Eurocrats vs. Freedom of the Press
By The New American The New American, July 12, 2004
Last March, investigative journalist Hans-Martin Tillack was awakened by the proverbial “midnight knock” on the door of his Brussels home. Belgian police, acting on the orders of the European Commission’s anti-fraud unit (known by its French acronym Olaf), confiscated 17 boxes of records, as well as his computer, cell phones, diary, bank statements and address book. Olaf had accused Tillack of bribing agency officials to obtain information used in a 2002 fraud exposé he published in the German magazine Stern.
Even after Olaf admitted in a press release that it had no evidence of wrongdoing on Tillack’s part, Belgian police kept more than a thousand pages of his documents, without so much as providing him with a list of what they’d seized. Noted the June 11 Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Tillack’s life has been turned upside down and he fears that some of the seized documents might lead Olaf to his sources.” Understandably, the reporter is concerned that would-be whistleblowers would be silenced “if they have to be afraid that their documents would end up with the Belgian police.” Which is the entire point of this Soviet-style exercise in intimidation, of course. “Being the capital of the EU has brought prestige and about 1,000 foreign correspondents to Brussels,” observed the Journal in an editorial. “But Belgium’s essential role in the noble European project brings great responsibility. How can the EU ask new member states to adopt the rule of law and transparency when the police are seizing journalists’ files in Brussels?” That’s a good question. Here’s a better one: Why was the Journal so eager to lay the blame at the feet of Belgian police, rather than the Euro-Commissars at Olaf, who ordered the raid? The obvious answer is that the Journal has long been a supporter of the “noble European project” of creating a continent-wide socialist mega-state, and is among the loudest supporters of creating a similar monstrosity in this hemisphere via the dishonestly named Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
