Amnesty International Report 2005 - Belgium

Covering events from January - December 2004

There were further attacks on Jews and Muslims. Detainees, many of them foreign nationals, allegedly suffered police brutality and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Reports of prison overcrowding continued, accompanied by a high suicide rate among prisoners. There was concern that aspects of the asylum determination process and related appeals procedures were not in line with international standards on the rights of asylum-seekers. The entry into force of legislation passed in 2003, establishing a guardianship service to protect the rights of unaccompanied foreign children, was widely welcomed, but the treatment of some such children continued to fall short of international standards. The government announced a national action plan running between the end of 2004 and 2007 to combat domestic violence against women, but there were fears that the plan was insufficiently funded. Trafficking in people, in particular women and girls for sexual purposes, continued to increase.

Scrutiny by intergovernmental organizations

A report published in January by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said that Belgium had made progress but that a number of ECRI's recommendations had "not, or not fully, been implemented."

In July the UN Human Rights Committee expressed concerns relating to, among other things, reports of racist acts; police ill-treatment; failure to guarantee or fully respect the rights of asylum-seekers, unauthorized migrants, detainees, prisoners and the mentally ill; and insufficient assistance for victims of trafficking. It stated that changes to Belgium's universal jurisdiction legislation introduced in 2003 had negative repercussions for victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law. It also expressed concern that the definition of "terrorism" in the Terrorist Offences Act of December 2003 was not fully in line with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Racism and xenophobia in the community

There were numerous accounts of Jews, including children, suffering verbal insults, harassment and violent attacks. There were also racist incidents directed against Arabs and Muslims, including asylum-seekers.

In January ECRI called for "a more determined institutional reaction against the use of racist or xenophobic discourse in politics" and for "concerted efforts of Belgian society as a whole" to address "manifestations of anti-semitism and Islamophobia."

In July the Human Rights Committee noted with concern the number of "racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim acts" and urged Belgium to take all necessary steps to protect communities resident in the country. The federal government strongly condemned such acts and a number of initiatives were taken by federal, regional and community authorities to protect vulnerable communities, combat racism and promote intercultural dialogue. In July, following a sudden upsurge in racist attacks, the government adopted a detailed federal action plan to combat racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.

• In June, four young teenage students at a Jewish rabbinical school in an Antwerp suburb said that they were confronted in the street by a group of young men of North African appearance who were armed with knives and blunt instruments. One of the students, a 16-year-old boy, was stabbed in the back and suffered a punctured lung. The authorities said that every step would be taken to safeguard the school, and a criminal investigation was opened to track down the attackers.

• In July several masked individuals armed with batons and a knife broke into Broechem open centre for asylum-seekers near Antwerp in the early hours of the morning. They entered the residents' rooms, terrorizing them and selecting three men for physical attack. The aggressors asked their victims questions of a racist nature, wanting to know, in particular, if they were Muslims. It later emerged that the victims, one of whom needed hospital treatment as a result of the attack, were of Russian, Israeli and Serbian origin. The police and the Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum-Seekers (Fedasil) announced additional security measures to protect residents of the Broechem and other similar centres for asylum-seekers. Fedasil also lodged a criminal complaint against persons unknown and a criminal investigation was opened. The attackers – all teenagers, including minors – were arrested within days.

Police ill-treatment, racism and impunity

There were further reports of ill-treatment and racist abuse by police. The Standing Police Monitoring Committee stated that complaints of police racism were increasing and that most came from areas with large immigrant populations such as Brussels and Antwerp. The perpetrators of such abuses frequently enjoyed impunity. A number of the fundamental safeguards against ill-treatment in police custody were still not in place.

The Human Rights Committee called on Belgium to amend its Code of Criminal Procedure and "guarantee the rights of individuals in detention to notify their immediate families that they have been detained and to have access to a lawyer and a doctor within the first few hours of detention". The Committee expressed concern about the persistence of "allegations of police violence, often accompanied by racial discrimination", and about reports that relevant investigations were not always thorough and judgments, when handed down, were still "mostly of a token nature." It called for more thorough inquiries and for routine linking of actions alleging police ill-treatment and actions brought against alleged victims by the police.

ECRI called for "further efforts to prevent racist or discriminatory behaviour" by the police. It reiterated the need to implement existing domestic legislation against racism and racial discrimination to ensure that the legislation was applied also to police officers responsible for any such acts.

Abuses during deportation

There were further allegations that foreign nationals, both men and women, suffered excessive force and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the context of deportation operations. In July the Human Rights Committee recommended that those responsible for carrying out deportations be better trained and monitored.

Some foreign nationals, who had been denied access to Belgian territory on arrival at the airport and then held in detention centres for aliens by administrative order awaiting deportation, were released on the orders of the court mandated to rule on the legality of their continued detention. In some cases such people were transferred directly to the transit zone of the national airport under police escort, on the orders of the Aliens Office attached to the Interior Ministry. They were then left for days or weeks, and occasionally months, effectively confined, without passports and access to legal advice, and without some of the basic means of survival such as food, fresh air and proper washing facilities. As a result, they were frequently forced to rely on the charity of passengers and airport staff. Among the victims were people whose asylum applications had been rejected.

The Ministry maintained that, although released by court order, the foreign nationals in question had no right of residence in Belgium and were still subject to deportation orders issued by the Aliens Office. It said that by being placed in the transit zone, the individuals were not being detained, but were simply being escorted to Belgium's border and were free to leave by catching a flight to their country of origin or a third country, with the costs being borne by the airline which had carried them to Belgium.

AI joined a number of domestic non-governmental organizations in public and direct appeals to the government calling for an end to the practice. In July the Human Rights Committee also expressed concern about foreigners being held in the transit zone "under questionable sanitary and social conditions". It considered such practices "akin to arbitrary detention which can lead to inhuman and degrading treatment" and said that Belgium should end them immediately.

• A teenager from Guinea-Bissau who arrived at Brussels airport in November 2003 and made an immediate but unsuccessful asylum application, spent some eight months in detention centres for aliens. During this period he was subject to several deportation attempts. The courts twice ruled that he should be released, allowed to enter Belgian territory, and provided with a guardian and appropriate care in an institution where he would be protected as a minor. The Aliens Office disputed that he was a minor, as he maintained, and eventually transferred him to the transit zone in the airport in July, where he spent several days without food and sleeping facilities. Following interventions and publicity by domestic non-governmental organizations and the media, the Interior Minister ordered the boy's transfer to an open centre for asylum-seekers.

During the year, at the request of the Interior Minister, an independent commission re-evaluated the techniques used in forcible deportation operations. AI drew the commission's attention to its continuing concerns as well as to the recommendations it had submitted to the Belgian government in 2003. The commission's final report and recommendations had not been published by the end of the year.