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30 Years of Vlaams Blok / Vlaams Belang
02/26/2008 :: Last December the Vlaams Belang celebrated its 30th anniversary. The late Karel Dillen (1925-2007) founded the Vlaams Blok party in 1977. The party was the first political party in history to openly advocate the abolishment of the artificial Belgian state and the establishment of an independent Flanders. From 75,000 votes in the 1978 general elections, the very first the party participated in, it grew to attract the votes of one million of the six million Flemings.
In the meantime, other parties, such as the N-VA and LDD, also propose Flemish independence and establishment parties, such as the Christian-Democrats, advocate a confederate Belgium with considerable Flemish autonomy.
Prosecution
In 1996 Karel Dillen stepped down as party leader and was succeeded by Frank Vanhecke.
In an effort to kill the party the Belgian authorities had it prosecuted. In 1999 the Belgian Parliament, where French-speaking Walloons are overrepresented, changed the Constitution so as to limit freedom of expression. It also voted a series of new laws with the sole purpose of criminalising and defunding the VB, including an Anti-Racism Act and an Anti-Discrimination Act which define “discrimination” so broadly that they allow prosecution of every and any individual.
When the judiciary refused to issue the verdict which the authorities favoured the case was dragged from one court to another until finally, in 2004, a court was found that was willing to declare our party a criminal and racist organization. This was done on the basis of an anthology of no more than 16 texts (including an article written by a female Turkish-born VB member about the position of women in fundamentalist muslim societies) published by local party chapters between 1996 and 2000.
Vindication
According to the court what we wrote was not necessarily untrue, but our “intentions” were of a criminal nature. 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.
After the verdict was pronounced the Vlaams Blok dissolved itself and a new party, the Vlaams Belang, was established. Like its predecessor, this party has continued to thrive. Today Belgium has become virtually ungovernable, with an “interim Prime Minister” who has to keep the country together, while an ever larger number of Flemings demand independence.
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