The New York Times
May 14, 2008
Memo From Liedekerke
Seams of Belgium’s Quilt Threaten to Burst
By STEVEN ERLANGER
LIEDEKERKE, Belgium — If Belgium vanishes one day, it will be because of
little towns like this one, where Flemish politicians are riding a new
wave of nationalism and pu****ng for an independent state.
Liedekerke has only 12,000 inhabitants, but its elected council has
caused a stir by insisting on the “Flemish nature” of the town. Not only
must all town business and schooling take place in Flemish, true
throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be
prohibited from holiday outings, like hikes and swimming cl*****.
“België Barst!” says the graffiti on a bridge near the train station, or
“Belgium Bursts!” the cry of the nationalists who want an independent
Flanders. But here they also want to keep the rich French speakers from
Brussels — only 13 miles away and 15 minutes by train — from buying up
this pretty landscape and changing the nature of the town.
Marc Mertens, 53, is the full-time secretary of the town, a professional
manager who works under the elected, but part-time, town council. Sitting
in a cafe near the old church — Liedekerke is thought to mean “church on
the little hill” — he describes how his grandfather fought in World War I
under officers who gave commands only in French. “And then they would say
in French: ‘For the Flemish, the same!’ ” The phrase still rankles, and
Mr. Mertens’s grandfather, a bilingual teacher, refused an officer’s
commission on principle.
Mr. Mertens, a handsome, genial man, is worried about his town.
“Brussels is coming this way,” he said, explaining that the people here,
having gained some autonomy, do not want to be overwhelmed again by
another French-speaking ascendancy. More schoolchildren, taught in
Flemish, have French-speaking parents. “When I was young I never heard a
foreign language here,” he said. “Now every day I meet people speaking
French.”
Marleen Geerts, 48, a computer-science teacher of 13-year-olds, said
teaching French-speakers took time. “You can’t go on with the material if
they don’t understand it,” she said. “It’s a struggle.” Her school
provides language tutoring.
Some Flemish nationalists, like Johan Daelman, the leader of the right-
wing, anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang party here and a town councilman, want
to keep out French-speaking immigrants from Africa, all in the name of
keeping Liedekerke “unspoiled” — free of the crime and racial tensions of
Brussels.
“We don’t want Liedekerke to become like a suburb of Paris,” Mr. Daelman
said, describing the riots, car burnings and attacks on the police by
mostly African immigrants to France. “Big city problems are coming here,
and we want to stop it.”
That combination of national pride, rightist politics, language purity
and racially tinged opposition to immigration is a classic formula these
days in modern Europe, what critics call a kind of nonviolent fascism.
Flemish nationalists have another complaint. Flemish are 60 percent of
Belgium’s population, and inhabit the richest part, with much lower
unemployment than the French-speaking Wallonia part. “The French speakers
used to rule us, ” Mr. Daelman said. Now, in the national government, he
added, “It’s not the principle of one man, one vote, and every problem in
Belgium now becomes a problem of the communities. It’s a surrealistic
spectacle, and the best answer is to divide the country.”
Liedekerke’s effort to restrict school outings by language embarrassed
both the federal and Flanders governments, both seated in Brussels.
Marino Keulen, the Flemish interior minister, vetoed it, though the town
intends to proceed anyway.
“It’s the wrong vision and method,” Mr. Keulen said in an interview in
Brussels. “They can’t do it by a language test.” He said the problem was
the popularity of the Liedekerke program with Brussels residents “who
want to use the facilities of Flanders, which are of a high quality.”
Other ways to restrict the program, using fees and residency
qualifications, seem fine, and less embarrassing. But Mr. Keulen, too, is
annoyed by the subsidies to Wallonia, as Flanders has less than 6 percent
unemployment (compared with 16 percent) and produces 81 percent of
Belgium’s ex****ts. He said he sup****ted a federal state, but even his
chief of staff, Steven Vansteenkiste, complains about a French-speaking
veto.
“We are a majority and very often we can’t do what we want, even in our
own region, because the French minority blocks us,” Mr. Vansteenkiste
said. “We see a lot of money going from the north to the south, but
they’re lagging even further behind us. They are really afraid we want to
leave and drop them.”
Little Liedekerke is im****tant nationally, too, because it is part of the
electoral and juridical district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, known as
BHV, at the heart of the inability to form a stable Belgian federal
government.
Flemish legislators want to divide the district, separating largely
French-speaking Brussels, which has special bilingual status in Flanders
as the federal capital, from the other Flemish areas. That would stop
French-speaking politicians from seeking votes in Flemish areas and
effectively end special bilingual rights for some 70,000 French speakers
living in Flanders, but outside Brussels.
But Wallonian legislators are blocking the changes, fearing that their
power is eroding, that the Flemish are doing some legal ethnic cleansing
and that a divided Belgium will end the subsidies that flow south from
richer Flanders.
Yves Leterme, the Flemish Christian Democrat who is federal prime
minister, promised constitutional changes that would enhance regional
autonomy. It took him nearly 150 days to form a government, but its fate
is still in question, saved only by an agreement last Friday morning to
postpone the BHV imbroglio once again, until at least mid-July.
A prime reason for the fight, said Caroline Sägesser, an analyst at
Crisp, a Brussels research group, is the future border of Flanders. “It’s
about preventing bilingual Brussels from spreading further into Flanders,
because if one day it should secede, Flanders couldn’t keep Brussels,”
she said, given its mostly French-speaking population.
In Liedekerke, Mr. Mertens finds hypocrisies in the fight over children’s
outings. The Flanders s****ts association, Bloso, controlled by the
Flanders government, runs s****ts activities and camps. But Bloso also
says that children who do not speak or understand Flemish can be sent
home without a refund, Mr. Mertens said. “Keulen says we’re against the
law, but this Flemish institution can do it,” he said, “and we’ve written
to them about it.”
So Liedekerke intends to retain its restricted outings program, but under
the letter of the law. It will soon vote on an amendment that says that
its outings program “has a Dutch character,” Mr. Mertens said. “And
instead of saying that the monitor can refuse kids who don’t understand
Flemish, we will write that the monitor can refuse children who
‘disturb’ the outings.” Of course, Mr. Mertens said, smiling, “one can
understand ‘disturb’ in different ways.” To help keep out “relatives” and
“friends” who live in Brussels, Liedekerke will charge them three times
as much as residents.
Mr. Mertens expects his two daughters, 12 and 13, to live in an
independent Flanders, and he thinks he may, too. “I’m convinced Belgium
can’t last,” he said.
The fight over BHV “will be seen as the start of the war between the
Flemish and the French speakers,” he said, adding: “The Flemish people
are becoming more self-aware and more decisive. We’ve been ruled long
enough by the French people, and our time has come. It may take 10, 20 or
30 years. But this Belgium will become superfluous.”
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