Belgian politician Bart Debie jailed for 'racism'

October 29, 2008
Diana West

... Bart Debie ... has been ordered to report to a Belgian prison ... to begin serving a one-year term for “racism.”

Let me explain the ghastly surrealism of this sentence as meted out to this former police officer and former Antwerp City Council Member by the Belgian state: Debie neither made the racist remarks at issue, nor was he even present during the incident. This only adds horrific dashes of Kafka and Koestler to a politically correct prosecution of a member of the political opposition by what may be best described as fascistic little Belgium...

... While responding to complaints about a pair of drunks, Debie and his policemen were attacked by five Turkish men wielding a baseball bat and a knife. Two witnesses testified to this attack in court. After helping to subdue and arrest the attackers, Debie was called away to supervise a SWAT team elsewhere in Antwerp, and his men returned to the station with the Turkish prisoners, who later claimed they had been beaten and subjected to racism while at the station. Debie believes the beating did indeed occur in his absence, although his ultimate conviction was for creating, as he explains it, "an atmosphere which led other people to say such things" as--get this--“Now we have five lambs here and we can slaughter them.”

... The policeman who admitted to making the “racist” comments went unpunished and now serves, Debie told me, on a “team for managing diversity in Antwerp.” Meanwhile, the Turks were never charged for their assault on police.

Having left police work, Debie decided to run for a seat on the Antwerp city council and, as he put it, “make Antwerp safe that way.” He ran as a member of Vlaams Belang, the Establishment-reviled conservative political party that (1) seeks Flemish independence from Belgium, and (2) opposes the Islamization of European culture which Left-wing elites in both Belgium and elsewhere in Europe actually encourage in part to help increase their own constituencies. And Debie won.

It so happens that after Debie was elected, prosecutors appealed his verdict.

Hmmm. I wonder why? Could it be part of the Belgian government’s ongoing campaign against Vlaams Belang, which, as the largest political party in Belgium, presents an continual threat of secession to Belgium (home, after all to “united Europe”) and opposition to Islamization? Even now, two of the leading members of the party, Filip Dewinter and Frank Vanhecke, are facing legal battles of their own to retain their political rights and viability against other completely bogus charges of “racism”—the favored bludgeon of PC Belgians desparate to retain centralized power...

And what does a convicted “racist” in Belgium do to make pay his debt to society? So far, Debie has paid fines of E30,000. He long ago lost his police career, and after this recent conviction, the government of Belgium actually stripped him of his political and civil rights for 12 years locally and five years nationally. All of which sounds, frankly, more Old Soviet than Old Europe...

Tomorrow, barring unforeseen intervention, he reports to overcrowded and violent Vorst prison outside Brussels where he will be serving alongside some of Belgium’s worst criminals, a not inconsequential number of whom are what Debie wryly characterizes as his “former clients.”

This surely puts Debie’s very life at risk, a fact he has urgently pressed onto Belgian authorities, who have so far failed even to acknowledge his safety concerns.

“When I got the news [to report to the prison], I rang to the prison director,” Debie told me. “They knew exactly who I was and they told me, We are very sorry but this is the worst place you could get” assigned to.

October 30, 2008
Lawrence Auster reports Debie's sentence has been suspended...

So, as a result of the authorities' sudden access of humanity, Debie, instead of having been fired from his position as police superintendent, forced off the police force, forced out of the political office to which he was subsequently elected, stripped of his political and civil rights so that he can't vote or run for any office, fined 30,000 euros, and sentenced to prison for a year, he has been fired from his position as police superintendent, forced off the police force, forced out of the political office to which he was subsequently elected, stripped of his political and civil rights so that he can't vote or run for any office, fined 30,000 euros ... and confined to his home for a year.

Clearly, in the EU, the quality of mercy is not strained.

And last year in 'fascistic little Belgium' ...

Peacful demonstrators attacked by Brussels police


Some videos of Debie in court (here and here) and as a policeman (here and here).

And a video by Diana West of Debie's last day in parliament here.