Bishop Marian Eleganti has said that “Islam has a problem in its relationship with violence” after a Moroccan immigrant in Modena, Italy, drove his car into a crowd.
In an interview with Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Eleganti was asked about the terrorist attack that occurred in Modena, Italy, on May 16. A 31-year-old Moroccan man, Salim El Koudri, drove his car at reportedly 50 to 60 miles per hour into a crowd on the busy central street, Via Emilia. After he hit several pedestrians, the car crashed into a shop window. He then got out of the car and stabbed a man who tried to intervene. Eight people were injured in the attack, including a woman who required both of her legs to be amputated.
The official investigators ruled out an Islamist motive, instead naming mental health issues as the main reason behind the horrific act.
However, Eleganti offered a different view: “It may be that in this specific case, we are once again dealing with a disturbed psyche. However, it is striking that in the case of similar attacks in European countries, the conclusion seems to come almost automatically: it is a lone wolf, a mentally ill person. In short: there is no connection to Islam or Islamism as one of the possible causes (sources) of such terrible acts. In any case, there is a regular effort to exonerate Islam in general and Muslims in particular by framing the incident as a mental disorder. But we cannot rule out that both factors are at play: Islamic fanaticism, mental disorder, and personal frustrations.”
“Why don’t Christians commit terrorist acts of this kind?” Eleganti asked. “Apparently, their religion (Christianity) offers far greater potential for individual resilience and immunity in the face of such demonic acts of violence, in which innocent people who have no personal connection to the perpetrator are the victims.”
“Benedict XVI was absolutely right when he diagnosed that Islam has a problem in its relationship with violence. It is an obvious fact,” Eleganti added.
It was later revealed that El Koudri expressed anti-Christian sentiment in emails sent to the University of Modena on April 27. While venting his frustration about the lack of job opportunities, he wrote, “F*** Christian b*****ds, you and your Jesus Christ on the cross, I’ll burn him.” He apologized for his “rudeness” in a follow-up email.
However, despite the revelations, the archbishop of Modena said loneliness and mental health issues were the root causes of the attack.
Eleganti responded by stating, “These are political statements in line with the spirit of the times, as well as attempts to shield themselves from the harsh reality that will not spare us and will teach us a lesson as soon as Islam takes control and becomes the majority.”
“Then the so-called unbelievers – that is, non-Muslims – in these countries will no longer have it easy. Such Good Samaritan-style statements by the bishops are made so as not to jeopardize, at least on a semantic level, peaceful coexistence among religions. In my view, in this context, they are a form of denial of reality. Take it from someone who has Muslim friends and even relatives!”
“No European country is immune to Islamic radicalization,” the Swiss bishop warned. “I believe that Islam is incompatible with our conception of society and the state shaped by Christianity, with our conception of religious freedom and freedom of personal conscience.”
“Islam has been an anti-Christian religion from the very beginning and has led to the disappearance of Christianity everywhere or decimated it to the point of near extinction.”
“This is still the case today,” Eleganti continued. “Many on the left and many Muslims today share a fundamentally hostile attitude toward Christianity; at the very least, none of them would lift a finger to ensure the survival of Christianity in our societies.”
“Rather, they dream together of a post-Christian era,” he concluded.
The world loves coal. That is the simple message from results showing new coal-fired power plants hit a global 10-year high in 2025, defying climate doomers who decry its use and long for wind farms, solar panels and hydro power everywhere.
Rising gas prices and supply disruptions linked to the Middle East crisis are just some of the factors pushing countries like China, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Italy to rely more heavily on dependable coal-fired energy security even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity – for now.
Overall coal power capacity — plants that came online or were commissioned — jumped 3.5 percent last year according to a report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which has tracked coal power for more than a decade, AFP reports.
The overwhelming majority of that — 95 percent — was in China and India, GEM said, with the U.S. also keenly embracing the power source under President Donald Trump who calls it “beautiful, clean coal,” as Breitbart News reported.
According to the president, his administration has also approved more than 70 permits for new mining projects, after Biden approved none throughout his term.
Beijing sees coal as a reliable failsafe for intermittent renewable supply, particularly for after power shortages several years ago, the AFP report notes.
India, the world’s most populous country, is leaning heavily on coal-fired sources to meet soaring electricity demand.
