“‘Grist to the mill of undemocratic forces’

For the first time since 1988, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) will soon no longer decide independently on whether or not to protect asylum seekers. Indeed, the De Wever government has decided that the CGRS will be housed in a new government Migration Department, which - naturally - will be under the supervision of the competent minister.

In itself, this is no surprise to anyone who had read the coalition agreement carefully. After all, it already stated in veiled terms 'that protection policy will fall under the political responsibility of the competent minister'.

Moreover, there was already some commotion a month ago because the government wanted the Council for Immigration Disputes (BoE) on a leash. The CoE is the body where asylum seekers and migrants can go to appeal decisions on their status. The COE is a court, you know, one of the important tools of the rule of law.

There is a word for politically controlling courts and muzzling the judiciary, but I can't think of it for the moment. They must know it in Hungary and Poland, because they have been doing it there successfully for years.

Weak defence

When democracy totters on its pedestal, you hope there are people standing up to defend it. But that kind of defence these days is served as limp and lukewarm as the percolator flute coffee in many a government building.

I had only just processed the news about the CGRS or there was already an editorial I hadn't recoiled from: 'The fact that this government's intention is provoking debate has to do with the changing view on asylum and migration'. In short: we used to think refugees were cool, today they are out of fashion. Or something like that. One can only hope that one's own legal protection does not depend on the trend of the moment or the rumblings in the nation's underbelly.

But it got worse:

'Purists, on the other hand, will say that helping refugees does not lend itself to political interference, because it involves the application of essential human rights. The problem is that such a principled stance can lead to the rise of undemocratic forces. It is a scenario that has already materialised in several countries, and which we must avoid at all costs in Belgium.'

So people who believe that it is best not to leave asylum rights to politically elected officials are annoying and annoying "purists" and also grist to the mill of undemocratic forces. So we need to restrict human rights to prevent the far right from coming to power. So the strategy is: defend territory by giving up in advance.

And that the far-right comes to power is the fault of the opponents of the far-right. Not for these kinds of questionable opinions and articles, not for shamelessly siding with the aggressors of democracy, not for the cowardly, wavering, self-covering ramblings of people who supposedly stand neatly and reasonably and above all nice and safe in the middle where "nuance" is supposed to prevail.

The scenario in question is indeed on the rise. Guess what is usually the first thing such regimes do? Curb the rule of law. How does anyone believe that one fights undemocratic forces by doing exactly what they want?

'At any cost' sounds tough, then, until we ask who exactly pays that price. Not the senior writers of the newspapers, not the politicians, not the nuanced, reasonable, rational people in the middle who all see no bones about it.

Legal security as privilige

You know what my mind can't wrap its head around? That the very people who have been warning for years about the demise of the Occident and the demise of the free, superior West with its fantastic rule of law, both "threatened by migrants and their backward cultures", are the first to applaud political decisions that undermine that precious rule of law. Legal security is there for them, and especially for them, they believe. That is what deeply internalised privilege does to you: that you start thinking you are chosen and immune to any political shift. Until that no longer turns out to be the case.

Whether or not people get protection is a legal decision and, for obvious reasons, should never be a political one. Just the second sets the door wide open for far-right policies.

The rule of law was devised to protect people from the arbitrariness of governments and guarantee their civil rights and freedoms.

If it is not clear by now that democracy and the rule of law are inextricably linked, and that tampering with the latter causes the former to crumble in any case, when will it?

This article was translated from Dutch by kompreno with articificial intelligence (AI) translation software and is for informational purposes only. The original article is the authoritative version. While we strive for accuracy, translations may not capture all the nuances of the original article.