There were 18 detainees in block 3 of the detention centre of Merksplas.
They demanded:
– Decent food;
– Trustworthy lawyers to claim the right to defend themselves;
– An end to the racism of certain staff members;
– Decent medical care.
“It is shit what we are being fed. A dog would refuse this.”
“The centre gives us lawyers who never answer. We try desperately to call, put all our credit on the phone but we never get an answer.”
“I was sick: the nurse offered me a quick Covid test and refused to let me see a doctor.”
“The management said to me: you North Africans are slaves of Europe. Blacks are slaves of the United States.”
This Friday 15/04/2022, there was a hunger strike out of protest.After comments from the staff about this action, everything went in acceleration: some prisoners demolished furniture, one of them head-butted a guard. Everyone was shouting and throwing things.
Two prisoners tried to calm things down. They wanted to get together to talk:“We’re not going to make it with nerves””Let’s get together and decide together.”
One of them talked to the management, but the only answer he got was the threat of confinement in isolation.
Following this uprising, six armed and helmeted policemen arrived, called by the management.Nine detainees were locked up in an isolation cell (‘cachot’) without any resistance. This whole action was done very discretely, without shouting and without violence, so that other detainees in the other wings did not see or hear anything. “Even the windows were shielded”.
On 18/04 the first two detainees were taken out of the isolation cell and brought to an isolation wing (a more “comfortable” cell, with TV).
On 19/04 one of the detainees from the isolation cell got crazy because they wanted to transfer him without his belongings. He broke all kinds of things and set fire to his mattress. Armed police officers went down twice a day in this isolation wing. The detaine was put back in the isolation cell.
On 19/04, nine people are still in isolation and some are still in the “cachot”” (number unknown).
Several transfers are announced for the next morning.
On 20/04 all the alleged rioters were transferred to other closed centres.
Being locked up for purely administrative reasons, simply because you do not have the “right papers”, is an injustice that is felt very strongly by detainees. In the case of ‘double peine’, who have served their sentences and are moving from the bars of one prison to the ones of the detention centre, and who are often deported far from their families and friends to a country they no longer know, the situation could hardly be more enviable.
For whom would the lack of prospects, the almost unlimited duration of detention and the absolute arbitrariness in the centres not be daily torture? The lack of access to their rights, the invisibility, the deplorable conditions of detention, the absolute power of the guards and the frequent racist remarks (these are their words) by certain staff members are reasons for them to rebel.
Rendez vous/afspraak/ meeting 19 h 35 Rue van Elewijck 1050 bruxelles ( Flagey )
–
FR/NL/ENGL
Jeudi 23 septembre, Getting The Voice Out vous invite à une soirée
pour se rencontrer et faire découvrir le collectif à celles et ceux qui
souhaiteraient rejoindre et/ou nous soutenir.
Getting the voice out
est un collectif de lutte contre les centres fermés qui s’oppose à
l’existence des frontières et à toutes les formes d’enfermement et
d’encampement.
Un des objectifs du collectif est de soutenir les luttes existantes à
l’intérieur des centres en gardant un contact avec les détenu.e.s dans
les centres fermés, en les soutenant dans leurs démarches et notamment
en récoltant des témoignages.
Les enfermements en centres fermés ne décroissent pas et les
violences des politiques migratoires sont toujours plus abjectes. Le
collectif a besoin de soutien, (téléphonistes, traducteurs.trices dans
toutes les langues… et bien d’autres!).Nous vous attendons le
23/09/2021 à 19 h!
La discussion sera suivie d’une p’tite bouffe conviviale, boissons bienvenues.Rendez vous ce 23 septembre 19 heure
Op donderdag 23 september nodigt Getting The Voice Out u uit voor
een avond om kennis te maken en het collectief voor te stellen aan hen
die zich bij ons willen aansluiten en/of ons willen steunen.
Getting the voice out is
een collectief dat zich verzet tegen de gesloten centra en tegen het
bestaan van grenzen en alle vormen van opsluiting en kampen.
Een van de doelstellingen van de groep is de lopende strijd binnen
de centra te ondersteunen door contact te houden met de gedetineerden
in de gesloten centra, door hen te steunen bij hun acties en door
getuigenissen te verzamelen.
