Belgium: Plans against migrant community
01 July 1996
A leaked document has revealed that the Belgian army has prepared plans for making war against the black and migrant population in the country. The plans describe migrants, especially those from Africa, as posing a "clandestine threat with a permanent character". It also proposes that reserve army officers should spy on black communities.
The report claims that "many countries and nations wish to live following the "western model" yet at the same time "more and more foreigners wish to live in the EU, especially from Africa." It continues:
"numerous migrant communities have established themselves in the large conurbations, where the major centres of power as well as transport and industry can be found. If those population groups would come to disagree with Belgian government policy they could unleash activities to disrupt these policies or to indicate their displeasure".
The report therefore claims that migrant communities should be seen as a "clandestine threat of a permanent nature".
In order to deal with this "clandestine threat"the report proposes beefing up the Army reserve. The aim would be to create a network of 1,200 army reserve officers who would recruit friends and family into the units. The Army reservists would be expected to operate as a "police constable controlling his beat". They would get to know the local police force and other authorities, as well as gathering information on "subversive elements".
Reaction to the report has been intense. The ruling Socialist Party has condemned the report's major premise as racist and has demanded an explanation from the Minister of Defence, Jean-Pol Poncelet, who claimed no knowledge of the report. He in turn declared that "no trace of racism must be tolerated within the army." In a hastily called press conference the author of the report, Colonel De Vleeschouwer, defended the targeting of migrant communities claiming that "we were only trying to define a potential threat... it could just as easily have been Germans or Swedes". General Brunin, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, regretted the paragraph concerning migrants, claiming that he had only read the report hastily and had only learnt of the paragraph targeting migrants through press-cuttings.
Although the offending paragraph has now been removed from the report the basic idea of the creation of a secret army to counter subversion has also caused concern. The De Morgen newspaper has compared the idea to the "stay-behind" networks created in the post-war years as part of the Gladio project. The stay-behind groups were originally set up to act as guerilla units in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion. However the networks very quickly turned their attention to internal subversion, recruiting activists from organisations such as the neo-nazi "Westland New Post". The stay-behind networks are alleged to have ended up providing weapons used by the infamous Nijvel gang to carry out the "Brabant massacres".
The resulting scandal has since persuaded many belgian MPs to call for an end to secret civilian armies. However the Socialist Senator Fred Erdman has pointed out that "some people look back nostalgically to these sort of networks". He has criticised the rewriting of the report, saying "the text should not just be rewritten, what we need is a whole new concept of defence."
De Morgen, 31.7.96.