Paul Kruger
July 17th, 2006, 03:03 PM
Dear Friends,
As a new member I would like to say hello to all members on the VNN-forum.
As editor for the Flemish political formation bureau BBET (http://www.bbet.org), I eagerly await all your questions concerning my native land.
As a way of introduction follows this article, which really could have been written about any of the multiracial hellholes in Europe.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/07/03/ed.col.cape.antwerp.0703.p1.php?section=opinion
Melting pot boiling over in Belgium
Published: Monday, July 3, 2006
ANTWERP, Belgium - History may one day record that this port of 500,000, Belgium's second largest city, is where Europe's immigration pressure cooker finally boiled over.
In May, a Malian baby sitter was shot (along with the white child she was taking care of - the latter apparently a mistake) by an 18-year-old high school student looking for immigrants to kill.
While 20,000 people marched in the streets afterward to protest the killing, there remains an overwhelming atmosphere of fear among this once tolerant port city's immigrant population.
"When I was a kid here, we were treated better," one Arab told me, "Maybe our numbers have become frightening, or maybe it's our Muslim religion, though lots of us never set foot in a mosque, and have worked hard to learn the language."
Still, Belgium's relations with its mostly African, mostly Muslim immigrant community are neither better nor worse than those of its neighbors. But unlike other European states, Belgium's dual identity crisis (French-speaking vs. Dutch-speaking) has spilled over into its immigrant population.
"The problem here," as one local explained, "is that nobody says, `I'm Belgian' because many native-born Belgians say they are Flemish or Walloon. So the immigrant kid says he's Moroccan.
"The situation in France is actually better because immigrant kids there often say, `I'm French, even if I'm excluded from society.'"
As my mouth dropped open to hear France cited as an example in this regard - after thousands of burned cars in last fall's immigrant riots - it occurred to me that this beautiful city on the Scheldt has become an unhappy microcosm of western Europe's immigration troubles.
Antwerp has long been a stronghold of the Vlaams Blok, renamed the Vlaams Belang, which is comparable to France's National Front in proposing radical restrictions on immigration.
While the violence here has brought things to a boil, neighboring countries are all tightening immigration laws, and making the acquisition of citizenship much more difficult.
In The Netherlands, the immigration minister, Rita Verdonk (known as "Iron Rita") has adopted tough measures designed to discourage immigration dramatically. She has summarily expelled 26,000 immigrants who exhausted their asylum-seeking recourse, toyed with the notion of making immigrants speak Dutch in the streets (an idea later dropped as impracticable) and instituted tests in Dutch language and culture for all immigrants.
Why is the European immigration pressure cooker steaming so strongly now? One reason is that the sheer numbers of immigrants in countries of declining demography have made integration much more difficult. Another is that continental European economies lack the economic dynamism to provide jobs for the relatively young immigrant population. A further issue is that most immigrants are of Muslim tradition in a world in which Islam has taken an increasingly militant tone.
For centuries, the symbols of Eternal Europe, such as Antwerp's beautiful Cathedral of Our Lady, decorated by Peter Paul Rubens, have provided a fortress against time. But time is ticking away relentlessly on this issue, and nothing is more urgent than to find a path to peaceful coexistence between traditional European societies and immigrants. I thought of this as I was sitting at one of the 16th century guild houses along the Grote Markt (old town square) eating a local dish of stewed eel.
An Arab friend, who was tucking into a piece of steak, eyed my eel warily.
"Do you like that?" he asked.
"Not particularly," I replied, "but when in Rome ..."
Eugene native Kevin Capé is a writer and teacher who makes his home in Paris.
As a new member I would like to say hello to all members on the VNN-forum.
As editor for the Flemish political formation bureau BBET (http://www.bbet.org), I eagerly await all your questions concerning my native land.
As a way of introduction follows this article, which really could have been written about any of the multiracial hellholes in Europe.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2006/07/03/ed.col.cape.antwerp.0703.p1.php?section=opinion
Melting pot boiling over in Belgium
Published: Monday, July 3, 2006
ANTWERP, Belgium - History may one day record that this port of 500,000, Belgium's second largest city, is where Europe's immigration pressure cooker finally boiled over.
In May, a Malian baby sitter was shot (along with the white child she was taking care of - the latter apparently a mistake) by an 18-year-old high school student looking for immigrants to kill.
While 20,000 people marched in the streets afterward to protest the killing, there remains an overwhelming atmosphere of fear among this once tolerant port city's immigrant population.
"When I was a kid here, we were treated better," one Arab told me, "Maybe our numbers have become frightening, or maybe it's our Muslim religion, though lots of us never set foot in a mosque, and have worked hard to learn the language."
Still, Belgium's relations with its mostly African, mostly Muslim immigrant community are neither better nor worse than those of its neighbors. But unlike other European states, Belgium's dual identity crisis (French-speaking vs. Dutch-speaking) has spilled over into its immigrant population.
"The problem here," as one local explained, "is that nobody says, `I'm Belgian' because many native-born Belgians say they are Flemish or Walloon. So the immigrant kid says he's Moroccan.
"The situation in France is actually better because immigrant kids there often say, `I'm French, even if I'm excluded from society.'"
As my mouth dropped open to hear France cited as an example in this regard - after thousands of burned cars in last fall's immigrant riots - it occurred to me that this beautiful city on the Scheldt has become an unhappy microcosm of western Europe's immigration troubles.
Antwerp has long been a stronghold of the Vlaams Blok, renamed the Vlaams Belang, which is comparable to France's National Front in proposing radical restrictions on immigration.
While the violence here has brought things to a boil, neighboring countries are all tightening immigration laws, and making the acquisition of citizenship much more difficult.
In The Netherlands, the immigration minister, Rita Verdonk (known as "Iron Rita") has adopted tough measures designed to discourage immigration dramatically. She has summarily expelled 26,000 immigrants who exhausted their asylum-seeking recourse, toyed with the notion of making immigrants speak Dutch in the streets (an idea later dropped as impracticable) and instituted tests in Dutch language and culture for all immigrants.
Why is the European immigration pressure cooker steaming so strongly now? One reason is that the sheer numbers of immigrants in countries of declining demography have made integration much more difficult. Another is that continental European economies lack the economic dynamism to provide jobs for the relatively young immigrant population. A further issue is that most immigrants are of Muslim tradition in a world in which Islam has taken an increasingly militant tone.
For centuries, the symbols of Eternal Europe, such as Antwerp's beautiful Cathedral of Our Lady, decorated by Peter Paul Rubens, have provided a fortress against time. But time is ticking away relentlessly on this issue, and nothing is more urgent than to find a path to peaceful coexistence between traditional European societies and immigrants. I thought of this as I was sitting at one of the 16th century guild houses along the Grote Markt (old town square) eating a local dish of stewed eel.
An Arab friend, who was tucking into a piece of steak, eyed my eel warily.
"Do you like that?" he asked.
"Not particularly," I replied, "but when in Rome ..."
Eugene native Kevin Capé is a writer and teacher who makes his home in Paris.