Detentie in gesloten centra neemt niet af en het geweld van het
migratiebeleid wordt steeds schrijnender. Het collectief heeft behoefte
aan ondersteuning, telefoonoperatoren en vertalers in alle talen.
We wachten op u op 23/09/2021 om 19 uur!De discussie wordt gevolgd door een gezellige maaltijd, drankjes zijn welkom.
On Thursday 23 September, Getting The Voice Out invites you to an
evening to get informed and introduce the collective to those who would
like to join us and/or support us.
Getting the Voice Out is a collective that is resisting against
closed centres and , borders and all forms of confinement and camps.
One of the aims of the group is to support the ongoing struggle
within the centres by keeping in touch with detainees in the closed
centers, supporting them in their actions and collecting testimonies.
Detention in closed centres is not decreasing and the violence of
the migration policy is becoming more and more apparent. The collective
needs support, (telephone operators and translators in all
languages,…).
We are waiting for you on 23/09/2021 at 7 pm!The discussion will be
followed by a nice meal, drinks are welcome.Appointment on 23 September
at 7pm.To get the address, send an email to : info@gettingthevoiceout.org or via facebook.For more info on the collective: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/
There were 18 detainees in block 3 of the detention centre of Merksplas.
They demanded:
– Decent food;
– Trustworthy lawyers to claim the right to defend themselves;
– An end to the racism of certain staff members;
– Decent medical care.
“It is shit what we are being fed. A dog would refuse this.”
“The centre gives us lawyers who never answer. We try desperately to call, put all our credit on the phone but we never get an answer.”
“I was sick: the nurse offered me a quick Covid test and refused to let me see a doctor.”
“The management said to me: you North Africans are slaves of Europe. Blacks are slaves of the United States.”
This Friday 15/04/2022, there was a hunger strike out of protest.After comments from the staff about this action, everything went in acceleration: some prisoners demolished furniture, one of them head-butted a guard. Everyone was shouting and throwing things.
Two prisoners tried to calm things down. They wanted to get together to talk:“We’re not going to make it with nerves””Let’s get together and decide together.”
One of them talked to the management, but the only answer he got was the threat of confinement in isolation.
Following this uprising, six armed and helmeted policemen arrived, called by the management.Nine detainees were locked up in an isolation cell (‘cachot’) without any resistance. This whole action was done very discretely, without shouting and without violence, so that other detainees in the other wings did not see or hear anything. “Even the windows were shielded”.
On 18/04 the first two detainees were taken out of the isolation cell and brought to an isolation wing (a more “comfortable” cell, with TV).
On 19/04 one of the detainees from the isolation cell got crazy because they wanted to transfer him without his belongings. He broke all kinds of things and set fire to his mattress. Armed police officers went down twice a day in this isolation wing. The detaine was put back in the isolation cell.
On 19/04, nine people are still in isolation and some are still in the “cachot”” (number unknown).
Several transfers are announced for the next morning.
On 20/04 all the alleged rioters were transferred to other closed centres.
Being locked up for purely administrative reasons, simply because you do not have the “right papers”, is an injustice that is felt very strongly by detainees. In the case of ‘double peine’, who have served their sentences and are moving from the bars of one prison to the ones of the detention centre, and who are often deported far from their families and friends to a country they no longer know, the situation could hardly be more enviable.
For whom would the lack of prospects, the almost unlimited duration of detention and the absolute arbitrariness in the centres not be daily torture? The lack of access to their rights, the invisibility, the deplorable conditions of detention, the absolute power of the guards and the frequent racist remarks (these are their words) by certain staff members are reasons for them to rebel.
Rendez vous/afspraak/ meeting 19 h 35 Rue van Elewijck 1050 bruxelles ( Flagey )
–
FR/NL/ENGL
Jeudi 23 septembre, Getting The Voice Out vous invite à une soirée
pour se rencontrer et faire découvrir le collectif à celles et ceux qui
souhaiteraient rejoindre et/ou nous soutenir.
Getting the voice out
est un collectif de lutte contre les centres fermés qui s’oppose à
l’existence des frontières et à toutes les formes d’enfermement et
d’encampement.
Un des objectifs du collectif est de soutenir les luttes existantes à
l’intérieur des centres en gardant un contact avec les détenu.e.s dans
les centres fermés, en les soutenant dans leurs démarches et notamment
en récoltant des témoignages.
