Update 17/09/2017:
The people who were arrested daily over the last weeks by the police in Maximilien parc, its surroundings and in the North Station are still many to be retained in closed centres. It remains very complicated to spot them and contact them. It is thanks to co-retainees that we sometimes manage to get a few names to put these people in contact with a lawyer. In a few centres, the staff tells them that they are not entitled to any lawyer and that they don’t have the right to have a phone.
A few got released after an emergency appeal, others would already have been sent back to the countries where they had left their fingerprints, but many are left without news, without any lawyer and with no contact with the outside world.
We had been informed of the presence of two minors at the 127bis closed centre. The Delegate for the Rights of the Child went this Sunday morning (17th September) to the centre to try and meet with one of them. The person at the reception firstly denied the presence of this young boy who was however effectively there, then they forbod the Delegate to enter for ‘administrative’ reasons. The impression we have is that the authorities try to ‘hide’ the presence in the closed centres of the people who were arrested in the Maximilen parc, including minors, so as to deny the systematic nature of those arrests (that are true raids) led by the police, as well as to prevent anyone to provide them with any kind of support.
If you know people who got arrested and are retained in a closed centre, it is extremely important to communicate their names very rapidly so as to enable the introduction of an appeal (within ten days) which could make their release possible. To do so, please send the exact name to: gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net. We will transfer the data to a lawyers’office.
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A hundred of migrants caught in Brussels are currently being retained in our closed centres following the ‘cleaning’ of the parc and the North station.
They are 40 in Merksplas, a wing is full in Bruges, and they are several dozens at the Caricole, 127bis and Vottem.
To free some space, many other prisoners were deported or released with an order to leave the territory, after sometimes 10 months of retention for some of them.
Among the hundred retainees in our closed centres, many are Dublin France and the centre refuses to assign them a lawyer because they say it is not necessary (which is totally wrong!).
Dozens of minors have been arrested and ‘placed under supervision’. They will surely continue their route, separated from their uncles, protectors or smugglers who were supposed to protect them, and are therefore in great danger!
Info by Terre d’asile France
All the Sudanese who were in Brussels of the camp Norrent Fontes are now back in the camp. They are extremely scared to go back to Belgium and very worried for their friends who are retained in closed centres.
AND this 14th of September we heard that 11 retainees have been on hunger strike for 5 days in the 127bis closed centre, among them Erythraeans and Sudanese. They do not understand why they are being retained and ask to be released!
On 15th September, Francken announces that an Identification Unit from Sudan is on its way. They will identify 80 Sudanese people in our closed
centres! Most of these people are Dublin, hence they still are asylum seekers in another country where they would have to wait for the answer to
their request. Will Francken ignore these rules and send asylum seekers back to Sudan, continuing to play the border guard of Europe?!
http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/loffice-des-etrangers-belgian-immigration-service-the-border-guard-of-europe/
Rapport Amnesty Soudan 2016/2017: https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/africa/sudan/report-sudan/
Call for air
We are getting calls from wandering persons/families in Europe and who, seen the agitations they can hear about in Brussels, imagine that if there are so many migrants movements and so many security forces, there must be interesting plans in Brussels to get to Great Britain.
Some of them are on their way!
FREEDOM OF CIRCULATION
