Belgian government collapses after party quits coalition

Belgian plans to ban Islamic veils thrown into doubt after centre-right liberal party pulls out of Leterme coalition


* Mark Tran
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 April 2010 15.30 BST


The collapse of the Belgian government has thrown into doubt plans to pass a law that would ban Islamic veils in public.

The government, led by the prime minister, Yves Leterme, fell after the centre-right Flemish liberal party Open VLD pulled out of his five-month-old coalition. Leterme tendered his government's resignation to King Albert after an emergency cabinet meeting, but the monarch did not immediately decide whether to accept it.

"I doubt that they will debate this law as they have other things on their minds," said a Belgian official in London.

MPs had been expected to pass a law today that would have made Belgium the first European country to ban the wearing of the burqa, which covers the face and body, or the niqab, which covers the face.

The bill, which has been criticised by human rights campaigners as a violation of the fundamental right to freedom of religion, was approved unanimously by the lower chamber's home affairs committee last month.

The law would make it a crime to be in a public place with one's face partially or wholly concealed in a way that would make identification impossible. Violators would be subject to a fine of €15-€25 (£12-£21) with a possible prison sentence of one to seven days.

There are no official statistics on how many women wear face-covering veils, though analysts agree it is a marginal phenomenon among the roughly 400,000 Muslims living in Belgium (about 4% of the country's population). In 2009, 29 women were stopped by police in eight municipalities in the Brussels region that already ban the full Muslim veil.

A similar move is being considered in France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered legislation paving the way for a total ban on the full Islamic veil. Sarkozy is moving ahead on the ban despite the advice of experts who warned that such a broad ban risked contravening France's constitution.

Sarkozy has repeatedly said that such clothing oppresses women and is "not welcome" in France. A government spokesman, Luc Chatel, said after yesterday's weekly cabinet meeting that the president decided the government should submit a bill to parliament in May on an overall ban on burqa-like veils.

"The ban on veils covering the whole face should be general, in every public space, because the dignity of women cannot be put in doubt," Chatel said.

The decision to seek a full ban, rather than a limited ban, came as a surprise. After a cabinet meeting a week ago the government spokesman announced a decision for legislation that bans the veil but takes into account conclusions by the council of state, France's highest administrative office.

The council advised that a full ban would be "legally very fragile". A six-month parliamentary inquiry concluded that a full ban would raise constitutional issues, as well as enforcement problems.

Muslim leaders in France say that the face-covering veil is not a religious requirement of Islam but have cautioned against banning the garment. Of France's estimated 5 million Muslims, only a tiny minority wear the full veil. Some critics of the ban have warned that such a move will serve merely to reinforce the alienation of those women from mainstream society.

Human Rights Watch has strongly criticised planned legislation to ban face-covering veils on human rights and practical grounds.

"Bans like this lead to a lose-lose situation," said Judith Sunderland, senior western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. "They violate the rights of those who choose to wear the veil and do nothing to help those who are compelled to do so."

The group argues that there is no evidence that wearing the full veil in public threatens public safety, public order, health, morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others – the only legitimate grounds for interference with fundamental rights, it said. Rather than help women who are coerced into wearing the veil, a ban would limit, if not eliminate, their ability to seek advice and support.

Without the support of the centre-right Open VLD, the remaining four parties in the Belgian government still had 76 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament but the coalition would have found it hard to rule with such a slim majority.

Open VLD said it had lost faith in the government, composed of centre-left and centre-right parties, because it had failed to resolve a dispute between French- and Dutch-speaking parties over electoral boundaries around the capital, Brussels.

Belgian government collapses after party quits coalition | World news | guardian.co.uk

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A Belgian friend of mine thinks the country may well up splitting, this stuff has been going on a long time and there are powerful regional trensions.

From Politics Daily

Quebec Burqa Ban? Province Moves to Prohibit the 'Total Veil'

Sarah Wildman
Posted: 04/22/10



Early last month, an Egyptian immigrant was banned from her French classes in Quebec. At issue was neither grades nor bad behavior but dress. Naema Ahmed, 29, refused to remove her niqab, the full veil that covers all but the eyes. The school, which helps integrate immigrants into French-speaking Quebec through language immersion, said that having Ahmed's mouth covered impeded her teacher's ability to correct pronunciation. Further, they couldn't guarantee that Ahmed's teacher would be a woman, which she requested. Ahmed was asked to either remove her veil or not return to class. She opted for the latter.