Les enfermements en centres fermés ne décroissent pas et les
violences des politiques migratoires sont toujours plus abjectes. Le
collectif a besoin de soutien, (téléphonistes, traducteurs.trices dans
toutes les langues… et bien d’autres!).Nous vous attendons le
23/09/2021 à 19 h!
La discussion sera suivie d’une p’tite bouffe conviviale, boissons bienvenues.Rendez vous ce 23 septembre 19 heure
Op donderdag 23 september nodigt Getting The Voice Out u uit voor
een avond om kennis te maken en het collectief voor te stellen aan hen
die zich bij ons willen aansluiten en/of ons willen steunen.
Getting the voice out is
een collectief dat zich verzet tegen de gesloten centra en tegen het
bestaan van grenzen en alle vormen van opsluiting en kampen.
Een van de doelstellingen van de groep is de lopende strijd binnen
de centra te ondersteunen door contact te houden met de gedetineerden
in de gesloten centra, door hen te steunen bij hun acties en door
getuigenissen te verzamelen.
Detentie in gesloten centra neemt niet af en het geweld van het
migratiebeleid wordt steeds schrijnender. Het collectief heeft behoefte
aan ondersteuning, telefoonoperatoren en vertalers in alle talen.
We wachten op u op 23/09/2021 om 19 uur!De discussie wordt gevolgd door een gezellige maaltijd, drankjes zijn welkom.
On Thursday 23 September, Getting The Voice Out invites you to an
evening to get informed and introduce the collective to those who would
like to join us and/or support us.
Getting the Voice Out is a collective that is resisting against
closed centres and , borders and all forms of confinement and camps.
One of the aims of the group is to support the ongoing struggle
within the centres by keeping in touch with detainees in the closed
centers, supporting them in their actions and collecting testimonies.
Detention in closed centres is not decreasing and the violence of
the migration policy is becoming more and more apparent. The collective
needs support, (telephone operators and translators in all
languages,…).
We are waiting for you on 23/09/2021 at 7 pm!The discussion will be
followed by a nice meal, drinks are welcome.Appointment on 23 September
at 7pm.To get the address, send an email to : info@gettingthevoiceout.org or via facebook.For more info on the collective: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/
For the past weeks, the whole Belgian society is being reorganised so as to follow the sanitary measures decided by the government. The whole Belgian society, well.. almost. In closed centres, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and for homeless people, the measures taken are not the same. The forgotten people of this capitalist society are still and even more subject to social inequalities, including gender and race inequalities.”We are abandoned to ourselves”, declares a retainee at the Merksplas closed centre.
Since the transmission of the virus happens through droplets, either by coughing, sneezing and/or touching objects such as door handles, food, cutlery, etc.,the measures prescribed by the Belgian sanitary services have been to avoid as far as possible that too many people find themselves in a same space, touch the same objects, in the common living spaces.
Testimony 01-04-2020:
no measures and in case of fever you are placed in isolation cell. Last week in Merksplas, a man had 39oC fever. They placed him in confinement for 5 days although there is not even a table there to eat, and no ventilation system.They took him out and placed him back with the others without making any test. Still in Merskpas, block 3, a man tells us: there is no distancing of 1.5 meter, water in the shower is cold, there is no soap to wash your hands. We are 4 per room, the guards do not respect the distance either, and do not wear masks. Today, on the floor above block 3, they controlled the people, they took all their clotes (even their underwear) supposedly after medicine had been stolen,but they could not find anything. They brought people to the showers to search them. He says that the centre must be clsoed and that it will be closed. Concerning collective institutions, washing hands, objects, surfaces and wearing a mask is highly recommended in order to protect, notably, the persons at risk (persons suffering from chronic respiratory diseases, cardiac diseases, renal diseases or diabetes) who could have respiratory complications if they contracted the virus. However, in closed centres, persons at risk have not been detected and no prevention measures have been implemented on 6 April 2020.
Visits have been suspended, but the workers of closed centres are doomed to leave the institution every day and have loads of contacts with many other people, contrarily to the persons retained. As far as the latest are concerned, they are never informed on the institutional decisions related to possible measures and existing cases. Already being exposed to a traumatic system (deportation threat, imprisonment, promiscuity, loss of landmarks, institutional violence, etc.), they are also exposed to the climate of societal fear surrounding the coronavirus, but with no access to information which could enable them to make individual or collective choices for their health.
