Belgium: Don’t Open the Door to the Police
Belgium is legendary for its historical hospitality toward foreigners, regardless of legal status or nationality. But that’s the nostalgic past of a land that once protected those fleeing the hazardous context of their home countries, granting political asylum and humanitarian status to displaced human beings.
In 1980, the federal government enacted the foundational Law of 15 December 1980 on the entry, residence, settlement, and removal of foreigners, effectively setting up mechanisms to pursue undocumented humans. Under this framework, police can apprehend individuals and subject them to administrative detention for up to 24 hours. A little punishment that could be seen as a teacher caning its students for not bringing the notebooks to class. However, a dystopian new draft bill (avant-projet de loi) has been lingering in the State Council (Conseil d’État).
This legislative amendment is engineered to expand the 1980 law, authorizing the State to empower police officers to breach human foyers and private residences via home visits (visites domiciliaires). These homes are targeted if they house identified “undocumented beings” deemed to be a “danger to public order or national security.” Indeed, there’s no possibility to say that all outsiders are a threat, as all locals behave wonderfully. Do you know who the architects behind this are? Those whose rhetoric aggressively opposes a multicultural mixture of society, thriving strongly for its absolute homogenization.
The MR (Mouvement Réformateur) party, sniffing closely around Trumpian aesthetics and nationalist European trends, acted as the political wizards behind this arbitrary law project. The initiative specifically targets individuals who fail to cooperate with forced return procedures and refuse to comply with an Order to Leave the Territory (Ordre de quitter le territoire / OQT). Consequently, the State brands these humans as an existential harm to the community. It represents a vile generalization of anyone who fled their homeland due to systemic threats, climate change catastrophes, or other hazardous contexts that made survival impossible. No one truly wants to leave their hometown behind, except, historically, the vagabonds, the corporate explorers, and the brutal colonizers, much like most Europeans, including Belgium, in previous centuries and years.
The MR movement conveniently forgets that human migration is a natural law and that Belgium is fundamentally multicultural thanks to that movement and to its colonial past, boasting Brussels as one of the most diverse cosmopolitan hubs in the world. Yet, they loudly cry out to “respect society” with the picture of Martin Luther King in their headquarters while legally sanctifying the violation of its most sacred domain: the homeland, the nation, the flag, the illusions.
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