Already well acquainted with the mores of the West, Ahmed filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission. The YouTube- Uproar in Canada over face-veil ban. "There is no ambiguity about this question," Quebec's immigration minister, Yolande James, told the press. "If you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values. We want to see your face." Further, Quebec Premier Jean Charest took a cue from Belgium, France and the Netherlands, pushing forward a bill that bans women wearing a burqa, niqab or any sort of full-face veil from receiving or applying for government services, including non-emergency medicine and day care. In other words: The ban applies pretty much everywhere but the street itself.

"This is a symbol of affirmation and respect -- first of all, for ourselves, and also for those to whom we open our arms," Charest told reporters. "This is not about making our home less welcoming, but about stressing the values that unite us. . . . An accommodation cannot be granted unless it respects the principle of equality between men and women, and the religious neutrality of the state."

In the weeks since Ahmed's story first broke, the Canadian media have debated the merits of reasonable accommodation, multiculturalism and integration. There have been protests, including this past weekend, on both sides of the debate. And the Muslim community is also divided. The Muslim Council of Montreal argues that "all Canadians, whether Muslim or not, are guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedomsthe freedom of religion and conscience. The state has no business in the wardrobes of the nation." And there are those like the Muslim Canadian Congress, which wants Canada to ban the burqa.

Some 80 percent of Canadians in general and 95 percent of Quebecois support the move.

For North Americans, this debate is relatively new. But the move to abolish the "total veil," as the French call it, has dominated European news for years now. Last fall, France initiated a parliamentary review on the subject, and on Wednesday President Nicholas Sarkozy renewed his push for a full ban, similar to a bill proposed by the Belgians -- once less roiled by these debates than their French neighbors but who have moved to halt the wearing of full veils in public, calling it a threat to public security.

"Women are already limited in their right to wear the burqa" in France, said Patrick Weill, a senior research fellow at the French National Research Center, who served on a 2003 French commission on secularism. "You cannot be a teacher, or a student. You cannot be a civil servant. You are already limited." But he pointed out a problem for even the most militant of secularists intent upon further bans: "What if [a woman who wears this veil] lives alone and she thinks she cannot go out without it, she cannot go out for food? She cannot go to a hospital if she is sick? That would be an attack on basic human rights. Whatever you think about wearing the burqa, you have to provide this person basic rights to eat. The European Court of Human Rights might declare the law unconstitutional. In that case it will a big victory for the fundamentalists."

The veil is seen, alternatively, as a means of repression, a public security risk, an indicator of fundamentalism, and a form of religious expression that must, in democratic societies, be tolerated.

Americans, known for championing religious liberties, are also not beyond seeing this as question of repression. But as my colleague Delia Lloyd pointed out in January, banning the total veil is hard to support philosophically (where do religious rights begin and end?), politically (bans certainly don't extend olive branches) and practically (very few women actually wear the veil).

"The debate in Europe is about the visibility of Islam," said Olivier Roy, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. "You have the traditional Christian right, which considers Islam 'foreign' and that it should be as invisible as possible – for example, those who were against the minarets in Switzerland. Then there are the secularists, who feel burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women."

Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian who has lived in Paris for 30 years, is a professor at l'École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. We first met in 2003, when I was looking for girls who were fighting to wear the hijab -- a head scarf -- in school. (They would lose the battle.) Khosrokhavar sees the issue as three-tiered.

"This sort of total veil," he said by telephone from Paris, "touches something deeply in Europe and in Western identity: individualism. In the West, people are associated intimately with their face and . . . this full veil is a denial of personhood, of individuality. In that respect it is rejected because it goes against Western values, independence."

