Racist Graffiti Targeting Arabs Sparks Outrage in Brussels Suburb

A racist and Islamophobic insult was tagged on Wednesday on a building under renovation on the Place du Miroir in Jette. "Arab = thief" could be read on the building. Black paint now makes the tag invisible. "We gave the instruction to the services to remove the tag. But in the meantime, the contractor had removed it," says Claire Vandevivere, the mayor of the Brussels municipality, to La Dernière Heure. "Deeply shocked," the elected official condemns this racist and Islamophobic tag. "It is out of the question to see that here," she adds. On the web, the photo of this racist tag has caused outrage. "Shameful", "Jette is getting worse and worse", "Is someone already on the case at the town hall to remove this horror?", "It’s a lamentable level", commented the inhabitants of Jette on a Facebook group.

In a report unveiled in 2021, the Collective Against Islamophobia in Belgium (CCIB) said it had recorded 48 anti-Muslim acts in 2020 against 79 in 2019. A drop that the association attributed to the limitation of social interactions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. "The Covid crisis had noticeable transfer effects: on the one hand, there was a decrease in Islamophobic acts through interpersonal relationships; these being linked to the decrease in real contacts between people," it explains. On the other hand, "Islamophobic hatred has increased in the virtual space of the Internet with hate speech and threats." 44% of the cases (21) are thus related to threats and incitements to hatred via the web, it is specified.