Dyab Abou Jahjah Privé 1 hr · Edited · 50 minutes ago, me and a friend of mine Mohamed Benhaddou were together in a car. He was dropping me in front of my door, in my street. I step out and two police officers step out of a police car and head towards me. - What are you doing here? They ask in French. They are young French speaking cops, so they do not recognize me. I answer calmly that this is my street and I live here. I see the look on their eyes, and feel that they do not believe me. They ask my identity card, I give it and I ask why is that necessary, I live here, you want me to show you? They ask me to take my hands out of my pockets and to stand against the wall. Me, a father of 43 years old, who has never committed a crime in his life. I have to stand against the wall like some teenage delinquent. - I am not standing against the wall I say in a calm tone. One of them is already pointing his machine gun at me. I hear them calling for back up on the radio. In the meantime My friend turns the car and comes towards us. They ask him to stop the car and to stand next to me. He does that. They call for back up and two more police cars arrive with more cops with machine guns. I see some of them looking surprised, they are Flemish and they recognize me obviously. One French speaking cop asks “what did they do”… The answer is “ they were in the street looking suspicious”… Me and my friend laugh bitterly… We were looking suspicious… I think they meant, our look is suspicious… you know the black hair and the dark eyes. We stay 20 minutes at gun point, in my street, in front of my door, under the window where my two daughters are sleeping… At gun point. The cop comes to us and gives back our identity cards and say that we can go. He looks worried, I think his boss told him on the radio that he is for no reason at all ethnically profiling an activist, and a writer in a newspaper and that this is not smart… but then again, I don’t think they care… we are all suspected terrorists now… we are all ethnically profiled…. We look like these terrorists right? We look like these cartoons…. Ethnically profiled at gun point in my own street, under my own window, they could have just went with me few meters to see my name on the bell and compare it with the name on my ID. I walk feeling heavy, very heavy inside, I stand in front of my door and wonder if I have the right to open it… I see blond blue eyed people walk next to the cops, they walk not looking suspicious at all… I guess they were right…. I guess.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:29:27 +0000