Racist Incident at Belgian Gas Station Sparks Outrage

"On Saturday it was super nice, so my friend and I decided to go to Nieuwdonk, near Antwerp. We decided to stop at a gas station to get sandwiches for the kids and we headed towards the sandwich shop. The saleswoman was not very friendly from the start. Then I asked her if she had breaded chicken. She told me no. [...] I look a bit at the display case where the sandwiches are and I realize that there is chicken," Daniza recounts to RTBF.

She is surprised by the behavior of the merchant. She was far from imagining what was going to happen next.

"The manager comes out of a back room... Immediately, he is very aggressive in his words and gestures and so he says to us: ’What’s the problem here?’. I tell him that there is no problem, that I was just asking if there was breaded chicken and that she had told me no and that I thought there was, and that’s all. Then he tells me: ’Listen no, she doesn’t speak French and here you are in Alost so if you don’t know how to express yourself in Dutch, well get out’," continues the mother.

The situation is going to quickly deteriorate. "I don’t think you have the right to impose Dutch on your customers," she replied to him. "Yes but you know here, we’re not in Morocco," he retorted. "My girlfriend and I are a bit on our back because well, neither she nor I are Moroccan, and secondly, ’we don’t do what we want, we’re not in Morocco’, what kind of racist statement is that?" the young mother is outraged. "When I come to Morocco and they don’t want to serve me, I don’t say anything [...] You’re four, that’s not going to work. Get out of here, dirty girl, go back to your country," the manager continues. "There I really felt a humiliation to a point that I can’t even explain... I said to myself that I couldn’t leave and leave him like that," she continues.

Angry, Daniza knocks over a flower pot that was for sale at the entrance. "In fact, this guy was racist towards Walloons, Arabs... No one moved," she explains. When the police arrived, the young mother recounted what had happened. She then filed a complaint against the gas station attendant. A case has been opened by the Q8 brand.