Bart Debie Heads to Prison
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Diana West, DianaWest.net, Oct. 29, 2008
“Funny enough, one does get used to the news.”
That’s what Bart Debie told me on confirming that, yes, he has been ordered to report to a Belgian prison on Wednesday—tomorrow—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. Of course, expressing incredulity over Debie’s utter innocence of “racism” is not to admit to the legitimacy of such “racism” prosecutions. Any such prosecutorial curb on speech is a gross violation of freedom of speech; but there is a doubly unjust and even absurd aspect to this case given Debie’s non-involvement. Hence the Kafka- and Koestler-esque touches.
But there’s also a touch of Dumas to the story. This struck me when I first listened to Debie tell his tale last summer during a visit to Antwerp, a city of about 500,000 people including some 40,000 illegal aliens mainly from Turkey and Morocco.
Once upon a time, Debie, a clean-cut and athletic-looking man of 34, was a senior police officer. When I met him, he was on the city council, but at age 25, he was the youngest police superintendent in the country who would later be nationally celebrated for leading successful police campaigns against mafia-run prostitution, human trafficking and illegal drugs organizations in Antwerp. Then came a night in 2003, after which things get both complicated and nightmarish.
I am still trying to master the facts of this five-year-plus case, but here’s how I understand the salient points: 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.”
Initially, Debie was given a suspended sentence in what turned out to be the first of two trials. “I was very happy with the first sentence,” Debie recalled. 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 desperate to retain centralized power.
In Debie’s case, this second time around in court, prosecutors got the racism conviction they sought—again, for remarks Debie didn’t make during the station incident Debie wasn’t present for.
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.
Naturally, as a man without rights, Debie had to resign from the city council, which is where I came in last summer. In fact, I videotaped him standing next to his city council seat for what he expected would be the last time. He is now prohibited from running for elective office, from voting, and from working in the civil service. When we spoke, he told me he was planning to get married in 2009 and was looking into whether, without civil rights, he would even be allowed to.
But that is in the future. 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. Debie has a final plea in to the Belgian Justice Minister, Jo Vandeurzen. “I’m not going to argue my sentence; I’ve accepted that,” he explained. Given the acute risks to his physical safety, however, Debie has asked Vandeurzen to allow him to serve an alternate sentence, something like street cleaning or zoo cleaning, which he says is not uncommon in Belgium.
So far, of course, he has heard nothing.
Why do I say “of course”? Unless this posting can really rattle the truffle tray in the Belgian palace, it’s hard to imagine humanitarian concerns succeeding where logic and evidence have long failed. But we can hope.
Meanwhile, Debie is trying to look ahead. “Funny enough,” he said, “there is something in that after this they can’t do anything else to me. I’ll be free.”
Sooner, let’s hope, rather than later.
[Ed. Note: Mr. Debie was released shortly after reporting to prison. He will serve out his sentence under house arrest.]
(Posted on October 30, 2008)
Comments
This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard. It sounds like something from a book written during the Cold War or an 80’s political movie.
Posted by idareya at 5:55 PM on October 30
“Initially, Debie was given a suspended sentence in what turned out to be the first of two trials. “I was very happy with the first sentence,” Debie recalled.
The policeman who admitted to making the “racist” comments went unpunished and now serves, Debie told me, on a “team for managing diversity …..”
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An appalling story!
I would not have been “happy” with such a sentence. Being innocent, I would have been satisfied with nothing less than a complete exoneration. But maybe a suspended sentence is considered lucky enough in Belgium, the best that he could expect. Poor fellow.
And as the story goes on, it gets steadily worse:
“the government stripped him of his political and civil rights for 12 years….
…he was planning to get married in 2009 and was looking into whether, without civil rights, he would even be allowed to.”
The new totalitarian, multi-culti, anti-racist Europe is truly going insane. It’s devouring itself. And, bad as Britain has become, Belgium sounds even worse (if that’s possible)!
I wonder if there’s anything we can do to help this man.
Posted by beenthere at 7:17 PM on October 30
Belgian Embassy:
http://belgium.visahq.com/embassy/United-States/
http://belgium.visahq.com/embassy/Canada/
(PS. I notice it’s under the motto: “erasing borders”)
Posted by ghw at 7:41 PM on October 30
Scary and nightmarish, isn’t it? But when you compare our personal freedoms today to what they were 30 years ago, we’re halfway to where Belgium is.
Posted by Lex Concord at 9:15 PM on October 30
I have been to Belgium more than a few times and I never thought it would devolve into a Soviet type regime. My gosh how things have changed.