The second point, he said, is security. Post 9/11 (New York), 3/11 (Madrid) and 7/7 (London), there is fear that if society accepts the veil, "Islamic radicals will ask, always, for more. . . . So they have to set limits. I was in Holland a few days ago and there, too, they were somehow disturbed by this total veil. They say, 'What does it mean? And why?' And many Muslims in Europe and some secular Muslims say this is not dominant Islam. [Those] in the total veil are going beyond the limits of what might be called the legitimate limits of Islam itself."

The third point involves how the veil squares with feminism. The total veil is seen as a symbol of subservience, but one curiosity Khosrokhavar points out is that a large number of converts wear the total veil, and these are women who have adopted both Islam and the veil willingly.

Khosrokhavar said that the veil becomes a focus of "scapegoating" in a time of economic crisis -- that the issue deflects criticism of failed economic policies by creating a false debate involving a small group of women. "It is a very complicated matter. Most of the Muslims [in the West] disapprove of the total veil, but they also disapprove of the law because they believe the law will stigmatize Muslims as a whole.

"It is a symptom of a crisis within most European countries," he continued. "French or German or Dutch identities were clear-cut decades ago, but now they are more and more blurred because of globalization and [the creation of a] European identity. It is very difficult to know who you are unless you oppose someone. If you oppose the [veil] and say, 'That's not French' or Belgian rather than defining what is French or Belgian, one's identity is constructed through opposition."

That identity crisis now extends to North America. Canadians seem just as confused about what it means to be Canadian as their European cousins -- is Canada a country of multiculturalism, devoted to respecting each new culture that comes to it shores? Or is it a nation that requires some give on the part of immigrants? In Canada the fissures extend to the age-old tensions between the French and English regions of the country.

The anxiety and stress surrounding Muslim women and their garb reverberate around the globe, and certainly to Canada's neighbor to the south. And yet, even as uncomfortable as the image of a fully veiled women may make some Americans, the United States lives by the values reiterated by President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech to Muslims last June:

"Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. . . . Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility toward any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. Indeed, faith should bring us together."

Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

Some 80 percent of Canadians in general and 95 percent of Quebecois support the move.

Wwouwwh! Just wwouwwh!

Originally Posted by contracycle

"Bans like this lead to a lose-lose situation," said Judith Sunderland, senior western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. "They violate the rights of those who choose to wear the veil and do nothing to help those who are compelled to do so."

I would tend to agree. I think a limited ban - i.e. not scarves in schools and no scarves on public employees would be fine and the correct compromise between the republican ideals and the reality of modern Europe.

WRT Belgium splitting up. It could happen. Belgium has a strange history and is a relatively recent creation overall. But I also think that it's going to be interesting given their very high level of gvt debt. Shorting Belgium bonds sounds like a good idea, IMHO.

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From the Independent

Belgium passes Europe's first ban on wearing burka in public

Parliament hails bill as victory for women, but Amnesty condemns attack on freedom

By Vanessa Mock in Brussels and John Lichfield in Paris
Saturday, 1 May 2010


The first European ban on the wearing of the Islamic burka in public is poised to come into force in Belgium. A parliamentary vote on a Bill which bans face coverings has raised fears among Muslim groups and human rights campaigners that other countries could follow suit. France is already considering similar legislation.

"We are the first country to break through the chain that has kept countless women enslaved," said Denis Ducarme, a Belgian Liberal party MP. He said that he hoped other European countries would follow Belgium's example. Members of the Belgian House of Representatives called a truce to weeks of bitter feuding caused by the collapse of the government to push through the vote, giving it almost unanimous, cross-party support. The measure now has to be rubber-stamped by the Senate after June general elections to become law.

Amnesty International condemned the move as "an attack on religious freedom". Philippe Hensmans, of Amnesty Belgium, said it had been pushed through without a proper national debate. He said: "It's also not at all clear that it is in line with the Belgian constitution and with international human rights conventions."

The supposed anxiety of politicians in both Belgium and France about the burka "threat" to female dignity and Western values has its cynical side, say critics. But it also points to a Europe-wide shift in fear of Islam away from standard, right-wing race-baiting towards a more middle-class determination to defend liberal values. The Belgian move was particularly striking in that the country's linguistically divided politicians can agree on almost nothing. Yet they were able to find parliamentary time to ban the full-length veil even as the country teeters on the brink of division.

