Belgium struggles to open police to Muslim minority

BRUSSELS: Tarek Chatt says he is one of only two Brussels policemen of Moroccan descent who grew up and is working in the same streets as the Islamist militants who attacked Paris and Brussels.

Police and security experts say increasing police diversity in communities like the largely Muslim borough of Molenbeek, where a key suspect in the Paris attacks lived and then hid, is crucial for improving intelligence and spotting radicalisation.

While Belgian officials want more tip- offs to prevent the kind of militant attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015 and 32 people in the Brussels metro and airport on March 22, they have struggled to open the police to the country’s Muslim minority.

On the eve of the anniversary of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Charles Michel told Reuters Belgium was ‘ very determined’ to recruit a force that would better mirror the diversity of the population.

Police say they struggle most with surveillance of communities like Molenbeek, where the mostly white force is viewed with suspicion by a largely immigrant population wary of being labelled as potential terrorists.

Belgium does not keep statistics on religion or race, but an estimated seven percent of the population is Muslim - rising to 45 per cent in Molenbeek, independent researchers say.

Officers like Chatt, who joined the force in 1999 as part of an earlier drive to recruit from the country’s large Moroccan minority, find their loyalties questioned by both sides.

“Back then, it was hard. People were negative. They took me for a snitch,” said Chatt, 48, who chose to serve in his home borough. But now they are pleased”, he says.

“People are proud to see someone of North African origin in uniform; they see it as fair. They listen more.”

On patrol of the crowded Sunday market in Molenbeek’s cobbled streets, he exchanged greetings with vendors, many of them the sons of migrants invited to Belgium to work in coal mines and factories in the 1960s and 70s.

He said his shared culture and language help him create a rapport with people in a borough where many only speak Arabic. — Reuters