01 october 2024′
E. has been in a closed centre for several months. He tells us about his experience of detention, particularly with regard to hygiene conditions, food and the lack of psychological support. He also talks about the action taken in protest at the poor management of the bedbug infestation.
My name is E. I’m in 127 bis detention centre, I’ve been there since the second of May, it’s been 5 months and there are bedbugs, the showers are dirty, the toilets are blocked and we managed to go on strike for two days so they proposed that we move to another wing but even in the wing where they put us there are still bedbugs. The bugs are on the cutlery, and at night we can’t sleep because they make us itch.
I’ve already had to change wings 4 times, you understand, we’ve put our clothes on the heating during ***** but it’s just that it always creates the same effect. They convinced us that we should go to the yellow wing, which is further down, because it was disinfected there and everything, but to our great surprise when we arrived it was still the same thing. At the moment, some cells have been closed and frankly they don’t want to change anything, because an inspector came to check the centre and now they’re not letting any more people in. Some of the older residents have told us that this has been going on for a year, because there are people who have been here for 9 months who have always been in the same situation.
It’s simply that we’re not being treated properly, you understand. They don’t give us good food and they only give us reheated food, we eat the same things all the time and to be honest it’s disgusting. We can’t take it any more, it’s terrible. Some people have been here for a long time just because they don’t have papers and they end up doing five, nine, ten months here and it’s awful, it’s really terrible for us.
Also, as I’m a psychologist, you can see ***** a psychologist is like a specialist who listens to us; they send us people from the centre to talk to us, who make us repeat the same things and there are things we can’t talk about all the time because it hurts us so much. Depending on what we’ve been through, it’s really difficult, and I need a competent doctor. I’ve been through a lot and I wanted to talk to a specialist to find a solution to this because I’ll never be able to forget it. And if they make me repeat myself all the time, as I repeat myself you see, I’m in pain.