France too, although facing a multitude of economic and social problems is considering "emergency legislation" to ban the burka and niqab before politicians go on holiday in August. Yet the French security services estimate that only 2,000 out of approximately two million adult Muslim women in France – 0.1 per cent – wear the full-length veil. Edouard Delruelle, co-director of the Belgian Institute for Equal Opportunities said only about 215 women "at most" in Belgium wear the burka.

In neither Belgium nor France, is the burka or niqab a rapidly growing phenonemenon. But in both countries, anti-burka legislation has found support across the usual left-right political divide with opposition to the garment creating unnatural alliances between social conservatives and feminist pressure groups.

In Belgium, the idea was first proposed by the Flemish far right as "a first step against Islamisation". In France, the idea was first raised last summer by a communist mayor and parliamentarian as a necessary defence of the Republican values of "liberty" and "equality". President Nicolas Sarkozy ran with the idea, seemed to lose interest and then insisted earlier this month in pushing ahead before the end of July. His unpopularity and need to prop up his right-wing core support may have influenced his decision.

But the proposed French ban is supported by several senior figures on the French centre-left (and opposed by others). It is strongly supported by the feminist group, Ni putes Ni Soumises, which works for women's rights in the heavily male-dominated, racially-mixed French suburbs. They view it as an important declaration that certain Western values, including female equality, are not consistent with the more extreme forms of Islam.

The draft French anti-burka law will say that "no one can wear a costume in public places intended to hide the face", according to a leaked draft. The fine for a first offence will be €150 (£130). Forcing a woman to wear a full-length veil by "violence or threats" will also be an offence, punishable by a fine of €15,000.

The Belgian Bill outlaws any clothing that partly or fully covers the face and worn in public. Anyone flouting the rule could face a fine of up to €25 and, in theory, up to seven days in prison, though legislators say it is highly unlikely that would be ever be imposed. Builders, nurses or other professionals who might need to cover their faces have been exempted from the Bill.

Local authorities in Belgium have already been allowed to clamp down on head-coverings. Jan Creemers, the Mayor of Maaseik, a small town on the Dutch-German border, said he had used a local ruling to deal with a group of heavily veiled women. "It became a problem in our town because we had about 50 women who walked around like that, which really annoyed many other residents. They kept coming to me to ask me to do something about it," he told Belgian radio. "I spoke to a couple of these ladies to ask them very simply not to wear this kind of clothing. But one in particular refused point-blank so eventually the police opened legal proceedings against her."

Michel Doomst, a Flemish MP, added: "If you have people who cover themselves up entirely, it sends out a very wrong signal to society. And that's why there was so much pressure from parliamentarians and why there's been cross-party support to do something about it."

But it could be many months before the Senate endorses the ruling. The present political upheavals and disputes between the Francophones and Flemish over language and voting rights make it likely that it will slip to the bottom of the agenda, and constitutional experts are likely to refine the legal wording of the text, parliamentarians say.

Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

Members of the Belgian House of Representatives called a truce to weeks of bitter feuding caused by the collapse of the government to push through the vote, giving it almost unanimous, cross-party support.

I heard on Swiss news that the house passed this new law with only two parliamentarians voting against it. Incredible!

Racism is raising its ugly head once again here in Europe.

Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

Parliament hails bill as victory for women

They've exchanged one bunch of bigots set on telling them how to dress for another.

Oh joyful day.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

They've exchanged one bunch of bigots set on telling them how to dress for another.

Indeed.

Quote:

They've exchanged one bunch of bigots set on telling them how to dress for another.

Reflected in derivation of the word "bigot": "bi-", meaning two, and "got", an acronym for "gormless old twerp".

From SwissInfo

After minarets, Swiss target the burqa

Thomas Stephens
swissinfo.ch
May 5, 2010 - 21:06


Six months after Switzerland banned the construction of minarets, parliamentarians in canton Aargau want to see a nationwide ban on Islamic full-body veils in public places.

This is the latest in a series of developments – from calls for Muslim cemeteries to young Swiss converts to Islam being accused of threatening the country’s security – that has strained relations with Muslims in Switzerland.

