We have learned that eight people of Moroccan origin were forcibly put on a flight to Morocco on Tuesday 19 November 2024.The day before, on Monday 18 November 2024, security officers violently and unexpectedly took more than a dozen detainees of Moroccan origin from the Merksplas and Steenokkerzeel detention centres. They were taken to the 127bis centre, and the Immigration Office tried to force them onto a flight the following day, Tuesday 19 November. Some managed to avoid deportation by applying for international protection, others by self-mutilating themselves before departure.
It would appear that the people selected for this collective deportation were men and women who were resisting their imprisonment in the detention centres (through escape attempts, taking action, resisting previous deportation attempts, hunger strikes). Eight people were finally deported.
An agreement with Morocco
Nicole de Moor, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, travelled to Morocco last April to conclude an agreement with the Moroccan authorities. The aim of this agreement was to find a compromise for the expulsion of Moroccans in a so-called ‘illegal’ situation in Belgium.1
More recently, a few days ago, de Moor proudly announced that, by 2024, the number of expulsions of Moroccan nationals had been multiplied by four, testifying to the joint efforts of the Immigration Office and the Moroccan embassy and consulate. On her Twitter account, she said: ‘Migration management does not happen by itself. A global approach to the economy, security, migration and return after the April mission is bearing fruit ‘2.
As a result of this agreement between Belgium and Morocco, many Moroccans have been arrested, placed in detention centres and also too often deported. Many of them have been living in Belgium with their families, sometimes for decades, and do not necessarily have any ties to their ‘country of origin’.
Some are resisting these imprisonments through protests and actions. Others, as a sign of protest or despair, go on hunger strikes, self-harm or even attempt suicide.
The double penalty: from prison to a detention centre
Nicole de Moor recently stated that ‘This year, 203 people have already been forcibly returned, 113 of them after being released from prison’3. This statement illustrates the confusion produced by the racist and repressive State, which maintains a negative public image of people without residence permits by portraying them as ‘criminals’.
In reality, people who reside ‘illegally’ are more likely to be sent to prison. Sentenced to a variety of penalties, they rarely benefit from alternatives to detention because of their residency status, as the Observatoire International des Prisons (Belgian section) explains in their recent publication4. As a result, they are more systematically detained (including preventively) and forced to serve their sentences ‘to the full’. They are then actually released from prison, after serving their sentence, but they are transferred directly to a detention centre. They then suffer a double penalty5.
Some of those sentenced to prison had dual nationality, in this case Belgian-Moroccan. Once sentenced, these people lose their Belgian nationality. As a result, they have no legal residence permit in Belgium, which justifies their transfer to a detention centre by the Belgian government, followed by deportation to Morocco (their ‘country of origin’, where in some cases they have not even set foot).
A man of Moroccan origin, who was subjected to this double penalty, testifies:
“What do they want from me? Morocco doesn’t want me. What do they want to gain from this?”
“Are you treated like a mop because you have black eyes? I’ve known racism since I was a child here, but as a child you get over it. Now I see it, I hear it. It’s inhuman.”
“I’ve paid for my bullshit, can’t I have a second chance? It won’t work if we stay calm here. I’m losing my brain.”
The deportations
In order to be deported to their ‘country of origin’, some people are forced onto a regular flight. These deportations on ‘classic’ flights, with Royal Air Maroc, on the 6.35pm flight to Casablanca, have become an almost daily occurrence.
Some people try to resist deportation by self-harming, swallowing various objects or alerting other passengers on the flight and asking for their support. Some of them are often subjected to several attempts at deportation, which they resist.
It is also increasingly common for several people to be forced onto the same regular flight. Each person deported is escorted by two police officers. Last June, some people told us about an extremely violent collective deportation6:
“A young man in his thirties with a pale face and eyeballs surrounded by blue and red, with a broken tooth (an incisor), was taken off the plane in Casablanca. I learned that he had been the victim of torture and aggression just before he was taken out of his cell after five days in the detention centre next to Zaventem airport. His body showed signs of beatings, spotted almost everywhere in dark blue and red. Bound hand and foot, he was carried to his seat on the plane, where he continued to be beaten and crushed. On the plane, his eyes were pressed with his fingers in an excruciating manner. The police covered his face with a blanket and several times he was strangled.”
Sometimes collective deportations are organised on ‘special’ or ‘charter’ flights, i.e. planes specially reserved for deportation. Some people testified that seven of them were deported on 2 October 2024, on a special flight to Morocco.
And again on 19 November 2024, we learned of the collective deportation of 8 people of Moroccan origin. And yet, following its agreement with the Belgian authorities last April, Morocco claimed the opposite: “But Morocco has its limits. For example, there is no question of ‘special flights’. Working with regular flights with a maximum of five people on board is always possible”1. We can see that the reality is quite different: mass expulsions are becoming increasingly regular.
We condemn the murderous migration policy pursued by Belgium, with the complicity of the governments of the countries from which the people locked up in the Belgian centres come. We demand freedom of movement and freedom of settlement for all!
#NoBorder
#StopDeportation
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