Immigrant media and broadcasts aimed at Muslim immigrants in Belgium (1)
1. North Africans
There are at least 210,000 people of North African descent, most of them from Morocco, living in Belgium. A large number of those who arrived as immigrant workers are considered to have been illiterate in both Arabic and French (the Berber languages are spoken but not written). An indeterminate number of foreign students, refugees, and more recent arrivals under the family reunification policy are literate in both Arabic and French. Those who were educated in Belgium usually know - with very few exceptions - only an Arabic dialect (spoken Arabic) and/or a Berber language in addition to French and/or Dutch.
1.1. The press (2)
Several dailies and weeklies in classical Arabic and a few in French for people from the Arab world are available in Belgian bookshops. None of them is written in Belgium and they do not contain any supplements or special columns for the North Africans of Belgium. Some of these publications even have web sites, but we do not have any data on how often they are accessed by Belgian-based surfers. There are a few bookshops selling books in Arabic and at least one library, not counting Brussels’ Islamic Centre.
Three French-speaking magazines for persons from North Africa were published in Belgium (3) in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but their circulation has always been limited. These are Tribune immigrée/Nouvelle Tribune (1981-1998), Spots / Al Adwaa / Horizons Magazines (1988- ), and Reflets Magazine (1992-93). An international French-language magazine for North African readers, Maghreb Observateur, was founded in Montreal in 1996 with contributors in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. It is sold in bookshops in Canada but the plans to distribute it in Belgium have not yet panned out.
Some North African organizations and associations have put out internal bulletins - usually in French or Dutch - for rather brief periods. Some issues were sometimes circulated more widely.
1.2 Radio broadcasts
Many private radio stations sprang up in the early ‘80s in the Brussels region, where half of Belgium’s North African population lives. Some of them were created by North Africans, others included one or more Arabic broadcasts. In 1986, when private radio stations were legalised, the Ministry of the French-speaking Community of Belgium decided to grant only a single modulated frequency to the various Arabic radio stations, who thus had to share air time. As a result, three of these radios (El Wafa, Médi Inter and Culture 3) have banded together since 1992 to pool their time slots, equipment and advertising departments under the name of Radio Al Manar. Three other stations (Médi 1, El Watan and As-Salaam) continue to use the same frequency independently. A number of conflicts broke out within radio stations, between radio stations, and between existing radio stations and groups wishing to take them over with the help of certain French-speaking Belgian politicians. This « Arabic frequency » was accused of spreading anti-Western propaganda on various occasions, notably during international crises involving Arab countries (the US bombing of Libya in 1986 ; the 1990-91 Gulf War and the invasion of Koweit), and very negative reports were sent to the Belgian authorities by North Africans wishing to offer a single alternative to the existing stations (4).
The hard core of groups that tried to take over these radio stations has basically remained the same over the years, namely, former North African students who came to Belgium as adults to study at university and hold jobs in the public sector or subsidised associations. Several of the current radio stations’ managers are first-generation immigrants, small entrepreneurs with ‘ethnic businesses’.
The quality of these stations’ broadcasts is rather uneven. We must bear in mind, however, that these stations do not get any public subsidies and their presenters are volunteers without specialised training in broadcasting. There are broadcasts in French, Arabic dialects, and two Moroccan Berber languages, Rif and Chelha. In addition, both the French- and Dutch-language Belgian public service radios have offered Arabic broadcasts, but the last one was dropped in November 1997. At least two Brussels-based Belgian association radio stations continue to broadcast in Arabic.
1.3 Television broadcasting
Whereas most Belgian households have been connected to cable TV distribution networks for some twenty years, the stations available on these networks have until recently totally ignored the audience of North African origin. Radio Télévision Marocaine has been distributed via the cable in only a few Brussels boroughs since 1996. So has the London-based MBC. Nevertheless, many North African households have satellite dishes that enable them to pick up the many Arabic-language stations that are broadcast via satellite. The Belgian public service TV networks no longer offer any Arabic broadcasts and there are no other Arabic or Berber TV broadcasts for Belgium’s North African population.