Posted by Skipper at 10:14 PM on October 30
In the year of 2008, in a western democratic nation,
It is absolutely insane.
It is sick.
Where are his supporters?
People should march in the streets in revolt against such injustice.
Posted by at 10:46 PM on October 30
They gave him a death sentence. And obviously they did it deliberately. That is VICIOUS!
In America, a cop who is sent to prison, for whatever reason, is never put in with the same “former clientele” he had been arresting.
Posted by at 1:08 AM on October 31
Hate crime laws were created for one purpose and one purpose only: to put White Christian males in prison for anything that they might say or do, or not say or do, and to set free anyone who commits a crime against a White Christian male.
Posted by at 6:43 AM on October 31
Canada is becoming this extreme also. You can go to jail now for expressing any criticism of government immigration policy. Regarding Belgium, it is the Walloons that create this insanity. If Flanders leaves Belgium this nonsense is over.
Posted by at 12:54 PM on October 31
“Scary and nightmarish, isn’t it?
But when you compare our personal freedoms today to what they were 30 years ago, we’re halfway to where Belgium is.”
Posted by Lex
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And that’s even MORE scary and nightmarish!
But it’s instructive too. We can learn something. If this is the path that we’re on, then let’s get off it real quick! We don’t to be like this.
Posted by at 12:54 PM on October 31
With all the flood of so-called “refugees” that we take in, virtually unquestioned, with knee-jerk acceptance, I would certainly think that here is an outstanding case of a person who should be entitled to seek asylum (if he wanted to) in an another country such as Britain, Canada, or the USA. This man is blameless of any “crimes”. The allegations leveled against him are laughable. He is clearly being persecuted, bankrupted, even his life endangered, simply because of his political orientation.
But of course, granting him refugee status will never happen. He’s not the right kind of refugee. Not the kind they want.
[According to the 1951 “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees”, a refugee is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. A person seeking to be recognized as a refugee is an asylum seeker. ]
Posted by browser at 4:28 PM on October 31
I don’t know much about the politics of Belgium in particular, but this violation of free speech and constant monitoring of the population, even imprisonment for your personal views, seems to be happening in most of Western Europe. That there is an agenda here is clear. What is less clear is who exactly is it serving, when it’s clearly not serving the original citizen descendants? Who are these all powerful rulers of the population? They won’t stop at censoring speech. Next it will be, if they could prove it, even what one thinks. Western Europe is becoming a great example of what the United States should Not evolve into. This stuff really is surreal. Whoever is behind it, needs to be vigorously fought by all freedom loving people.
Posted by Bobby at 2:26 AM on November 2
Also important: the Belgian “Centre for Equal Opportunities”, see http://www.diversiteit.be/?setLanguage=3
This Centre is a prosecution office under direct political control of the Belgian political establishment, especially the Walloons, the French-speakers in the South of Belgium. Meanwhile their Flemish lackeys hope to get rid of a political opponent, the same Vlaams Belang. Under disguise of other activities, basically this Centre was founded for these political reasons: destroying a Flemish independence party.
In a legal Belgian situation where roughly even “speaking” is forbidden, it is their lawyers who send people to court and to prison. Reminds me of the inquisition.
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams at 3:54 AM on November 4
According to that line of reasoning it should have been the mayor of Antwerp who had to be sent to prison, because it is the mayor who is the final responsible for the police.
Indeed, I quote: his (the chief of police) 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.”
This also proves how biased the Belgian criminal “justice” is.
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams at 4:50 AM on November 4
“According to that line of reasoning, it should have been the mayor of Antwerp who had to be sent to prison, because it is the mayor who is the final [one] responsible for the police.”
That is an EXCELLENT point!
Or, as an American president once said: “The buck stops here!”
Posted by voter at 4:37 AM on November 6
It’s not called the EUSSR for nothing. Brussels is the capital of the EU. Belgium is just a heartbeat away from a split between the French-speaking Walloons and the Flemish who have never quite gotten along in this cobbled-together union which is being forcibly propped up by the federalist EU. If Belgium collapses then the whole corrupt edifice of the entire NWO/EU project is also in jeopardy. Watch these Red Totalitarian neo-Marxist/Fabian Socialists trample democracy, freedom and Flemish nationalists underfoot in order to save the European part of their one-world project which has been sixty years in the making and started with a little free trade deal called the Common Market.
Posted by dr dees brainwashing elixir at 5:39 PM on November 8