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		Belgium strikes at the heart of democracy Lincolnshire Echo - November 22 2004 The Belgian legal system is noted for its general ineffectiveness, and for its legendary reluctance to prosecute paedophiles. But suddenly it has roused itself from its torpor, and struck a dagger into the heart of the democratic process. In an extraordinary and unprecedented move, it has banned the country's most popular political party, the Flemish Vlaams Blok. Does this matter in Lincolnshire? Yes. If it can happen in one EU member-state, it can happen in another. The Vlaams Blok has won twelve consecutive elections. Last June, it got over 24% of the vote in Flanders, where 60% of Belgian people live. This makes it the most popular party in the country. Yet it has been banned on the basis of trumped-up and specious accusations of racism and xenophobia, using legal concepts, and "evidence", which are so loose and flaky that they could be applied to almost any political party. The charges are not based on the party's Constitution or the Manifesto, or on statements of leading party officials. Instead, the prosecutors have scraped the barrel. They have trawled through documents published by local party branches between 1996 and 2000. On that basis, almost any political party could be accused of almost any heresy. In any case, many of the quotes were merely taken from official government statistics on crime rates or social welfare. Apparently it's OK for the government to publish the data, but if a political party quotes the figures, it can be deemed to have had "the intention of contributing to a campaign of hatred". This is based on a Belgian legal concept know as "procès d'intention", which entitles the court to speculate about the supposed motives of the party. And the system reverses the burden of proof, requiring the accused to prove a lack of intention. One of the passages cited as evidence was written by a female Turkish-born Vlaams Blok member, criticising the treatment of women in Muslim societies. This was also deemed to "incite hatred". Consider the contrast with Mr. Theo van Gogh in neighbouring Holland, who made a highly controversial film on the same subject, and was murdered for his pains by an Islamic extremist. The liberal establishment rushed to condemn the crime, and to assert Mr. van Gogh's right to free speech. Yet when a Vlaams Blok member makes exactly the same point in Belgium, they are condemned for it. Under Belgian law, when an organisation has been declared racist, it is illegal to be a member of it, so the party has been forced to disband to protect its members. Of course no rational observer believes the charges. The reason for this outrageous denial of democracy, and for the persecution of the party, is that the Vlaams Blok opposes both a federal EU and a federal Belgium. So Belgium, and the EU, are terrified of its success at the ballot box, and will do anything to stop it. The Vlaams Blok wants to secede from Belgium. Here at home, the Scottish National Party wants to secede from the UK. They may be misguided and ill-advised, but it is a perfectly respectable aspiration that they are entitled to promote. It doesn't make the SNP xenophobic or racist or anti-democratic. Vlaams Blok wants to leave the EU. Here at home, UKIP has the same policy (as do many Conservatives I meet). It is (at the very least!) a respectable and legitimate aspiration for a political party, and does not of itself make UKIP xenophobic. And Vlaams Blok stands for a tough immigration policy. So does the Conservative Party. And we're not racist either. It is an outrage against democracy that the Belgian establishment has banned this Party. The acceptability of a political party should be left to the people at the ballot box, not decided by unaccountable judges in defiance of public opinion. As my good friend and colleague Dan Hannan MEP has pointed out, in the old Soviet Union, they never banned elections. They just banned parties that disagreed with the state. In this, as in so many areas, the parallels between the European Union and the Soviet Union are too close for comfort.