- The Belgium Supreme Court just declared Belgium's largest
party "Vlaamse Blok" (Flamish block) a "criminal organization"
and ordered its dissolution.
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- Today we were executed. But we will rise.
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- A message from Frank Vanhecke MEP Vlaams Blok Party Leader
November 9, 2004
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- Today, our party, the Vlaams Blok, has been condemned
to death. This morning, the Belgian Supreme Court upheld the verdict, issued
by the Court of Appeal in Ghent on 21 April, which declared the Vlaams
Blok a criminal organisation. In order to preserve our party members from
prosecution, we are now forced to disband. What happened in Brussels today
is unique in the Western world: never has a so-called democratic regime
outlawed the country's largest political party.
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- The Vlaams Blok was supported by almost 1 million voters
in last June's elections. We got 24.1% of the vote in Flanders, where 60%
of the Belgian population lives. Voting is compulsory in Belgium and no
other party was supported by more people. Our party has grown continuously
for two decades. Since 1987, it has won twelve consecutive elections in
a row. Belgium, established in 1830 by French revolutionaries, is an artificial
construct dominated by the Socialist Francophone minority in Wallonia.
Our party's main objective is the secession of Flanders from Belgium. Flanders
is the free-market oriented Dutch-speaking and politically minorised northern
part of the country.
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- We are the democratic voice of an ever growing number
of Flemings who, in an entirely non-violent way, want to put an end to
Belgium. Our electoral strength is causing panic amongst the Belgian establishment.
A recent opinion poll of the Brussels newspaper Le Soir and the Francophone
state television RTBF (24 October) indicates that the Vlaams Blok currently
stands at 26.9% of the Flemish vote.
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- Despite the fact that a political party should be fought
in the voting booth, the Belgian regime has been harassing the Vlaams Blok
with criminal prosecutions for over a decade. The Belgian Parliament, where
Francophones are over-represented, changed the Constitution in 1999 in
order to limit freedom of expression. It also voted a series of new laws
with the sole purpose of criminalising and defunding our party, including
an Anti-Racism Act and an Anti-Discrimination Act which define "discrimination"
so broadly that every individual can be prosecuted on the basis of them.
(The text of these infamous bills can be found on our website www.flemishrepublic.org).
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- Moreover, according to Belgium's draconian new laws,
every member and collaborator of an organisation that propagates "discrimination,"
can be punished with fines or imprisonment. Furthermore, the onus of proof
has been reversed, so that the complainant does not need to prove that
the accused "discriminates" or propagates "discrimination,"
but the latter has to prove that he does not.
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- Since 1993 the power to prosecute for discrimination
and racism was transferred to a government quango, resorting directly under
the Prime Minister, the so-called Centre for Equal Opportunities and the
Fight against Racism (CEOFR). This quango has now been vindicated by the
Supreme Court, an institution composed of political appointees, half of
them Francophones.
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- Have we ever condoned discrimination on the basis of
race? No, but that did not matter to the Belgian establishment and its
political courts. We were condemned on the basis of a selection of excerpts
from texts provided by the CEOFR. These excerpts were taken from an anthology
of no more than 16 texts published by local Vlaams Blok chapters between
1996 and 2000. According to the court what we wrote was not necessarily
untrue, but our "intentions" were of a criminal nature. The Ghent
ruling, today reaffirmed by the Supreme Court, stated that our texts (though
some were mere quotes of official statistics on crime rates and social
welfare expenditure and another was an article written by a female Turkish-born
Vlaams Blok member about the position of women in fundamentalist muslim
societies) were published with "an intention to contribute to a campaign
of hatred." Such a procès d'intention (a conviction based
on speculation about our supposed motives) is a real disgrace, and the
fact that the Belgian judiciary had to resort to this proves that no other
reasons for convicting us could be found. We have never propagated, advocated
or practised any discrimination. Never.
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- The consequences of the conviction are, however, serious.
According to the law, every member of our party or everyone who has ever
cooperated with it, even if he has not committed any crimes himself, becomes
a criminal by the mere fact of his membership of or his cooperation with
our party. The Ghent verdict literally stated: "Rendering punishable
every person who belongs to or cooperates with a group or society [...]
serves as an efficient means to suppress such groups or societies, as the
lawmaker intended. Rendering punishable the members or collaborators of
the group or society inherently jeopardizes the continued existence or
functioning of the group or society [...]."
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- Indeed, the reaffirmation of the Ghent verdict by the
Supreme Court forces us to disband our party in order not to endanger its
members and collaborators. Therefore, a party congress next Sunday will
convene to officially disband the party. We will, however, put to the congres
the establishment of a new party to defend the political priorities that
the Vlaams Blok has always fought for: an independent and democratic Republic
of Flanders; the traditional moral values of Western civilisation; and
the right of the Flemings to protect their national identity and their
Dutch language and culture.
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- I thank those who founded our party in 1977 and all who
have supported it in the past 27 years. They have fought the good fight.
I thank our one million voters. They deserve a democracy. Belgium does
not want to grant them one; we will. Today, our party has been killed,
not by the electorate but by the judges. We will establish a new party.
This one Belgium will not be able to bury; it will bury Belgium.
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- Frank Vanhecke, MEP Vlaams Blok Party Leader
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