From Brussels Journal:
Last Saturday”s riots in Antwerp, when Moroccan “youths” went on the rampage in Antwerp’s historical center, destroying cars and beating up reporters, has led to frustration among police officers because the authorities prevented them from stopping the violence. Officers complained in today”s papers that they had been given orders to watch passively while young, rowdy Muslims were allowed to take revenge over… drawings published more than four months ago in a Danish newspaper.
“We had to watch how they were ripping off car mirrors. We wanted to stop this vandalism but were ordered to withdraw,” an anonymous policeman says in today”s Flemish daily De Standaard. “An ambulance was told to switch off its siren because that might provoke the Moroccans.” Another anonymous officer told the press: “There you are watching this, while citizens can see that you are powerless.” According to an anonymous police chief the authorities decided, that “it was better to have a few cars vandalized than risk open war in the streets.” On Monday the city council, led by the Socialist mayor Patrick Janssens, decided that the city would compensate the damage to cars and property…
In Paris, France’s leading left-wing paper Le Monde criticised the EU”s failure to act in response to the series of attacks on European embassies in the Middle East. In today”s leading editorial it writes that Europe (the paper mentions Mr Solana) is not adequately defending freedom of speech. Europe “seems crippled, intimidated” by the reaction to the cartoons in the Middle East and the paper argues that this “can only encourage regimes like Syria and Iran to continue to manipulate this affair for political ends.” Le Monde also criticizes French President Jacques Chirac who condemned the “offensive character” of the cartoons but not the attack on the French embassy in Teheran…