In Africa, coal proposals were again concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, which together accounted for two-thirds of new coal development in the region.
Globally, the retirement of coal power slowed last year, with nearly 70 percent of units that were due to end operations instead staying online, GEM said per AFP.
In Europe, those missed targets were linked primarily to decisions taken during the 2022-23 energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In the United States however, retirement delays reflect a determined government push for coal as a direct aid to energy self-sufficiency , said Shearer.
“U.S. coal-fired generation rose by more than 80 TWh (terawatt hours) year-on-year, a figure so large that no other country came close,” said Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker and author of the report.
The surge “was not simply a function of (demand) growth, it reflected a policy environment that actively encouraged it,” she added.
A photo of the Turkish murder suspect, Thamer Hassan Ali B
Following a manhunt by German police that lasted for months, the suspect in the fatal stabbing of 41-year-old restaurant owner Mortsa S. has been apprehended in Turkey. Hamburg police discovered that the suspect, Thamer Hassan Ali B., is a Turkish national and had been residing there under a false identity.
The suspect is currently detained and set for deportation, but he has lodged an objection against deportation proceedings.
The Turkish judicial system must now determine if the alleged killer will be transferred to the authorities in Hamburg. The man was found after Hamburg police successfully tracked down his location in Turkey.
The victim, Mortsa S., ran the Persian restaurant “Sepideh“ on Hammer Straße, a name meaning “dawn.”
In February 2026, the victim was stabbed following a dispute that took place behind the establishment. The two had reportedly long been in conflict before the fatal attack, according to Bild newspaper.
Even though Mortsa S. was mortally wounded, the 41-year-old managed to pull himself back inside his restaurant. His workers then rushed him in a Mercedes-Maybach to the Asklepios Clinic in Wandsbek, but medical professionals were unable to save his life.
Mortsa S. left behind two young children, a son and a daughter.
Months prior to the incident, Thamer Hassan Ali B. had behaved poorly inside the restaurant and was banned from entering the property. In the wake of the ban, the relatives were reportedly terrorized with threatening phone calls.
On the exact day of the crime, the suspect returned to the premises once more and told the victim, “I want to talk.“
When they went behind the restaurant, the stabbing attack reportedly occurred.
A new political brochure published by Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has right-wingers up in arms.
The 32-page booklet entitled Decline for Germany, not an Alternative launches a number of wild claims about the country’s main opposition party, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) – which became the largest opposition force in the Bundestag following the February 2025 federal election.
AfD cultural policy spokesman Götz Frömming called the brochure “outrageous” on May 20, 2026, and said the CDU was disseminating “long-debunked lies about AfD”.
Among other things, the brochure accuses AfD of “wanting a one-party state similar to the [Communist] German Democratic Republic or National Socialism”.
It claims AfD was “attacking the protective mechanisms of our democracy itself” because AfD representatives had voiced their frustration with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) – which has long spearheaded a push to ban AfD altogether. The BfV classified AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organisation in May 2025, a designation the party is currently challenging in court.
The Conservatives further claim that hatred for Jews was a “core part” of AfD ideology – arguing that the party was anti-Semitic because it positioned itself as making politics for the people and against out-of-touch elites.
The brochure uses a quote by AfD honorary chairman Alexander Gauland as evidence for this, in which Gauland speaks of a “globalised class” in companies, parties and NGOs which sets the pace “culturally and politically”.
Finally, the CDU publication accuses AfD of wanting to deport millions of German citizens whom they consider unworthy:
“All people are equal … but the AfD does not believe this. For them not all people are equal, not even all Germans. Leading AfD politicians openly say that a German passport is not enough. They speak of ‘passport Germans’ and ‘real’ and ‘better’ Germans. The AfD openly says it wants to deport millions of people, even German citizens.”
As news site Niusreported on May 20, 2026, this claim had already been ruled false by a German court in March 2026 – when it banned a left-wing NGO from disseminating similar accusations about the right-wingers.
With the new brochure – which can be ordered in bulk in the CDU’s online shop – the Conservatives have yet again cranked up the level of accusations and hysteria vis-à-vis their political contenders on the right.
