Married and with a teenage son, he is the main support of the indepe leader in Brussels and defends Flemish nationalism
Marcela Topor, first lady of Torra and remote wife of Puigdemont
When on December 20 Carles Puigdemont went to the premises of the European Parliament to collect, for the first time, his temporary accreditation as a MEP, the former president was not alone . He was accompanied from his residence by a large delegation of collaborators and assistants, but a figure captured all the prominence of that cold morning. He was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, in the Luxembourg Square in Brussels. And when he saw the entourage approaching, he crossed the distance with a firm step and received a meaningful hug to the independence leader. All the cameras were set in Assita Kanko, the Belgian politics, also MEP and one of the main allies and friends of the escaped politicians.
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Kanko has a very intense history and life. She was born in Guinea Bissau in 1980. She suffered as a child genital mutilation and after the murder of her mentor, investigative journalist Norbert Zongo, decided to follow in her footsteps and become a human rights activist. Shortly after, at the beginning of the century, he left his country and first came to the Netherlands and then to Belgium, for his partner, where in just 15 years he finished a career as fast as zigzagging. After graduating, she worked as a cleaner , administrative and in a bank. He obtained nationality in record time. But he changed the ranks of writing to those of politics.
He first joined the ranks of the Open Vld, a liberal Flemish movement. Later he moved to the Mouvement Reformateur, of the same tendency but in the Francophone world. And in 2018 he starred in an unexpected turn to the right and ended up on the N-VA lists, the main party of the country, a Flemish conservative and independentist force, which placed it as number two on the European lists of the following year. Since May, it is full MEP. She is married to a Belgian (Francophone) and has a 12-year-old daughter .
Kanko, an active feminist, has the difficult task of defending her party and a clearly restrictive immigration policy. Among his colleagues are openly xenophobic and controversial voices, like that of another great defender of Puigdemont, Secretary of State Theo Franken. In the Eurocamara he shares a group with Vox, a force he despises and attacks as soon as he can. When Abascal's deputies entered, the N-VA considered a change, but they finally remained. "We are lions, not kittens, we are not going to run away," Kanko said then.
In recent months, Kanko is the ambassador of independence in Dutch- speaking forums and media. A figure with a lower political profile than the former federal ministers, the president of the Flemish party or Parliament. But very committed to the cause. Rage, indignation and sadness are displayed in the dishes by the situation of Puigdemont, Comín, Serret or Puig, but above all by that of the former. In 2017, the N-VA attracted her to her environment by giving her the 'Ebbenhouten Spoor', a recognition to 'new flamingos', which the previous year had granted to another feminist, the Iranian Belgian Darya Safai.
In 2014, Kanko published his story in a book entitled Because you are a girl: story of a circumcised life . Then he devoted a good part of his time to genital mutilation and the situation of women in Africa. In Belgium it has been compared on numerous occasions with Ayan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch deputy, of Somali origin, turned into the scourge of radical Islam and who also suffered mutilation. And now he lives in the US after suffering constant threats. He has no qualms, in his biography or in interviews, in talking about the trauma he accompanies throughout life after the mutilation, the effects he believed were overcome and how, after years, he continues to learn things about his body, his mind and his sexuality.
Kanko has a different profile, now more focused on national politics. But he shares discourse on cultural relativism and against the left. He harshly criticizes the "dominant" discourse on multiculturalism and the passivity of parties and civil society in Europe to what he considers unacceptable violations and discrimination against women under Islam. Defend the rights of individuals and "the values of the Enlightenment" in social gatherings and interviews, but look elsewhere when they are not respected if it is to sustain the defense of their friends in the chamber.
He is in the Human Rights and Justice Commission of the European Parliament and devotes a good part of his activity to women's rights and mutilation in Africa. But his speech has changed over time. It has happened, for example, to think and write that "nationalism is an expression of fear, cowardice and lack of inspiration" to be its spokesperson, in Flanders or for Catalonia.
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