Several people in the municipality of Sint-Niklaas in the East Flanders province found a note on their car window asking them to park their car in the right spot, signed with a swastika.
The message in itself is innocent, but it was signed by 'The Street committee', and underneath it a swastika and a Third Reich eagle, both Nazi symbols. The police and the centre for equal opportunities, Unia, have opened an investigation.
One of the people who found the note on his car handed it to a friend who shared a picture of it on Twitter. However, the tweet has since been deleted. "Please park your car on your own parking space and not on the street, we are not allowed to park on your parking space either," the note said.
The police are investigating who wrote and distributed the note, and they have also drawn up an official report. The note itself is not a criminal offence, but someone who spreads symbols of Nazism could also incite violence or hatred against certain groups of people.
In this case, the swastika "is used only to threaten. There is almost no other possible explanation. It is possible someone is just looking for attention, but doing that with Nazi symbols is very specific. Using these symbols is not a criminal offence, inciting violence and hatred is necessary for it to be punishable. But in these times of racism and xenophobia, we could not just let this pass," said Lode Nolf from Unia, reports VRT NWS.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
