Flemish Far-Right Leader Wants Roma Out of Belgium
There’s little difference between what Filip Dewinter is saying below and the swill that nativist groups in the US pour out — the only real difference is the ethnicity of the targeted “out group”.
“With the Roma we have many problems. But I am not particularly interested in their ethnic origin. It’s about the illegality of their situation here and about the fact that they are abusing the welfare protection system, they work on the black market, they commit crimes and deal in drugs. These are the things we are interested in,” Dewinter says.
Vlaams Belang launched a website (www.meldpuntillegaliteit.be) on Wednesday that invites people to report crimes committed by illegal immigrants, a site similar to the one set up by the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands.
However, Dewinter says his website has nothing to do with the Dutch website.
“I know everybody confuses our site with the PVV website which is about Eastern Europeans and the problems they are creating there. Our website is about illegal immigrants and our problems with them and about the government’s immigration policies that we consider very weak. This is our priority not the Romanians or the Poles.”
Dewinter says the Roma can not integrate in the society.
“Roma are a big issue for us, they are present in many cities across Belgium. Most of the asylum seekers are Roma or gypsies and they do not integrate here, they do not want to speak our language, they create many problems. Their place is not here and it is very clear they should go back to their countries. It is obvious they only want to take advantage of their stay here and we cannot allow them to stay here without contributing to our society, without working, earning their money and paying taxes.”
There’s a long history of articles regarding Filip here stretching back more than five years, here’s a few of them:
Pat Buchanan’s Executive Director to be Sentenced for Violent Hate Crime
Vlaams Belang Head at Neo Nazi book fair
Pro-Koln Fascist update, Day Three
Spencer: Teaming up with Euro-Supremacists again
Answering the Vlaams Belang Apologists
Here’s more on Vlaams Blok/Belang and Filip at my blog:
The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury II