The secret was well kept, a state secret as one can imagine, and we learnt later that the flight was chartered by FRONTEX (the European agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders) and organised by Belgium and its Foreigners’ Office.
Frontex was set up as from 20014 and its head office is in Warsaw, Poland.
http://frontexplode.eu/files/2010/01/Presentation_Frontex.pdf
http://www.frontex.europa.eu/operations/return
It was the thrid grouped flight coordinated by the Foreigners’ Office from Brussels to Kinshasa within one year, the other two took place in March (6th) and December (12th) 2012.
On 16th of June 2013, 35 Congolese migrants were grouped together in the closed centre 127bis. Among them, twenty were coming from various Belgian closed centres, 3 from France, 10 from Ireland and one from Germany.
Here is the story of one of them in France: http://www.educationsansfrontieres.org/article46893.html
Deportation proceedings
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The police in number (a hundred according to our sources) arrived to the closed centre 127bis at 12 a.m. to take the persons designated for the flight. According to our sources again, the police was extremely violent, taking each one of them by force.
‘They are like thieves coming to steal cattle’, said one of the detainees.
In the afternoon, other buses arrived, bringing other Congolese peopole from other countries. It took four long hours to the police to settle the 34 handcuffed Congolese people in their several vehicules.
All the prisoners of the centre were outraged to see this violence and were shouting against this injustice. A man who certainly shouted too hard was grasped round the waist and handcuffed by serveral policemen. When one of them hold him at the throat he believed he was going to suffocate and he bit him. He was thrown to an isolation cell for 48 hours. The detainees continued demonstrating, taking the mattresses outside and shouting.
‘It was tough madam, it was really tough’ said a detainee.
The impressive police escort with two buses left the centre at 5 p.m. towards the military airport of Melsbroek.
At the airport, several Congolese had come to support their friends, protest loudly and denounce the collaboration between Belgium and the DRC.
Military police was all over the place at the airport, on the lookout for any suspect activity.
Three persons were taken out of the plane after their lawyer’s urgent appeal got sucessful. They were brought back to the 127bis centre and put in isolation!
The plane took off at 6.30 p.m.
127 BIS
‘The tension stays high in the centre after this limitless repression.’
‘We’re full of hatred’
‘We do not stand being mistreated’
‘Enough now’
News from Kinshasa
Message of 17th June 6.39 a.m.
They have been taken to the Presidential Palace where they will be questioned.
The laws, conventions and treaties voted by Belgium and Europe enable these so-called grouped or collective deportations in a certain legality. Nothing will stop the EU and its Member States to doggedly control migration flows.
We do not want this State terrorism that deems it has the right to define who on earth has the right to move, to breathe and to live.
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