Antwerp Race Riots Militant Charged

A Muslim firebrand accused of inciting two days of race riots in Antwerp was charged yesterday with conspiracy to foment disorder, destroying vehicles, and assaulting a police officer.

Abou Jahjah, 31, a Lebanese-born extremist who once fought for Hizbollah, was blamed for stirring up ethnic conflict in the Belgian city's North African quarter after a Moroccan teacher was murdered on Tuesday by a white dockworker said to be mentally ill.

The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, vowed to put a stop to the open lawlessness of Abou Jahjah's militant organisation, the Arab European League. "The league is trying to terrorise the city," he said.

The authorities were shocked by the targeted nature of vandalism this week. Flemish pubs and black-owned businesses in the Borgerhout district were attacked, but shops displaying AEL stickers were spared.

Belgium's liberal media agreed yesterday that the country's experiment with tolerant multiculturalism had totally broken down.

The Flemish newspaper De Morgen said: "For a decade, the immigrant quarters of this country have turned into reservoirs of frustration, even hate. They have found a voice in Abou Jahjah."

Abou Jahjah rejects assimilation, demanding segregated schools and self-governing, Arab-speaking ghettos.

Asylum seekers reach record 100,000 a year

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
The Telegraph (UK) (Filed: 30/11/2002)

Record numbers of asylum seekers are arriving in Britain despite intensified ministerial efforts to stop them.

The latest quarterly figures published yesterday showed a huge leap in applications. The headline total rose by 11 per cent to 22,000 compared with the previous quarter and were 20 per cent higher than for that period last year.

When dependants are added, there were nearly 30,000 applications between July and September. The total for the year, including children, seems certain to pass 100,000 for the first time - easily the highest in the EU.

The figures were a severe blow to David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, who has expended much rhetoric on trying to dissuade economic migrants from coming.

The Home Office said that measures contained in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act had yet to have an effect. The figures also predate the closure of the Red Cross Sangatte camp near Calais and the tightening of Channel Tunnel security.

Next year all financial support will be withdrawn for single people and childless couples who do not apply for asylum when they arrive.

Beverley Hughes, the immigration minister, said the system known as exceptional leave to remain, which allows people to stay even when they are not judged to be genuine refugees, was being scrapped. It will be replaced by "humanitarian protection" to be granted only in cases of genuine hardship.

Miss Hughes said the new figures were "not satisfactory". They showed that Britain continued to take more than its fair share of people with an unfounded asylum claim.

She added: "The [new] measures will, over time, reduce the pull factor to Britain and tackle abuse of the system."

Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, said that to call the figures unsatisfactory was "the most remarkable understatement".

He said: "If asylum applications continue to increase at this rate and the Government does nothing to reduce the administrative chaos, the present crisis will turn into a disaster."

(Are the Europeans waking up?

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