Joe Van Holsbeeck, the 17 year old boy who died after being butchered with a knife by North African youths in Brussels Central Station last week, was buried today. Muslim immigrants distributed home baked bread during the funeral. Joe was savagely stabbed to death Wednesday a week ago when he refused to hand over his MP3 player to the North Africans. Immediately after the assassination the police inquired whether Joe had made any "racist remarks" whilst been mugged, but Joe and his family and friends were not racists. On the contrary.

Joe's parents opted for a memorial service instead of the traditional funeral Mass. The parish priest of the Catholic St. Elisabeth Church of the Brussels borough of Haren told Belgian radio this morning that the parents wanted to ensure that "immigrants would not feel excluded at the funeral service." The priest did not hand out the Holy Eucharist to the mourners, but the immigrant neighbours of the Van Holsbeeck family distributed home baked bread. This, the priest explained, was "a sign of fraternity" between Belgians and immigrants.

Joe's killers have not been caught yet. Some doubt whether they ever will. The North African youths who slaughtered a 16 year old black boy in a similar fashion last January, have not been found either. Yesterday Senator Jean-Marie Dedecker, a member of Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's Liberal Party (VLD), wrote in an op-ed article in De Standaard, a major Brussels newspaper, that the Belgian police, when confronted with criminal immigrants, all too often "look the other way in order to avoid being accused of racism." Dedecker called Joe's murderers "thugs."
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