Several people are currently on hunger strike at the 127bis detention centre. An entire wing has been refusing food since Tuesday 17 February. With their strike, the detainees want to denounce the injustice of their detention, some of which sometimes extends over long periods (which can last up to 9 months or more than a year, with 18 months being the maximum duration), and the inhumane treatment by doctors and centre staff.
In detention centres, hunger strikes are a recurring means of protest against violent and dehumanising confinement. It is often one of the last means of resistance to make their voices and their struggle heard. By taking this action, people are putting their lives at risk: deprivation of food can be fatal or leave serious, lifelong consequences.
The detainees currently on hunger strike report neglect and mistreatment by the centre staff, particularly the doctor.
One detainee, who has been on hunger strike for 15 days, says: “Since I arrived here, I have taken integration classes, I have taken language training, I have achieved C1, university level. I have never had any problems.” A police officer came to his home to invite him to follow him to the police station and send him to a detention centre. He quickly began a hunger strike after his arrival at the centre.
“I’m leaving free or I’m leaving dead. They say I’m a danger. To whom? For what? Yesterday I fainted, my heart rate rose to 230. They don’t care. The doctor doesn’t care about me, he laughs. He says, ‘You’re going to leave anyway, either alive or in a coffin, one or the other‘.”
“My wife and I have always worked. And now they’re telling me, ‘You’re going home in a coffin. You’re going to die, it’s your choice‘, the doctor told me. I asked, ‘Are you sure you’re a doctor?’. He said, ‘I’m a doctor for people like you’.”
I. describes how he is treated in the centre: restricted access to the internet, restrictions on visits from relatives, restricted access to water, which is essential during a hunger strike.
The strikers, their families and visitors are thus subjected to all kinds of obstacles, measures put in place by the centre’s management to force them to end their hunger strike.
Recently, one of the prisoners on strike was transferred to solitary confinement in Merksplas, in an unheated cell; a new attempt to pressure him into ending his strike.
Some are determined to continue their resistance to the end, despite their very worrying state of health.
“It’s filthy here, it’s dirty. There are 60 of us for two toilets. It’s never clean, it’s disgusting.
The food is disgusting. I don’t eat, but for those who do, it’s disgusting.
I’m vomiting blood, I’m pissing blood.
I try to drink but I can’t. My mind is giving up.”
“What do they want to do with me? They’ll never get a laissez-passer. I think they’ll have to send me to another planet!”
“If they don’t let me go, someone’s going to die here. What human rights are there here? I’m surrounded by barbed wire, it’s as if I’ve killed someone.”
Another person currently on hunger strike is also extremely weak, to the point of regularly losing consciousness. He has been on hunger strike for almost a month.
“Nothing is happening, they’re waiting for me to die. In any case, I won’t stop until my last breath. My whole life is here, I was 12 when I arrived here.”
He is the father of a baby a few months old, whose birth he was unable to attend because he was detained in a centre.
The doctor told him: “It’s your choice, it’s your problem. You want to die, you’re going to die.”
It is easy for the authorities to shift the blame in cases of hunger strikes and hold the strikers responsible for the consequences on their health. This rhetoric masks the political choices that lead to these situations. When a person has no choice but to accept uprooting, separation from loved ones, return to a country where they are in danger,… or to fight at the risk of their life, we cannot really talk about choice.
SOLIDARITY WITH DETAINEES
DOWN WITH DETENTION CENTRES
FREEDOM
