Brussels mayor bans protest against islamisation of Europe
From the
New Europe
The mayor of Brussels, Freddy
Thielemans, after discussions with the police and other services,
decided to ban a demonstration against the progression of the
practices of Islam, saying he feared the event would trigger
incidents between the demonstrators and the foreign population of his
city.
I decided to forbid the September
11 demonstration ‘against the Islamicisation of Europe, he said.
Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call
racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of
international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by the
European legislation. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly
pronounced judgments condemning this type of acts.
The organization known as SIOE,
Stop the Islamisation of Europe, wanted to organize a rally in front
of the European Parliament on September 11, exactly six years after the
attacks on New York. The organisers insisted that they have no
connection to the parties of the extreme-Right, but their desire is to
stop the “invasion” of Islamic practices in Europe. Their anger is
directed at Islamic law, which they say violates equality and democracy.
Udo Ulfkotte, one of the organizers of the anti-Sharia demonstration in
Brussels, went to the European capital to confer with lawyers about
legal steps to counter last week’s decision to ban the demonstration.
Ulfkotte gave interviews to some of the major Belgian newspapers.
Ulfkotte expected that thousands of Europeans, from all of the 27 EU
countries, would have come to Brussels on September 11 to support the
demonstration’s demand. When asked what the organisers would do if the
Belgian authorities uphold the ban.
In that case we still ask people to come to Brussels, where we will
stage a ‘birthday party’ for Mr Thielemans and everyone else who happens
to be born on 11 September, he said.
Three organisations are behind the planned demonstration; the Danish
anti-Islam party SAID, the British group No Sharia Here and the German
organisation Pax Europa.
Update:
Appealing to Protest
2nd September 2007
The mayor's decision to ban the
protest has been upheld by a Belgian court and the Belgian High Court
confirmed the ban after an apppeal.
And the Danish branch of the alliance says its members will march
anyway.