Apr
Apart from a website, which is designed to educate aspiring asylum seekers on their chances of settling in Belgium, there would also be a special Facebook campaign targeting certain groups, namely Palestinians and Moroccans. Belgium’s Immigration Office has launched a six-month-long dissuasion campaign aimed at potential migrants in their countries of origin, as well as refugees in transit countries, Minister of Asylum, Migration, Health […]
Apr
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has apologised for the kidnapping of thousands of children born to mixed-race couples during colonial rule in Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda. The “métis” children born to Belgian settlers and local women were forcibly taken to Belgium and fostered by Catholic orders and other institutions. About 20,000 children are believed […]
Feb
A confrontation took place on Friday between young people and police in front of a school in Lokeren. The incident took place at the Lokeren Technical Arena. Police have been called by the school’s management, says Het Laatste Nieuws. According to the newspaper, four police officers went with a dog to the scene and asked the youth […]
Feb
Four Green MEPs were arrested early Wednesday after breaking into a Belgian military airbase to protest against the presence of U.S. nuclear bombs on European soil. Three of the European Parliamentarians — Molly Scott Cato, Michèle Rivasi and Tilly Metz — unfolded a banner on a runway for F16 fighter jets at the Kleine Brogel […]
Feb
Racial discrimination against Africans “is endemic” in Belgium’s institutions and the nation needs to apologize for the crimes committed during its colonization of Congo and make reparations, U.N. experts said Monday. Belgium’s actions in Congo have long been criticized as one of the worst examples of colonial abuse. Writer Adam Hochschild alleged in his 1998 book […]
Jan
The Brussels Criminal Court has sentenced 54-year-old woman to three years in jail for attacking her 19-year-old daughter. The woman had stabbed her daughter in the abdomen and under the chin after she had converted to Islam and secretly married a Muslim. The judge stated that the sentence would show the mother that her behavior was “unacceptable,” reported Belgian […]
Dec
As the year 2018 came to a close Monday, it brought with it an end to kosher slaughter in the northern Flanders region of Belgium, home to half of the country’s Jewish population and a major supplier of meat for European Jewish communities. In June 2017, the parliament in the Flemish region, one of the […]
Dec
Belgium’s Africa Museum will reopen to the public on 9 December after five years of renovations designed to modernize the museum from an exhibition of pro-colonial propaganda to one that is critical of Belgium’s imperialist past. The museum, full of artefacts and stuffed wildlife, was often criticized for ignoring the brutalities of King Leopold II’s […]
Dec
Belgium’s center-right government is fighting for its survival this week after the largest coalition party broke away from its three partners and said it would not back a global U.N.-backed migration pact. The right-wing N-VA party started a social media campaign against the migration pact Tuesday, more than two months after Prime Minister Charles Michel […]
Nov
Belgian officials are investigating whether doctors improperly euthanized a woman with autism, the first criminal investigation in a euthanasia case since the practice was legalized in 2002 in the European nation. Three doctors from East Flanders are being investigated on suspicion of having “poisoned” Tine Nys in 2010. The 38-year-old had been diagnosed with Asperger’s […]