Leading CDU representatives have also chosen even more escalatory rhetoric lately. On May 14, 2026, Conservative State prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst said in a speech at the German Catholics’ Day that a government takeover by AfD would be highly dangerous:
“In the case of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, too, many would have said that they would soon disappear once it became clear that they were out of their depth in government. Though, it was not the Nazis who disappeared, but freedom of speech and of the press, as well as an independent judiciary – and all within a matter of weeks.”
The escalatory rhetoric may be connected with the right-wingers’ recent rise in the polls. In two long-running surveys by pollsters Forsa and Insa, AfD recently reached all-time highs of 28 and 29 per cent of the vote – while CDU has fallen to just 22 per cent in both polls, six percentage points less than at the February 2025 general election.
Brussels Signal contacted CDU for comment but had not heard back at the time of writing.
German journalist Christoph Lemmer commented on the brochure:
“Whether the AfD stands for ‘Germany’s decline’ may or may not be the case. That remains to be proven. For the CDU and CSU, it has been the case ever since [former chancellor Angela] Merkel came to power.”
Senior politicians from the German centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are advocating for the party to continue its path further towards the Left just to avoid having to cooperate with the ‘far right’—as they like to call the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
Speaking on public TV station ARD on Wednesday, May 20th, Daniel Günther, the CDU’s prime minister in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, argued that the AfD represented a far greater threat than Die Linke, the successor to East Germany’s former Communist ruling party.
“You cannot lump the AfD and Die Linke together,” he said, insisting that any future government formation “must happen without the AfD.”
The comments come ahead of crucial elections in two eastern German states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in September, where polls show the AfD leading comfortably.
In both states, a government excluding the AfD may only be mathematically possible with support from Die Linke—despite a longstanding CDU party resolution formally ruling out cooperation with both parties.
Recently, André Schröder, a prominent CDU politician in Saxony-Anhalt, also suggested that the party’s resolution did not necessarily prevent practical cooperation with Die Linke.
Both these remarks confirm that the CDU has abandoned conservative principles in favour of a broad anti-AfD alliance stretching from the centre-right to the far left.
The party would now rather cooperate with the heirs of East Germany’s communist establishment than acknowledge the growing electoral appeal of the AfD, which campaigns primarily on opposition to mass migration, EU centralisation, and radical green policies.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has surged to 42%, which means it could potentially secure an outright majority of seats in the state parliament. Die Linke polls at 12.6% here. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the party is in the lead with 36%—an almost 20-point increase compared to their result in 2021, way ahead of Die Linke at 12.8%
The AfD has also skyrocketed to 42%—double the CDU’s support—in another eastern German state, Saxony, according to a new INSA poll. Compare that with Die Linke’s 10%. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel reacted on X by accusing establishment parties of attacking ordinary citizens instead of addressing Germany’s problems.
Neue INSA-Umfrage: Die AfD in Sachsen ist mit 42 % inzwischen doppelt so stark wie die CDU! Wer linke Kampfschriften gegen die AfD verfasst und das Ehrenamt und große Teile der Bevölkerung verunglimpft, statt die Probleme dieses Landes zu lösen, der muss sich über solche… pic.twitter.com/fk89zpvdze
Meanwhile, in Günther’s home state of Schleswig-Holstein, the CDU’s support fell sharply to 27.6% at last year’s federal election, compared to the 43.4% it received in the 2022 state election. Die Linke stands at a mere 6% currently, compared with AfD’s 15%.
Instead of self-reflection and seeking ways to engage with the public, Günther has doubled down on calls for tougher action against the AfD and its online supporters.
Speaking at a conference in Berlin, he reiterated his desire for greater regulation of social media, public algorithms, and even a “real-name requirement” online to combat what he described as “hate and incitement.”
Unsurprisingly, he also backed a procedure to ban the AfD and urged stronger mobilisation against the party.
Such comments only justify the narrative that the establishment parties, worried about their loss of support, are increasingly willing to silence opposition voices while calling a democratic opposition party a “danger” to the state.
AfD member Peter Bystron is fighting back against the smear merchants who lied and tried to tie him to Russia.
Last year the globalist left targeted AfD member Petr Bystron before elections alleging he was a Russian agent. The allegations were as fake as the Trump-Russia allegations pushed by Barack Obama and Democrats for years.
Bystron is a member of the conservative, anti-open border party AfD that continues to gain prominence in Germany politics.
