arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Antwerp, 30 November- The Arab European League (AEL) learned today that the Antwerp public prosecutor's office charged AEL president Dyab Abou Jahjah –who was arrested last night- with criminal association, being an accomplice to public disorder while showing arms, deliberately blocking traffic, destroying vehicles, and assaulting and wounding a police officer.

Abou Jahjah will face a hearing on Tuesday where the court will decide whether to release him, or remand him in custody pending investigations.

AEL finds these accusations baseless and unfounded. The rioting and violence that occurred following the racist murder of 27 year old Mohammed Ashrak by an extremist Belgian last Tuesday, was the result of cold blooded homicide. If Abou Jahjah played a role, it was in attempting to contain the anger and restore calm.

No one but the murderer and the Belgian authorities are responsible for the sorrowful events that followed Ashrak's murder. Holding Abou Jahjah responsible for this exposes the inability to deal with the situation and the desire to look for a scapegoat.

Instead of addressing the issue of racism that killed an innocent young man last Tuesday, the far-right media launched a vicious defamation media campaign on Abou Jahjah and AEL that only speaks for itself.

It is our confidence that Abou Jahjah's legal position is strong and the accusations levelled against him are groundless.

We continue to call our members and sympathizers to show their support by staying vigilant, alert and also maintaining the calm.

M. Jahjah, the self-proclaimed "Abou" of the Arab European League, is just an arab clone of M. Dewinter, the Vlaamse Blok leader.

Both share the same ethnic discourse. Both publicly promote communautarism, while privately professing plain racism.

Like M. Dewinter, M. Jahjah is a mobster.

It makes me sick to see that progressists and humanists can take the defense of a such a disgusting character. And if this is your idea of socialism, let me remind you that it's a rather peculiar form: national-socialism.

Laurent Szyster

Dear Laurent,
Als jij hier komt schelden, dan mag ik het ook. Maar wees gerust, ik zal beleefd blijven.
Als jij ziek wordt van mensen die opkomen voor hun rechten,
als jij je opwindt omdat "progressieven en humanisten" de verdediging opnemen van het recht op vrije meningsuiting,
als jij het nodig vindt om Abou Jahjah "disgusting" te noemen,dan sta jij alvast héééél dicht bij je vriendjes van het blok,
(en VLD & SP.a (met een hééééél kleine "a") en de hele kliek van regeringspartijen die de voorbije dagen hebben aangetoond dat ze, als het erop aan komt, in hetzelfde kamp zitten als Dewinter en co).

Wel, als onze eigen regering, geruggesteund door de nodige spin doctors in de media, in hun zogenaamde verkiezingskoorts (wat overigens absoluut geen excuus is, want wij betalen ze om het belang van IEDERE burger in dit land te dienen, niet dat van een partij), nu uit schrik voor het Blok plotsklaps rechtser worden dan rechts, en daarmee het programma van het Blok gaan beginnen uitvoeren, ja, dan kunnen wij de volgende verkiezingen net zo goed allemààl voor het Blok gaan kiezen...

The AEL is not privately professing plain racism : the VB is, and not only privately. European Arabs are in the same position as the US Africans : they are a MINORITY, an OPPRESSED minority, and one of the reason they are oppressed is the colour of their skin.

When you compare (legally) rebelling oppressed minorities with the fascists, you do exactly what all colonialist governments have always done in order to manipulate and turn public opinion against the rebelling minorities.

I propose you read the speech Malcom X gave some days before he was assassinated, and which ends with these words :

"I say again that I'm not a racist, I don't believe in any form of segregation or anything like that. I'm for the brotherhood of everybody, but I don't believe in forcing brotherhood upon people who don't want it. Long as we practice brotherhood among ourselves, and then others who want to practice brotherhood with us, we practice it with them also, we're for that. But I don't think that we should run around trying to love somebody who doesn't love us."

In other words, what all these people do is a legitimate RESISTANCE. The reason why the AEL has been the victim of a very mediatised lynching, orchestrated by the Belgian politicians and the media they control, is that the AEL represents the beginning of a coalition between Arab Europeans and other European alterglobalisation activists.

Politicians all over the world are afraid to see that more and more people are uniting to use their rights to defend themselves, opposing the established institutions, and trying to democratically create a new world, with more justice and freedom. That is precisely what Minister Dusquene confirmed when he said that if the law had to be changed, HE would change it. How does he know that the parliament will accept changing the law ? Because he knows that, for some years now, the only thing the Belgian parliament does is systematically validating what the government has already decided (with some exceptions, but concerning not very important topics).

This is NOT democracy.

Don't think these activists are having fun : most of time, they are slandered, or they lose their job, or they are imprisoned, above all what they are already enduring as an oppressed minority.

Don't let YOU manipulate by the politicians and the media, Laurent, THEY are controlled by the big business, THEY don't dare to oppose the racist and mafia like Bush junta. THEY are implementing this new fascist "US world order".