09 sptember 2024
A man of Georgian nationality, who arrived at the Bruges detention centre a week ago, had stopped eating for 5 days. The man suffered from diabetes and was not receiving adequate treatment. On 2 September, he collapsed and was taken to the centre’s ‘medical wing’. The inmates alerted us to the situation two days later, when several resuscitation ambulances arrived. The next day, 5 September, guards told them that the man had died ‘of a heart attack’. Some of the centre’s inmates were transferred to another detention centre the following day.
The man was probably ill and did not receive appropriate medical care. He died as a result. Officially, he died of a heart attack.
It is extremely difficult to obtain more precise information, as prisoners are threatened with repression if they speak out.
In the Vottem closed centre, the management told inmates who learned of the death:
“Whoever talks about it goes straight to the solitary confinement cell’’
The announcement of this death comes just one month after a suicide attempt at centre 127bis.
It also sadly echoes those who have died in closed centres in just the last year:
-Tamazi Rasoian at Merksplas in February 2023, in circumstances still unknown¹;
-A case of suicide, also at Merksplas, in December 2023²;
-Another suicide at 127bis, in March 2024³.
For all these people killed by racist and murderous migration policies: no forgetting, no forgiving.
¹ https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/call-for-support-truth-and-justice-for-tamazi/
² https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/second-death-of-2023-at-the-detention-centre-of-merksplas/