As TGP reported last year:
After days of agitation in the European mainstream media, the popular AfD politician Petr Bystron has now become the target of a death threat combined with blackmail. As BILD reports, Bystron’s Bundestag office in Berlin received an anonymous letter with the text: “…if you value your life, then you quickly collect €100,000 and call here…”
The blackmailer insulted the AfD foreign politician as an “asshole” and added a collage with Bystron’s photo with a painted Hitler beard. The Bundestag police are taking the matter seriously and have started investigations (file number Vg/949/2024). The AfD politician said to the German Newspaper BILD of the death threat: “These are the fruits of the smear campaign of the last few days. I ask Czech Prime Minister Fiala: ‘Is this what you wanted to achieve?’”
Several insider authorities in Prague are accusing Czech Prime Minister Fiala of being personally responsible for mentioning Bystron’s name in connection with an affair surrounding the news portal “Voice of Europe.” At the beginning of last week, the Czech secret service made it public that it suspected two Ukrainians of covert propaganda for Russia. The accusations of collaborating with the portal and even taking money were directed against six European parties, all of which are against the war in Ukraine.
Bystron told the Czech newspaper BLESK that this was revenge for his appearances at the anti-government demonstrations in Prague, such as the demonstration on Wenceslas Square last year, where hundreds of thousands of Czechs cheered the AfD politician and at the same time loudly demanded the resignation of the hated Fiala government. According to the latest surveys, only 2% of its own citizens trust the Czech government.
On Wednesday, Petr Bystron’s office announced that the AfD memeber was filing defamation charges against one of the groups that smeared him as a Russian agent during last year’s campaign.
Bystron accuses the organization of having defamed him in a campaign in March by portraying him as a “politician paid by the Russians.” In posters and social media posts, the group depicted Natálie Vachatová, an adviser to Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, as a security risk and featured her alongside Bystron.
“Such defamatory allegations led to investigations against me lasting two years, including a total of 29 house searches — without a single piece of evidence being found or any charges being filed,” Bystron said in explaining the lawsuit. In addition to financial compensation, he is demanding the immediate removal of the posts, a cease-and-desist order, and a public apology published on the association’s channels.
Vachatová and the photographer of the image used in the campaign, Petr Štěpánek, have also initiated legal action against the organization. Štěpánek is suing over copyright infringement and unpaid licensing fees, while Vachatová has filed a defamation claim. Vachatová became the target of weeks-long attacks by the association after it emerged that she was working on legislation aimed at significantly restricting NGO financing. Bystron himself came under attack from several Czech NGOs and media outlets after repeatedly criticizing the former government in public.
So far, Milion chvilek pro demokracii has not responded to the lawsuit or to media inquiries. The organization is regarded as controversial in the Czech Republic and is viewed by critics as a tool for the defamation of political opponents. Critics accuse the group of one-sided support for the ousted Fiala government, as well as of smearing and intimidating the government’s political opponents. The organization’s founder, Mikuláš Minář, has been accused of embezzling up to 7.3 million Czech crowns donated by supporters.
Three male players are competing in girls’ volleyball at USA Volleyball-governed events despite a 2025 policy that restricts biological males from participating in the female category. As at least one of the boys has allegedly attempted to conceal his biological sex by altering his legal documents, women’s sports advocates are now calling on USA Volleyball to implement sex testing to enforce protections of the female category.
In January of 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” directing federal agencies to interpret Title IX protections on the basis of biological sex. The order states that federally funded educational institutions that permit trans-identified males to compete in female sports categories could risk loss of federal funding.
While the executive order primarily applied to schools and educational institutions receiving federal funds, its impact has extended beyond scholastic athletics. In the months following the order, several national governing bodies at the guidance of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee overseeing Olympic and youth sports pipelines, revised or clarified participation policies for female competition categories..
One of those governing bodies was USA Volleyball (USAV), which oversees sanctioned junior club competition through regional associations across the United States. USAV subsequently adopted eligibility standards for female divisions based on biological sex, and announced the changes in July of 2025.
But despite USAV’s announcement, Reduxx has been made aware of multiple male athletes who allegedly continued competing on girls’ teams in USAV-sanctioned events. At least two are “stealth,” meaning they have attempted to present themselves as being born female and may not have disclosed their biological sex with their teammates or athletic officials.
