On 5 December 2024, more than ten detained persons at the Merksplas detention centre had been on hunger strike for several days. Six of them have been placed in ‘isolation’ today.
Our group is regularly alerted to hunger (and sometimes thirst) strikes in the different centres. Some of these people are demanding their release, believing that their imprisonment is unjust. Others are protesting against their deportation to a country to which they do not want to or cannot return.
In recent months, the same situation has occurred with many people of Moroccan origin, following the mass deportations of these people to Marocco1.
Two prisoners at Merksplas were released after a 40-day strike. Others were deported despite their state of health. Others were also transferred to other centres.
This type of action is spreading like wildfire. We were told on 5 December that more than ten people (of various nationalities) have begun a hunger strike. During the calls, they denounced the ‘undignified’ conditions in which they were being held: insalubrity, deplorable hygiene and sanitary conditions, lack of medical care, etc. Several inmates mentioned cases of self-mutilation due to the lack of medical care:
- “Freedom has no price”.
- “I put my life on pause, I die or I live, it’s up to them to decide.”
- “I haven’t found any other solution.”
- An inmate: “It’s my right and my choice to decide whether or not to feed myself.”
- Management: “You are required to eat, under constraint if necessary.”
- “There are several people on hunger strike. I think I’m going to stop eating too, it’s all I have to do to get my freedom. One man has been on hunger strike for forty days. He’s going to die, madam, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s torture to watch.”
- “It’s awful here, madam. We don’t get our medication, but we get as much painkillers as we want. There’s very little food. We’re put in solitary confinement for any reason. Some of the men locked up here have children outside (one of them has six), others have valid documents from another European country. This is not normal, madam.”
Hunger strikes are a last resort for people held in detention centres when there is no other way out. Various managers refer to these actions as acts of rebellion.
These actions should not be minimised. These people are putting their lives at risk out of despair, no longer knowing how to get out of the trap created by migration policies.
These actions are often individual, when a person no longer sees any other possible way out. Detained people are then placed in medical isolation, sometimes without a phone, and their families no longer have any contact with them2.
These actions can also be collective, in protest at a serious incident in the centre. This year, in 2024, the following incidents were reported:
– The repression of a collective hunger strike in the Bruges detention centre on 2 January3
– Another collective hunger strike at the 127bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel in May4
– A hunger strike led by the women* locked up in the Bruges centre in October5
The management of the centre deploy their usual means of repression: isolation cells, solitary confinement, hasty expulsions, transfers, etc. or even, if there is a collective movement, calling in the police, who then invade the centre with weapons to break up the resistance movement (as for example in this video, at the Merksplas centre6).
We have also received two reports of men dying as a result of a hunger strike and lack of care, at the Merksplas centre in February 20237 and at the Bruges closed centre in September 20248. We assume, moreover, that not all situations of this kind are always reported to us, and that there is surely more to be said about critical situations.
The detention centres kill people slowly. The government locks people away, deprives them of their freedom and their life choices, with no way of defending themselves. Hunger strikes, although dangerous and sometimes even deadly, are the only way left for some people to show their resistance and assert control over their own lives and bodies. We offer our deepest support to the people locked up in the centres, whatever their means of resisting.
#Solidarity
#EndDetention
4 https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/hunger-strike-at-the-127-bis-detention-centre-in-steenokkerzeel/
