honor of a young new-Belgian who can't have somebody forbidding him anything, and who is ready to punch you for it.

Twenty years ago I was convinced that the young new-Belgians would quickly be assimilated. But now a generation of rebels without a cause grew up in Brussels who always feel offended and wronged. Never responsible for anything, it's always the fault of somebody else: of the government, of the racist Belgians. And also within their own families the young Maghrebian men remain unassailable. When the police in Molenbeek arrested a boy, the father immediately organized a protest because his son 'wouldn't even steal an apple'.

The efforts of the government in the problem-neighborhoods ensured that the youth don't feel the need to leave them, an ULB study showed last year. Thus you create the confines of a village in the big city.

A daughter of Moroccan friends has a Belgian friend. She never goes out with him in the neighborhood, since they'll be immediately jeered at. Because almost all the young immigrants may have Belgian citizenship, they don't have any identification with this country. On the contrary: 'Belgian' is a curse-word...

Indeed, you never see young women alone in the neighborhood. And certainly not in the cafes: there they're not even tolerated. When a worker of the municipality asked for a coffee there, it was quickly made clear to her that she shouldn't count on being served. When I bike into the Merode-neighborhood, I know that far past the Zuidstation, I won't see one woman on a cafe terrace. And I don't need to speak about the double sexual morals which are still expected from young immigrant women, that they'll demonstrate their virginity during the wedding night, though everybody knows that Brussels hospitals restore the hymen with a simple operation.

It was to the credit of the Left to ask for more attention for discrimination and the social gap. The problem is sadly deeper: we were afraid to force our values on immigrants. Those values are really too dear for me to forfeit.''A couple of weeks ago the leader of the Dutch green party spoke critically of how... more

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Iran Demonstrations: Violent Clashes Between Protestors And Riot Police

Security officials and riot police engaged in violent clashes with demonstrators in Tehran today in what one reporter called an "unprecedented scene" in Iran in recent years.

NBC producer Ali Arouzi described the events on Saturday:

What started off as a small rally outside a pro-reformist newspaper swelled into a massive crowd of people chanting, "Death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad!"

Then, what started with a small amount of police pushing the crowd back turned into huge riot police in armored gear and motor bikes beating all the young students here with batons, knocking them back. The students responded by throwing stones, which the police then threw back. Now the police are coming off all the heart streets and main streets to try and disperse the crowd. But this is an unprecedented scene in Iran today.

Arouzi said that many of the demonstrators, afraid of reprisals, were wearing green scarves and surgical masks.

Asked if he believed the election results being reported by Iran's Interior Ministry, Arouzi sounded highly skeptical. "If you were in Tehran the last few days, you would think it impossible that Ahmadinejad won," he said. "Everybody we spoke to was a supporter of Mousavi."

He noted that Mousavi's supporters acknowledged that he was somewhat of a blank slate politically, but that the presidential election had become a referendum on Ahmadinejad.

Arouzi then described the protests in greater detail:

Initially, it was a peaceful demonstration. People were forming a human chain, saying they wanted their vote back... but the more the police came, the angrier the mob got. It became sort of a mob mentality here. Now the police have swelled in huge numbers. They are being very, very violent with the crowds.

Every young person I've spoken to here, I've asked them, 'do you think you coming out onto the streets is going to make a change?' They said, no, but we have to come out anyway if we want our voices to be heard, but they're sure this won't make a change.

Demonstrators have been injured. People have come up to us and they've shown us that their arms have been bruised, black eyes, broken noses, bloody heads. But they are fighting back as well. This is, I mean, I've been in Iran four years here and everything here has always been contained. Today we saw the demonstrators setting on the police. An hour ago, maybe 30, 40 demonstrators rushed the police, throwing stones at them. One of the policemen fell and they were kicking him in the head and some of his colleagues had to come and drag him away.Security officials and riot police engaged in violent clashes with demonstrators in... more