Testimony 30/03/2020:
“Now my wife and sons can’t come to visit me. I’m in block n°3 in the closed center and it’s a very critical and dangerous situation, it’s like hell. We are three in each room using the same toilets and shower and 20 people leave close to each other in this block. Nothing’s done to protect us from the virus, we eat and play together, we touch the same doors and we smoke in the same room. There’s a lot of people working there going in and out. Nobody carry masks here and there’s no machin to control the virus. We saw on TV that 2 prisonners in Merksplas’ prison got affected. If everybody get sick what are they gonna do ? Now I always stay in my room because I’m afraid also for my family. I’m so stressed up that I only eat twice a day. They have to empty and close the center so everybody can stay healthy !I saw on TV that people are dying, I want to go out and join my family. Everyday my wife calls me and cries, she’s alone working and taking care of the children.”
The retainees are subjected to a hierarchical institutionnal power, against which they have very few means of action. Some try to respond to the constant violence and injustice they face by organising themselves collectively in different ways, by revolting, by trying to speak to the director of the centre, or sharing their testimonies. Each time the repression of their acts and attempts to make their voices and choices heard is very harsh so as to stifle any kind of solidarity
Testimony : 01-04-2020:
Demonstration and isolation cells!Strike began upstairs in block 3 : Two weeks ago, people from upstairs of block 3 started a demonstration and shouted because they refused to go back inside after their lunch outside because of coronavirus. Everybody shouted in solidarity downstairs but they didn’t do no strike. The police came, 6 guys from upstairs were put in isolation cells and 4 guys from downstairs as well for 3, 4 and 5 days : ” we didn’t fight and didn’t touch anybody !”
Testimony 30/03/2020:” after lunch, (which they continue to have in the refectory), the retainees led an action, they refused to leave the room without having talked to the director. A. strongly spoke to the director, telling him that it would cost absolutely nothing to the Belgians to empty the closed centres in this crisis period, that anywaythey would be locked down at home, and above all that in 3 months, after the crisis, they would still be able to find plenty of ‘illegals’ to fill back the closed centres…’ The director finally said that he would investigate/wait for news or information from Brussels. The retainees are ready to start that again, they are waiting for news beginning of next week. If nothing comes on Monday or Tuesday, on Wednesday they will ask to speak to the director again. A. insists on the fact that the talks will be peaceful, without violence. A.A. agrees for us to relay the information he gave us under the condition that he remains anonymous.
Testimony 30/03/2020:
“In the prison next door, in Turnhout, one person was positively tested to the coronavirus, I am worried, I saw that on TV. In the prison of Forest too. Everybody here is worried because for sure there are people infected here. 60 people are working every day here in the centre. The situation is really dangerous. We don’t get any information, they do not tell us anything. They release certain people because they have to reduce the numbers, but others remain here, we don’t know why, although we didn’t do nothing wrong”, tells us a retainee in Merksplas. (…) do you follow sanitary measures? Really, nothing has changed here since the outbreak of the virus. Business as usual, at the refectory, the people serving the food wear masks and gloves. The guards don’t say a word, they don’t wear masks. We are exposed to danger constantly, everybody. We spoke to the director this morning because we should all leave the centre, it is too dangerous. (…) Nothing changed,we go to our rooms from 10 p.m till 7.45 a.m, they lock us in. They come back to open at 7.45 a.m, we go to breakfast. In the refectory we sit as usual, then we go to the veranda where there is the snooker, the babyfoot, we play there as usual. In the room? We can all be there at the same time, which is 20 people currently. In the bedrooms we are now three, before we were 5, but apart from that nothing has changed (…) Please, something has to be done, otherwise we are all going to die here.
Hence, the persons retained in those centres do not have access to adequate sanitary measures and are confronted to the exacerbation of institutionnal violence. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, they are even more forgotten. In front of imprisonment and increased violence, more and more retainees get weaker,develop post-traumatic and psychosomatic symptoms(amenorrhea or heavy menstrual periods for many women; vomiting, headaches or traumatic injuries, severe depressions, even depersonalisation symptoms) or inflict this violence against themselves (escalation of self-mutilations).