One of them is known to be “Bri” Deiley of Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado. Although Deiley has attempted to conceal his biological sex, he was identified through an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court by several transgender advocacy organizations in opposition to state restrictions on male participation in women’s sports. The brief included personal testimonies from trans-identified male athletes who claim to have been impacted by laws restricting their access to women’s sport competitions.
In the filing, Deiley was referred to under the pseudonym “Melissa,” and an anonymized photograph depicting him playing volleyball was included. However, the image was able to be cross-referenced with the original version, which had previously been posted on social media by his high school.
[L] The anonymized photo of Deiley from the Amicus brief, compared to the uncensored photo posted to Instagram by Centaurus High School [R]
Deiley’s mother is quoted in the brief, and describes him as deliberately “stealth,” meaning they have worked to conceal his biological sex from the female players on his team. She also states that Deiley began puberty blockers at a young age and argues that he does not possess a biological athletic advantage as a result.
The brief also notes that Deiley hopes to participate in NCAA Division I or II volleyball following his graduation. Such participation would conflict with existing federal law prohibiting males from competing in women’s sports.
Bri Deiley (red shorts) following a recent athletic event.
Deiley is currently participating in girls track and field at his High School, and recently took a first place win in Women’s Varsity High Jump at the B-Town Bash on April 3, and also received a medal at the prestigious Colorado State Championships just last week. But his involvement on the Goldfish 18U Volleyball Team at USA Volleyball-governed events under the Rocky Mountain Region Volleyball Association appears to be in violation of USA Volleyball’s efforts to comply with Executive Order 14201.
Another male athlete participating in USA Volleyball-governed events is Logan O’Brien, who, like Deiley, appears to have chosen to conceal his biological sex from his teammates and is alleged to be using an altered birth certificate to claim he was born female.
O’Brien plays on the Sportime Gold 15 team, which is affiliated with the Garden Empire Volleyball Association region of USAV. Coaches are reportedly aware that he is biologically male, but have not prevented him from participating in matches governed by USAV.
Also participating on a team within the Garden Empire Volleyball Association is Sawyer Chiappano. However, unlike Deiley and O’Brien, Chiappano makes no effort to conceal his transgender status and openly represents himself as a “GenderCool Champion.”
GenderCool represents itself as a “youth-led movement helping replace misinformed opinions about transgender youth.”
Chiappano plays on the New York Elite 14 Gray team, which has won several volleyball tournaments this year and is considered a stand-out volleyball team in its region.
Reduxx reached out to USA Volleyball for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication. This article may be updated in the event a response is received.
Speaking to Reduxx, a spokesperson for the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) expressed concerns that USA Volleyball’s purported efforts to protect the women’s category was not being respected.
“Federal law, including Title IX and the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, requires governing bodies and schools to maintain sex-separated sports teams for girls. Families spend thousands of dollars annually for their daughters to participate, and the least USA Volleyball can do is enforce basic eligibility rules to ensure boys do not compete on girls’ teams,” the spokesperson said.
“USA Volleyball’s current stance, which places the burden of identifying and assessing players’ sex on athletes and their families, represents a dereliction of duty. Blatantly violating both the law and the intent of its own policies, while harming young female athletes, is unconscionable,” she continued.
The spokesperson also expressed concern over what she described as the increasing prevalence of males attempting to participate in female athletics without disclosing their sex.
“Sex is not private information, and deception is never a right. Boys and their families cannot be allowed to conceal their sex in order to gain access to girls’ sports and locker rooms,” she said, adding that because birth certificates can be altered in some states, identification documents alone may no longer be sufficient to guarantee female-only spaces in sports.
“All governing bodies in the United States should implement sex screening via cheek swab as part of registration eligibility requirements for girls’ and women’s sports. As the International Olympic Committee has recognized, it is the least invasive and most accurate method, and it can be used whenever eligibility is in question.”
Deiley, O’Brien, and Chiappano are just the latest male athletes to be exposed for participating on female volleyball teams despite growing public backlash.
Separately, in January of this year, the Department of Education found that San Jose State University had engaged in sex discrimination by allowing a trans-identified male player to participate on the Spartans women’s volleyball team. The Department threatened imminent punitive action agains the University if it did not comply with Executive Order 14201 and guarantee female athletes access to single-sex sports.
San Jose State University refused the Department’s demands in March, and announced it was planning retaliatory legal action.
