Ethnic War in the Streets of Brussels

Friday evening, riots broke out in the streets of Brussels between Moroccan youth and supporters of the football club RSC Anderlecht. Thursday evening, a blog had called for attacks on the «white» supporters of the club, and «to burn pubs, houses and cars».

The official story is that the problems began on Sunday, after the Belgian Cup Final between RSC Anderlecht and AA Gent. RSC Anderlecht won the Cup, but after the match its supporters and Moroccan youths had clashed near the metro station of Saint-Guidon nearby the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium where the match was played. Since then, the atmosphere had been tense in and around Anderlecht, but on Thursday, a blog was created on Blogspot calling for attacks on the «white» supporters of the football club and to burn pubs, houses and cars.

It seems there may be more to this story than the media are tellingus. In a reaction to a blog posting by an Anderlecht supporter using the nick da_reflect, a suggestion is made as to the reason why riots between Moroccans and supporters of Anderlecht broke out on Sunday evening: a user called RSCA_SpideY asks whether today's riots had something to do with «that Moroccan guy who tried to rob an Anderlecht supporter on Sunday evening and was beaten up by other RSC Anderlecht supporters afterwards». There's no confirmation of this story in the mainstream media though, but they're not citing any another reason why riots broke out on Sunday either.

Another interesting aspect of the story is that there is no information about the author of the inciting blog yet. It seems remarkable that the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism hasn't commented on the case yet since the posting clearly must have been in violation with the Belgian anti-discrimination laws. After all, according to the press, the word «white» was specifically mentioned in the posting. One could expect that the mentioned Centre would not leave any stone unturned to find out who the author is and bring him to court. Others have received warrants, in a «knock on the door» fashion for articles that were far less offensive or explicit, as the readers of this blog already know. It should be mentioned that I didn't succeed in finding the address or a copy of the blog posting, so I assume it's already removed from Blogspot's servers.

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