2. Persons from Turkey and the Balkans
There are at least 105,000 people from Turkey, including at least 10,000 Kurds and a few thousand Christians, mostly Assyrians and Armenians, in Belgium. The bulk of the few thousand Serbo-croatian-speaking Muslims living in Belgium came as displaced persons, mainly from Bosnia, in the wake of the civil war. The number of Albanians from Kosovo (Yugoslavia) and Macedonia is probably higher, but there are currently no reliable statistics concerning this group.
2.1. The press
Most of the country’s speakers of Turkish, Albanian, and Serbo-croatian are literate in one of these three languages and have access to periodicals and books in them. Newspapers (5) in these languages are readily accessible in numerous neighbourhood bookshops, but there are only one or two Turkish general bookshops in Belgium that sell books as well, not counting the mosques and Turkish cultural centres’ libraries. There is no publication put out for the Turkish community in Belgium, aside from association bulletins circulated to members only.
2.2. Radio and television broadcasting
Unlike the developments in Berlin (6), there is no private Turkish-language television station producing programmes specifically for the Turkish-speaking population of Belgium. The French- and Dutch-speaking public service radio and television networks no longer offer any broadcasts in Turkish or Serbo-croatian and never offered any in Albanian. A multicultural Brussels association radio has two broadcasts in Albanian ; its Turkish broadcast has disappeared for lack of a presenter.
Some of the cable TV distributors have been offering the Turkish government station TRT-Avrasya (‘Eurasia’) to their subscribers in certain Flemish towns since 1990 and in Brussels since 1996. A Brussels-based cable network also offers the Turkish private station Euroshow, particularly in Schaerbeek, where at least 10,000 Turks reside. Several other public and private Turkish-language stations are available to the large number of Turkish families who have satellite dishes, making cable subscriptions highly unattractive. An Albanian television station broadcasts a few hours a day (from Tirana) via satellite, but there are no plans to distribute it via the cable network.
Med-TV - a TV station that is allegedly close to the Kurdish PKK, which has been waging an armed struggle against the Turkish State since 1984 - has been broadcasting in Kurdish, Assyrian, Arabic and English from the Flemish town of Denderleeuw since 1995, although its headquarters is in London. This is thus a station with an international vocation that can be received by satellite dishes only and is not distributed by cable networks in Belgium.
3. The religious media
Unlike the other religions recognised by the Belgian State, Belgium’s Islamic community is not given any air time on the country’s public radio and television networks. Such broadcasts are produced (including in Arabic and Turkish) in neighbouring countries (the Netherlands and France) and are accessible to Belgium’s Islamic residents via cable TV and on the radio.
Two bulletins, Islamitiesche Nieuwsbrief and Le Conseil, are disseminated by subscription and in Islamic bookshops, but they are published at highly irregular intervals. Their editorial staffs include a number of Belgian converts to Islam. Various types of media (magazines, brochures, books, audio cassettes, and tracts) are also disseminated by radical Islamic movements, but these media are rarely produced in Belgium (7).
4. The regulations concerning cable distribution and satellite dishes
In Belgium, radio and television broadcasting licenses are granted by the Flemish, French-speaking and German-speaking Communities, the exception being the bilingual Brussels Region, where they remain under the Federal State’s jurisdiction. In practice, as practically all households in Belgium are connected to cable TV distribution networks, the applications for new stations are made by the private or intermunicipal (public) cable operators. Two private cable operators in the Brussels region started broadcasting Arabic (RTM and MBC) and Turkish (TRT and Euroshow) stations in 1996 without prior authorisation. This triggered a polemic with the minister in charge of telecommunications, but the broadcasting was not interrupted for all that.
Several local governments have subjected satellite dishes to a yearly tax. The usual arguments for levying such taxes have to do with town planning or budgetary problems. Unlike what happened in France in 1995, political and cultural arguments against receiving television broadcasting from Muslim countries, especially the fear of fundamentalist and/or anti-Western propaganda, have rarely been advanced by Belgian politicians (8).
Notes (click on the title to go back to the text)
1 Drafted by Pierre-Yves Lambert, a sociologist. Occasional contributor to Nouvelle Tribune (Brussels), Horizons Magazine (Brussels) and Maghreb Observateur (Montreal). Former contributor to Radio Al Manar (Arabic radio station in Brussels).
