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Today we were executed. But we will rise.
A message from Frank Vanhecke MEP, Vlaams Blok Party Leader,
9 November 2004

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.

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.

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.

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 overrepresented, 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 http://www.flemishrepublic.org).

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.

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.

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.

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
[...]."

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.

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.

Frank Vanhecke, MEP
Vlaams Blok Party Leader

Yep ... they won't bury you, you will bury them.

Pak ze Fifi!!