Twenty-seven years ago today, on 22 September 1998, Semira Adamu was killed by Belgian police officers. The 20-year-old woman, an activist and undocumented migrant, was undergoing her sixth attempt at deportation.
Escorted onto the plane by nine white police officers, Semira was suffocated with a pillow while she sang her resistance. Her feet and hands were tied. Held for more than 10 minutes with her head under a pillow, Semira stopped breathing and fell into a coma. She died a few hours later.
Semira had come to Belgium to escape a forced marriage in Nigeria. Upon her arrival in Belgium, she was arrested and transferred to a detention centre, where her asylum application was rejected. Before her death, she had already resisted five attempts to deport her, during which she suffered numerous acts of police violence.
The ‘cushion technique’ was a coercive technique that was legal at the time and clearly described in police training documents. This technique was encouraged by the Ministry of the Interior to ‘subdue recalcitrant deportees’. Since Semira’s death, the cushion technique has been officially banned. But in practice, police violence continues during deportations: any means are acceptable to silence a deportee who shows resistance.
Since then, Semira has become a symbol of resistance in detention centres, for all those threatened with deportation and for all those outside who oppose this deadly practice.
Even though it was the police that killed Semira, it is the Belgian state that is responsible. The Belgian state that deprives people of residence permits, that deprives them of documents. The Belgian state that authorises and demands the deportation, at any cost, of people it considers ‘undesirable’ on its territory.
Semira, we will not forget you. We will not forgive them.
Down with borders, the state and the police.
Freedom for all.