2 There are also some periodicals lead by Belgian professionals but dealing with an intercultural public or with ‘intercultural’ preoccupations. These periodicals are intended mainly for social workers of associations and institutions in an ‘intercultural’ environment : Bareel in Flanders (in Dutch), Agenda Interculturel in Brussels (in French), Het Huis van Palmyra in Brussels (in Dutch), and Osmoses in Wallonia (in French).
4 See also Bouras, 1986 and Benbouali, 1994.
7 See Grignard, 1997 : 167-178.
see also: Political participation of Belgium’s Muslim populations
Hassiba BENBOUALI, "La Fréquence arabe", in: Agenda interculturel, n°127, octobre 1994
Frédérique BOURAS, "La Fréquence arabe", in: Tribune Immigrée, n°20, octobre 1986
Vera GASEROW, "Le ghetto médiatique des immigrés turcs", Die Tageszeitung (Berlin), trad. fr. in: Le Courrier International (Paris), 8-14/06/1995
Alain GRIGNARD, "L'Islam radical en Belgique à travers la littérature de propagande: une introduction", in: F.DASSETTO (ed.), Facettes de l'Islam belge, Bruxelles, 1997, Academia-Bruylant, pp.167-178
Pierre-Yves LAMBERT, "Taxe sur les antennes paraboliques et offre sur le câble", Nouvelle Tribune, octobre 1997
Dogan ÖZGÜDEN, Immigration turque et mass média, Bruxelles, Info Türk, 1983
Frédéric VANDECASSERIE, "Médias et immigration en Belgique", in: Migrance (Paris) n°11-12, 1996
Magazines ethniques, "interculturels" et/ou "multiculturels"
Agenda Interculturel (depuis 1981), c/o Centre bruxellois d'Action Interculturelle, 24 rue de Stalingrad, 1000 Bruxelles, phone +32.2.513.96.02, fax +32.2.512.17.96 (en français; à destination principalement des travailleurs associatifs en milieu "interculturel")
Al Akhbar (depuis 1996), c/o Federatie Marokkaanse Demokratische Organisaties (Fédération des organisations démocratiques marocaines), Bondgenotenstraat 52, 1190 Brussel (Vorst), phone +32.2.346.17.71, fax +32.2.343.78.83 (principalement en néerlandais; à destination des militants associatifs marocains de Flandre et de Bruxelles)
Bareel (depuis 1979), c/o Vlaams Centrum Integratie Migranten (Centre flamand pour l'intégration des immigrés) (en néerlandais, à destination principalement des travailleurs associatifs en milieu "interculturel") [le VCIM s'appelle maintenant Vlaams Minderhedencentrum, Vooruitgangstraat 323, 1030 Brussel, tel. +32.2.205.0050, fax +32.2.205.00.60]
çagdas (depuis 1996), c/o Federatie van Vooruitstrevende Turkse Verenigingen (Fédération des associations progressistes turques), Dendermondsesteenweg 319, 9040 Gent, phone +32.2.228.90.55, fax +32.2.228.90.55 (en néerlandais)
Espace Orient (traductions en français d'articles de la presse arabe, turque et iranienne) (n'xiste plus)
Het Huis van Palmyra (depuis 1995), c/o Intercultureel Centrum voor Migranten (Centre interculturel pour les immigrés), Gallaitstraat 78, 1030 Brussel (Schaarbeek), phone +32.2.245.88.30, fax +32.2.245.58.32 (en néerlandais)
Horizons Magazine (depuis 1988), 27 Place communale, 1080 Bruxelles (Molenbeek), phone +32.2.411.67.85, fax +32.2.411.42.19 (en français; à destination principalement de la communauté d'origine marocaine)
Nouvelle Tribune (depuis 1981), Av. de Stalingrad, 89/1 1000 Bruxelles, Tél.: +32.2.502 28 38, Fax: +32.2.502 34 84 (en français)
Osmoses (depuis 1996), 43 rue Dieudonné François, 7100 Trivières, phone +32.64.26.01.77, fax +32.64.26.52.53 (en français; à destination des travailleurs associatifs et institutionnels de Wallonie en milieu "interculturel") (e-mail)
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