“It confirms my fears that after a media frenzy, we’ve now got a political frenzy. And as with the minarets, there’s not much reflection going on,” Stéphane Lathion, head of a research group on Islam in Switzerland, told swissinfo.ch.

“Using the law to ban something in such a blunt manner will inevitably be taken as a provocation.”

Coming a week after Belgium’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly backed a bill that considered burqa-type clothing incompatible with basic security, politicians in the northern Swiss canton of Aargau passed a similar proposal by a small far-right faction by 89 votes to 33.

However, it will take months before the cantonal authorities decide whether to present an anti-burqa initiative to the federal parliament.

“The burqa is a symbol of dominance of men over women,” agreed Aargau's centre-right Christian Democrats, Radicals and rightwing Swiss People’s Party.

They described the burqa – which, according to official estimates is worn by around 100 women in Switzerland – as an affront to women’s dignity. They also argued that it posed a security risk for banks and other institutions.

Those on the political left – the Social Democrats and the Greens – opposed the motion.

The Greens spoke of “hysteria” and “fearmongering”, while the Evangelical Party pointed out that veils are also worn at weddings and funerals.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International was critical, saying a complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion. It was also concerned that such women would be further excluded from society.


“Provocation”

“I’m in favour of banning these full-body veils in public spaces, but what disturbs me in this media and political debate are bad arguments,” Lathion said.

“People talk of freedom for women and religious freedom, but in my opinion we shouldn’t mention religion – we should simply ban anyone from walking around in a public space if they are covered up or disguised.”

For Lathion, a more interesting and less provocative issue is that of peaceful co-existence.

“I can defend the right of a young girl to walk around wearing a scarf or a Buddhist monk to wear his robe without challenging the concept of living together harmoniously. But someone who walks around in a full-body veil is either doing it as a provocation or as a way of saying ‘I refuse to live with you’,” he said.

“Considering the current situation, with such tension surrounding anything to do with Islam, I think it would be much wiser for the authorities to ban this type of demonstration in public places.”


Tension

This tension came under the global spotlight in November 2009, when nearly 58 per cent of Swiss voters approved an initiative banning the construction of minarets.

Switzerland’s image as a country of human rights was rocked and Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, told swissinfo.ch that something was “culturally wrong” in Switzerland.

In March Switzerland came in for criticism from the United Nations Human Rights Council. A resolution said the ban was a “manifestation of Islamophobia that clearly contravenes international human rights obligations concerning freedom of religion, belief, conscience and expression”.

Also in March a call by a Swiss Muslim umbrella group for Islamic cemeteries in every canton provoked a wave of reactions.

A month later the head of the Migration Office warned that some young Swiss converts to Islam – referring to the controversial Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) – were a potential threat to the country’s security.

Alard du Bois-Reymond said such converts included people who wanted a “radically different society” and pointed to examples in Britain and Germany where such demands had provided “fertile ground for potential terrorists”.

The ICCS believes a fatwa council is needed in Switzerland as a theological authority for dealing with Islamic issues.

To top things off, Switzerland is also struggling to untangle an almost two-year diplomatic stand-off with Libya, whose leader Moammar Gaddafi recently called for a holy war against the Swiss.


Chanel burqas

As for the future, Lathion thinks it inevitable that other cantons will broach the subject – indeed Bern and Solothurn are already set to discuss it – but he believed the really interesting thing would be when the debate reached Geneva or Zurich.

“There, the fantastically rich wives or daughters of Saudi princes, who have been visiting for years, walk around covered up. Their burqas have always been accepted as they are accompanied by millions of dollars. What are we going to do with them? Will there be special dispensations for people wearing what I call Chanel burqas?”

He saw no reason why the issue wouldn’t also end up being put to the people.

“[The minaret initiative] was launched with the same logic: there are only four minarets [in all of Switzerland] and very little demand. There was no problem but we created one. There’s a risk of the same thing happening here: there are hardly any burqas in Switzerland, but we’re going to make a big deal and ban something that hardly exists,” he said.

“What disturbs me is the fact that, like in France and Belgium, a secondary phenomenon has been turned into an affair of national importance. It’s irresponsible and unprofessional on the part of the media and irresponsible for politicians to pour oil on the flames. It’s dangerous.”