A few stories of women in the centres:
A lot of women are ringing us these days to denounce the situation of their co-detainees in the closed centres of Bruges and Steenokkerzeel. A climate that is harsh and heavy.
On January 17, they were 35 in the closed centre of Bruges and 30 in Steenokkerzeel.
Each have their story, one part of their life is here and they cannot go back to their homeland for personal reasons.
A few stories:
– A Moroccan woman living in France for 9 years, 4 months pregnant, is going to live her third deportation attempt: the deportation was refused by a doctor. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/urgent-troisieme-tentative-dexpulsion-a-risque-ce-samedi-18012014/
– A Russophone woman, 80 years old, has been retained since one month and had to go through a first deportation attempt! Her health is very bad, her whole body is shaking and she does not eat.
– A Cameroonian woman has been retained for 7 months. She had been arrested during an urgent medical assistance request in Antwerp: the social assistant of the CPAS came to her house within the context of this request to check that she was indeed living there. She was accompanied by the police who arrested her on the spot.
– A Peruvian woman retained since one month and very violently arrested at her house in St Josse at 5 a.m. She refused a first deportation attempt. All her family is legal here in Belgium.
– A Moroccan mother retained for 2 months. Her two sons are living in Brussels and are Belgian. She was arrested during a control. She has nothing and no one left in Morroco and her sons want to take charge of her and have their mum close to them.
– A Pakistani woman arrested at work, detained for 2 months. She has been living in Belgium for two years, got married here and she can not go back to her country where the whole village might turn against her and kill her.
– A Cameroonian woman arretesd at the Foreigners Office. She spent one year in Cyprus where she lived an ordeal (closed centre, forced prostitution, etc.). Belgium wants to send her back to Cyprus (Dublin2).
And two releases:
– A 33 weeks pregnant woman. The father is legally living in Belgium. She got through a first deportation attempt to Norway (Dublin 2) and then, having refused her deportation, she got released.
– A woman from Burkina Faso with Italian papers in order got released. She was in transit in Brussels when they arrested her. Now that she is free she doesn’t know where to go to, she doesn’t know anyone in Brussels and has no financial means. She wants to go back to her host country, Italy. It was a ‘mistake’ of the administration!
All this is just an overview of what happens behind those walls.
Repression remains the Office’s privileged means of action, in the form of imprisonment at all cost!
