eurealist.co.uk

Flemish party banned as racist by Belgium’s high court

The Old USSR in The EU
Well they have done it, they have been threatening this for along time and at last Belgium’s ruling liberal party of Guy Verhofstadt, the prime minister, has used a rights watchdog controlled by the his office to issue a lawsuit against the Vlaams Blok. Belgium’s most popular political party, which is now banned from receiving funding of any kind and will have to disband.
The high court accepted that Vlaams Blok was a racist party because it violated race laws by distributing 16 leaflets in the late 1990s deemed to be incitement against immigrants. One of the tracts, denouncing female circumcision in Islamic countries, was written by a Turkish-born woman member of the Vlaams Blok, but the court ruled that the arguments were intended to foment anti-Muslim feeling.
The party attacked the ruling as a breach of free speech since much of the material consisted of official statistics. The country’s high court yesterday, fuelling concerns that the judicial branch is being used to eliminate political enemies. Frank Vanhecke, the party’s chairman, accused the ruling elite of using totalitarian tactics to stop legitimate political expression. This is an attack on democracy and free speech. Our political opponents have changed the racism laws six times in a campaign to have us condemned. What they have done today is shocking,” he said.
I could not agree more, I do not know if Vlaams Block are racist, but let us just for one moment accept that they are, is this any reason to ban them from expressing their beliefs. Some would obviously say yes to that question, but we must then understand that those who do, cannot have a belief in free speech, because once you start banning one persons freedom to voice their opinions, where do you draw the line, and when you do this to a fully formed political party, that is nothing less than an attack on democracy.
If this is allowed to stand then we can expect further moves to ban freedom of speech, and political parties opposing the EU, this blog could well be considered to be breaking Xenophobic laws, Denis MacShane has already made it clear that Eurosceptic are in his eyes xenophobic. First they make something illegal and then they define it in a way to silence opposition, so Xenophobia is to become the word they use to describe someone who opposes the EU, because the only reason we oppose the EU is because we are frightened of foreigners, therefore we are Xenophobic.
If this goes on we can all wave goodbye to our freedom of expression, freedom to choose which party to vote for. The largest majority of voters in Belgium have been disenfranchised by the courts, if this were to happen in some third world country there would be an outcry of indignation, but here in the EU these people believe they have the right to silence opposition.

It would seem that the old USSR far from being finished has simply moved west, because that was the excuse they, used to ban opposing political parties.