The testimony of H. detained in the closed centre of Bruges (FR)
(april 2025)
Enlish translation
“I’d like to testify for what’s happening here in the centre because we live in really bad conditions. We shower once a day. The meals are not good. Security doesn’t treat us well. And above all, in the evening, when we go back inside at 10:30 pm, we can’t use our phone, we can’t make calls, they take our phone away. If you speak badly to security, they put you in solitary confinement, often for nothing at all. With no fighting, no swearing. They put you in solitary confinement for nothing. For the moment there are four people in solitary confinement. And during Ramadan, they stopped the food coming from the mosque. They refused to let it in. It came from the mosque, from the imam. They said it couldn’t go in, that we had to eat the meal they gave us.
Yesterday, someone tried to commit suicide. He’s not well, he has pain in his heart, he can’t breathe at all, he has collapsed two or three times. Even today, he collapsed outside while we were out for a walk. He asked to be moved to another centre. He’s usually the one who motivates everyone to revolt, so they put him in solitary confinement. Security really doesn’t treat us well. As soon as you talk badly, they put you solitary confinement. And even if you’re in pain and ask to see a doctor outside, they won’t let you. They take you here to see a nurse, give you medicine and tell you that everything’s fine. I’ve had a stomach ache for a month now. I’ve asked to see a doctor to take a blood test. They tell me it’s nothing serious. But since then, I haven’t been well.
Today they wanted to take me to the airport, but I refused to go. Then they told me they’d let me know if I would be taken to the airport or not. But they didn’t tell me yet, because I refused. I just told the assistant: I’m not going. I can’t go. She said she’d look at the decision later and let me know. She hasn’t told me anything yet. Really, it’s no good here, it’s no good in Bruges. Nineteen people in one room! You can’t sleep at night. Some people are sick, some people snore, some people go to the bathroom all night because they’ve got a stomach ache. And they don’t sleep all night. And during the day, they forbid people to sleep. This place is really horrible. It’s not a center for illegals, it’s a prison. It’s really not okay.
The only thing that suits them is them taking you home: they force you to go. I’ve been here for a month, but I’ve been locked up for a total of 5 months. In fact, I was transferred from Merksplas and they brought me back here. On [April] 14, it will be 5 months. They transfer people like that, as they like. Some people here have families, children. Some were born here, they’ve just had their papers taken away. We’re trying to do everything we can to stay, at least legally: they won’t accept us. We apply, we do everything: some of them have applied for asylum. We go through the procedures to stay here legally. And they’re the ones that don’t accept us. Every time you apply for asylum, you’re told you don’t have enough evidence. And at the same time, if you stay locked up, you can’t bring back any evidence. But here, inside, you can’t do anything: you’re locked up. There are people who want to help us. They can’t come and see us or contact our families or do everything they can to recover evidence here. I’ve got friends. I only have my girlfriend who comes to see me and a few friends. They don’t know my family. I’ve known them all here. Me, my family, they’re in Africa. I don’t know where they are. I’m no longer in contact with them, it’s been eight years. They don’t know how I live. They don’t know I’m locked up, no one does. Since then I haven’t been in contact with them. It’s really hard.
You go to prison, you do your time. You get a fine, you pay your fine. But I find it unacceptable that they put us in centres like that. They’re the ones who have to give us papers: we don’t come here with papers. We come here with the papers of our countries. Or the nationality of our country. If they want to accept us, that’s up to them. Because we don’t leave home just like that. We leave home because things aren’t going well. They give us zero tolerance here. It’s nonsense, wallah. Here, they don’t tell us anything. It’s only when you go to the airport that you see the reality of what’s going to happen. And also, we weren’t born with European papers. We didn’t choose to be born in a foreign country to then come here. I really looked into it. But we didn’t come here to be frowned upon. We really came here to integrate, to have a better life. Start a family. And to integrate legally. If we come and apply for asylum, it’s not to stay outside. It’s so that we can be protected. But if they kick us out, we feel really rejected, we have no support at all. They don’t even give us a chance to integrate. If we’re living illegally, it’s because they wanted us to be illegal. If you don’t get a response, they don’t accept you, you’re forced to live illegally. If, at the very least, they accept you, they put you in an open centre, where you can come and go, they know where you live. If there is the slightest mistake, they come and get you. We can live normally. But they put us in these centres, there is no possibility to leave. You have three hours to walk outside in a day.
To be honest with you, psychologically we’re not well. We’re not well at all. I feel like I’m going to go mad, no lie. I’ve got all kinds of ideas in my head that I don’t think about outside. But here, it’s like it’s normal, you have to think about it to pass the time.
And yet things aren’t going well here at the moment. I’ve been out of touch with my family, especially in Guinea, for eight years now. Even before I left Guinea, I was no longer in contact with them. Ever since the state broke down the house of my family, saying that it was reserved. There’s no president there, it’s a coup d’état. Nothing’s going well. In Africa, you know what the military are like.
Sometimes I look it up a bit but… you know here there’s no time to stay on the internet for long. You have one hour of internet a day. All you think about is how you’re going to get out of here. I don’t even feel like living here any more, no lie. You don’t even have a will to live anymore because they take it away. Because of them, you’re disgusted of life. You don’t feel like doing anything. You don’t even want to live any more. Here it’s different. I wouldn’t even wish it on my worst enemy to be in the centre like this. It’s like you’re in a henhouse. A hen in a cage. You can go outside, eat a bit of corn and then they bring you back in. They make you live like a chicken.
They come, they watch us, they go home. They have their families. They’re fine, they come to work because they get paid at the end of the month. They should at least do it for us. That we can work, get paid at the end of the month and go home. That will help us mentally. At least before, we had the orange card, I had a permanent contract. I was working and everything, no nonsense. It was when they took away my [residence] permit that I became depressed. I lost my job and went into a depression. I had an appartement, I paid the rent. When I got the card, I did everything I could to get a contract, I got a permanent contract in a catering business, in a kitchen. Then they gave me a negative, and after three months they took away my orange card. No boss is going to accept you without the card. At the commune, they told me they’d withdrawn the card before I’d finished at 8pm, so they couldn’t give me the [work] permit. It’s all gone down the drain. It all went wrong. I went into a depression, I nearly fell ill.
And my father, before he died, owed a lot of money to people. So I can’t go back into the neighbourhood now… I’ll be threatened. I don’t even know what to do any more. Ever since they told me they were going to send me back there… I’m lost, to be honest, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”