“Not everyone was raped, I would say, but everyone suffered humiliating and disgusting sexual abuse. The Palestinian reported that he was immobilized, stripped naked and, while blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was brought to him. With encouragement from a trainer in Hebrew, the dog mounted him.”
Dogs mounting Palestinian Arabs?
Anyone who believed they had heard everything about Israeli Jews has not yet read “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians” by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, which four years ago I called “the Pravda of progressivism.”
Fantastic timing!
The New York Times published it on the very day that the report from Israel was arriving about the mass rapes committed by Palestinian Arab terrorists on October 7: individual and gang rapes, vaginal mutilations, forced sexual violence in front of relatives and other horrors from the catalogue of the “resistance.”
We are witnessing one of the greatest contemporary intellectual collapses: the replacement of evidence with emotion, of research with suspicion, of ideological narrative with reality.
The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of introducing rats into the Palestinian Arab territories. Not ordinary rats, but “engineered” rats that Israeli high-tech supposedly designed to “attack children and the sick.”
A grotesque zoological litany.
Wild boars released by the Zionists destroyed Arab crops.
Israel unleashes hyenas against Palestinian Arabs.
Sharks. Yes, sharks were recruited by the Mossad to destroy tourism in Egypt.
The “Palestinian president”, Mahmoud Abbas – the one we shower with money – even went before the plenary session of the European Parliament to claim that a rabbi had asked the Israeli government to poison Palestinian Authority water. At the end of his speech, Abbas received much applause and a standing ovation from many parliamentarians. It took some time before the old relic of Ramallah apologized.
I do not doubt that Islamists may believe in the great conspiracy of Jewish fauna. What is worse is that many Westerners believe it too.
The machinery of Islamic propaganda understood the postmodern void: fill it with emotional narratives, sacred victims and white-Jewish executioners. It works!
Doctor Goebbels is the hidden master of our time.
On August 17, 2009, Aftonbladet, Sweden’s oldest and best-selling newspaper, published an article by Donald Bostrom in which the journalist, without sources or evidence, wrote that the Israeli army, in collusion with the medical establishment, kidnapped Palestinian Arabs to harvest their organs. Jews stealing organs?
The propaganda machine never stops: it simply moves on to the next slander.
Rationalism died when we decided that truth is a white colonial construct. From then on, anything can be said and thought: that the Jews are Satan, that the white man is a racist who pollutes, and that there are not 2 sexes but 72.
The past is not dead; it has gone viral. Welcome to the new world. It is identical to the oldest one. Dark, primitive, drunk on hatred. And incredibly fashionable.
There is a line in “Stella Maris” by the immense Cormac McCarthy:
“When this world that reason has created is finally swept away, it will take reason with it. And it will be some time before it comes back.”
Today we are living in that intermediate time, suspended between a dying Enlightenment and triumphant archaism. What is coming, we will discover soon.
“Violent” ex-soldiers from countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan have massed at small boat launch sites on the Belgian coast, police have revealed.
A growing number of military men have been spotted “accompanying” the boats – making it too dangerous for police to intervene, local force chief Nicholas Paelinck said this week.
With French authorities taking a stricter approach to monitoring the would-be migrants, small boat smuggling gangs have moved to launch from Belgium.
But armed men have rendered authorities impotent to stop the boats.
“Normally, we try to puncture the boat beforehand to prevent the crossing to the United Kingdom,” Mr Paelinck said.
“But that is not possible here, because you see ex-military personnel from Iraq circling the boat to ensure the police cannot get to it.
“Officers were threatened by the soldiers, and a mirror was even smashed with an iron bar. We conducted a risk analysis, and it is too dangerous to operate on that beach anymore. We will not do that again.”
Police have also found “weapons of war and ammunition” in migrant tent camps, and have warned it is “only a matter of time” before officers are confronted.
Ostend police chief Hannelore Hochepied told Belgian MPs it will only get more difficult, with summer a “very busy period” for his men.
“The small boats usually set off in the early morning, so it’s all hands on deck for the local police, with a major impact on daytime capacity,” he added.
Belgium’s coastal police receive support from federal police but have called for further federal aid to tackle smuggling gangs.
This includes technological support such as high-performance surveillance cameras, thermal cameras at key locations, sensors on access roads to the beach and drone technology.
