Youth rebel in Brussels
AN IDENTITY CHECK set off an explosion of anger by youth from immigrant
(mainly Moroccan) familles on Friday May 10 in the
Forest precinct of Brussels.
Several hundred youth fought with the police and attacked symbols of luxury
The racism of the Brussels police force is particularly striking. Underpaid and working in appalling conditions, the communal police "take it out" on the young immigrants - a fact described recently-published book by an former Brussels cop. Extreme right groups have infiltrated the police. According to several inhabitants of the district, fascist militants gave the young immigrants "logistic ed that vandalism cases get top priority in the courts. Of course, there will probably be legislative elections this autumn and election fever is on the rise.
These events represent several kinds of failure. After the 1988 legislative elections, the new government installed a royal commissariat for immigrants, headed by Paula D'Hondt (social Christian - a former minister who had just lost her position). Her series of reports were hardly looked at by the government, on its own admission. The commissariat is an advisory body unable to make policy. The integration policy that it is fighting for (and and elitism.
VINCENT SCHELTIENS
And also in France
ON THE night of Saturday, May 25, 1991, a hundred youth clashed with police in the Val Fourré district of Mantes, some 40 kms from Paris, looting and burning the town centre shops. Six young people were arrested during the
VER the next few days further night; one of them died on May 27 in detention, victim, according to the police story, of "heart failure following a serious asthma attack." This death recalls clashes took place in other parts another, that of Malik Oussekine, who died as a result of a police charge during of Brussels, including Saintthe student movement of November-December 1986.
Gilles, Molenbeek, Saint-Josse and Schaerbeek. This explosion of anger
Over the past eight months, the French suburban housing estates have been is born of a social situation which is to be the scene of repeated explosions of violence on the part of desperate young found in all the big cities and housing people who live in these human dumping grounds where unemployment, inseestates of Belgium, where the authorities, curity and racism are concentrated.
whether at national or local level, have
The story begins in October 1990 in Vaulx-en-Velin, a working class district nothing to offer young people in general, near Lyons, where some 20% of the 50,000 inhabitants are unemployed. The and the immigrant youth in particular.
"accidental" death of a local youth at the hands of a police patrol led to violent
Some 22% of the inhabitants of these clashes between hundreds of youth and the forces of order. There was looting quarters of Brussels, and one child in two, and buildings were set on fire. The scenario is the same everywhere: police live below the poverty line, as defined by and private security guard provocations; racist insults hurled at young "beurs"
(young people of immigrant background) and repression of the "wreckers".
About 50% of Brussels' youth are from
As in Sartrouville and Argenteuil - where the same outbursts of anger have immigrant backgrounds — about 27% of been seen — Val-Fourré is a part a region of big public suburban housing the whole population. The immigrant popestates built in the 1960s to accommodate immigrant labour employed in the ulation is concentrated in nine of the city's big factories. These today have been hard hit by the economic crisis. Nearly
19 communes. This layer of the popula-
20,000 jobs disappeared in this region between 1982 and 1990, above all in the tion is subjected to systematic discriminaautomobile and chemical industries. The unemployment rate is 10.5%, reachtion. This applies in education: which is ing more than 20% in some districts, and educational levels are low.
not adapted to their needs and where no
The authorities are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating acknowledgement of their different cultusocial and economic situation in such places, and attempts are being made to ral background is made; employment:
set up rehabilitation programmes and programmes to encourage youth employwhere many small firms refuse to employ ment. But it is not clear how the joblessness of young people is to be dealt with immigrants; police hostility: with identity when nearly 30% of those seeking work are under 25 years old.
checks several times a day, often by the
Inthe coming months such explosions will occur again and again, in confronsame cops; and with regard to recreation:
no playing fields for the children — in
Forest the swimming pool has been turned into an expensive dance hall, which refuses entry to immigrants.
support" with the aim of being better able which includes a number of sensible
23
June 10, 1991 • #208 Internationa/ Viewpoint
basic democratic rights. He is denied the right of freedom of expression, and the right to engage in peaceful political activity. He is being persecuted for his consistent advocacy of democratic principles. He is a political prisoner.
Please write to Mahmoud at the following address;
Mahmoud Ahmad Massarwa, Ayalon Prison, P.O. Box 16, Ramleh, Israel. *