Bruges City’s Arabic-Language Video Sparks Political Backlash Over Integration

On Facebook, a video in which the city of Bruges calls on young people to participate in a survey is not well received by some political parties due to the use of the Arabic language. In this video, "an artificial intelligence-generated character who, in Arabic, calls on young people to give their opinion on the Daverlo sports park in Assebroek, with an accompanying text in English to top it off."

"It goes without saying that this provokes strong indignation. In our party, but also among many Bruges residents and Flemish people in general. And rightly so, because it is a clear violation of language legislation. This stipulates that authorities in Flanders must always communicate in Dutch. Under the guise of a participation project, they are now trying to circumvent language legislation, and that is unacceptable," says Maaike De Vreese, group leader of N-VA in Bruges.

She explains that: "with such preferential treatment, we are not doing newcomers any favors, many of whom invest a lot of time in learning Dutch. And it also undermines support for these same newcomers. It is precisely for this reason that Flanders and Bruges rightly invest a lot of resources in integration. It is therefore not acceptable for the city to now choose to communicate in Arabic."

An opinion shared by Stefaan Sintobin (Vlaams Belang - Far right) who intends to go beyond a simple denunciation. "I will file a complaint with the Linguistic Control Commission for violation of the language law," announces the city councilor.

Mayor Dirk De fauw (CD&V) tries to end the controversy: "This video was developed at the initiative of the Youth Service, along with other videos, as part of Communicity." According to his explanations, it is a European project in which many cities participate. And he adds: "during the development or selection of the videos, something obviously went wrong, a human error or a programming error, because this was indeed not the intention. We are looking into how to remove this video as quickly as possible."