Rob Bates, director at the Centre for Migration Control, told GB News the presence of ex-soldiers was worsening a migrant “invasion”.
“We’re talking about the fact that they are coming from countries that are in a state of permanent conflict, and they have been almost incubated in a culture and a society where it’s inevitable that they will have encountered some form of violence at some point and maybe been involved in combat and conflict,” Mr Bates warned.
British politicians have been reluctant to treat small boat crossings with the “level of severity” needed, while the British Government has taken a “lackadaisical attitude” to the crisis, he added.
Mr Bates said: “I think, unfortunately, as the flows shift up from Belgium to France, it just shows Labour’s folly of putting all their eggs in the French deal basket.
“And actually, this is now a situation where any collaboration with European partners won’t yield the results that we need them to.
“It’s time to just finally take that step and embark on a policy of detention and deportation.”
Last month, Shabana Mahmood signed an agreement worth £662million with the French Government in an attempt to curb small boat launches.
But French politicians have said the deal “will not change anything” to stop the influx of migrants across the Channel.
Mr Bates also warned migrants in Britain had become a “permanent invasion” – with the total number of arrivals now outnumbering the British Army.
“We are facing something here that could wreak huge, huge havoc – not just socially and fiscally – but actually in terms of the security and well-being of hundreds of thousands of Britons.
“I don’t know how many more flashing red lights we have to see on the dashboard before ministers start to treat this with the severity it does deserve.”
A total of 7,576 asylum seekers have crossed into Britain through the Channel so far this year, with an average of 65 people per vessel from 15 May 2025 to 14 May 2026.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We are aware of dangerous and illegal small boat launches from Belgium. Through continued shared intelligence and close partnerships with Belgian authorities, numerous others have been successfully prevented to prevent illegal arrivals to the UK.
“Our work with France has already stopped more than 42,000 illegal migrants attempting to cross the Channel since the election. We have removed or deported almost 60,000 people who were here illegally.
“But we are going further to remove the incentives that draw illegal migrants to this country and increase removals and deportations of those with no right to be here.”
Two new pro-life bills have been introduced in the U.K.’s House of Lords.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) reported that Lord Daniel Moylan and Baroness Nuala O’Loan have each introduced a pro-life bill to the House of Lords. Both bills will receive their first reading in June.
Moylan’s “Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill” aims to pressure the government to ensure transparency and accurate reporting of complications in relation to abortion procedures.
Complication rates in the U.K. may be significantly higher than officially reported, a 2023 government review revealed. A data analysis from statistics in England between 2017 and 2021 revealed that abortion providers reported a complication rate of 1.52 per 1,000 abortions, while hospital data showed a significantly higher complication rate of 4.06 per 1,000.
According to SPUC, the figure could be even higher since 1 in 17 at-home abortions (so-called “pills-by-post” abortions) result in an ambulance call.
The government review also found that abortion providers were often not updating records if complications occurred after women had left their facilities, especially when the attempt to kill the unborn child was done via abortion pills.
The bill from O’Loan seeks to protect babies born alive during abortions. The issue has become more relevant since abortion was completely decriminalized in the U.K. this year, allowing women to perform their own abortions using abortion pills up to the moment of birth. This could lead to more dangerous long-term abortions, with more babies being born alive accidentally.
In the Australian state of Victoria, 33 babies were born alive after late-term abortion attempts since the practice was decriminalized. In Queensland, 204 babies were reportedly born alive following failed abortions between 2005 and 2015.
A 2008 report showed that in the U.K., 66 babies were born alive after abortion attempts carried out by the National Health Service in a single year, with many surviving for more than an hour after birth.
SPUC notes that Private Member’s Bills such as those proposed by Moylan and O’Loan rarely become law, but they still serve the important function of raising awareness and sparking parliamentary debate on controversial issues.
SPUC CEO John Deighan commented on the matter, saying, “It’s a joy to see Lord Moylan and Baroness O’Loan standing up for the unborn against the terrible barrage in the last parliamentary session.”
“These Bills would not be necessary, however, if it were not for the dreadful pills-by-post scheme pushed by the careless pro-abortion ideologues in Parliament. SPUC will do all we can to help them get the recognition and traction they deserve, of course, but will not give up lobbying to end the dangerous scheme that has led to these moves in the first place,” Deighan concluded.