Western capitalist societies rank and prioritise human beings through the system of imprisonment and borders. There are those who may access certain territories and those who may not. The (non) management of the coronavirus epidemy in closed centres strengthens this prioritisation. There are those who deserve their lives to be taken care of and… the others… the retainees of any kind (prisons, closed centres, psychiatric hospitals, factory workers, etc.), the unproductive of society who are usable (as shown by the call for undocumented or retainees to produce masks at a lower cost) and disposable…
We are deeply outraged, revolted and opposed to that inhuman unequal racist and capitalist system borne by Belgian authorities.
We call for the opening of all the closed centres, the release of all the retainees and the provision of places to welcome them.
On Saturday 29 November 2025, five Guinean nationals were forcibly placed on an SN Airlines commercial flight accompanied by 50 undercover police officers. From the limited information gathered from those deported who arrived in Conakry, it appears that things did not go ‘smoothly’ and that some of those threatened with deportation did not go without showing their disagreement.
It should also be noted that the issuing of laissez-passer by the embassy has raised many questions for over a year now.
We are looking for any testimonies from relatives, passengers or people who have been subjected to these forced deportations, as well as other resources, press articles, testimonies from airport employees and Belgian or Guinean authorities, etc.
You can write to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or call +32 484 02 67 81.
Activists gather outside the Holsbeek centre on the 25th of November, on the international day for the elimitation of gender–based violence
On Saturday 29 November 2025, a group of activists gathered outside the closed centre for women* in Holsbeek (in the Leuven region). This act of support was organised as part of the international day for the elimitation of gender-based violence, which takes place every year on the 25th of November. The group was able to shout their support to the people detained in Holsbeek and communicate with them. Following this visit, several people called us. They are of various nationalities and have been detained for months. They tell us how difficult detention is, with the constant fear of deportation. Many are in critical health.
We share their voices with you.
“I don’t feel well here. I have epilepsy. Last year, I had a problem because of it. I’ve been falling to the ground ever since. I fall all the time… I take tablets every day. The centre takes me to hospital, I’ve already been twice to see a psychiatrist.“
“We make an effort to stay. It’s hard here. There’s a lot of stress, you think a lot. You can’t sleep normally. There’s too much pressure. Every day is harder than the day before.”
“We try to support each other as best we can inside. But it’s not easy here.“
“We’re like sisters here. We’re in the same situation, we can understand and help each other.“
“There’s no reason. The people here aren’t criminals: we don’t do anything. We don’t deserve to be here. There’s no reason. Our only hope is to get out and end this. It’s a nightmare for me, sometimes I think it’s a nightmare and that being here isn’t real. Sometimes I ask myself: where am I? And when I see that I’m in the centre, I cry.”
“Really, I’m fed up. The TV doesn’t work. All day long, nothing to do. Why are there closed centres? Why are women in closed centres? We work, we’ve tried everything. But why? There’s nothing here. I can’t take it anymore. We can’t take it anymore.“
The closed centre for women* in Holsbeek
The centre of Holsbeek is one of six closed centres in Belgium. Opened in 2019 as part of Francken’s Masterplan for closed centres, it is unique in that it only accommodates women* (including trans-women). It should be noted that women* are also detained in a special wing of the Bruges detention centre, as well as at the Caricole transit centre. Holsbeek has a capacity of around 50 places, and the detainees we are in contact with report that there are currently just under 30 people detained there.
‘Your safety, our job’: the lies of the state
A few days ago, the president of the FPS Interior, Laura Szabo, visited the Holsbeek centre with the director of the Immigration Office, Freddy Roosemont. Their hypocritical discourse about the Holsbeek centre contrasts sharply with what the detained women* tell us. It is scandalous to take such positions publicly when the reality of the people detained in closed centres is quite the opposite. Laura Szabo addresses the centre’s staff:
“Your professionalism is at the heart of our mission: to guarantee everyone’s safety while preserving their dignity. In a context where living together can generate tensions, you act responsibly to ensure a humane reception, faithful to the values that guide us. The staff at the closed centre are responsible for the safety and supervision of the residents. They do everything possible to ensure that their stay is humane and respectful and to prepare them for their return. Medical and psychological services are also available to them.”
These false public statements no longer surprise us, but they remain deeply shocking. They are yet another reminder that the government and its representatives (both the FPS Interior and the Immigration Office) lie and manipulate public discourse on migration and closed centres. They hide the reality of the centres and the suffering of the people they detain. How dare they talk about ‘humane and respectful conditions’? How dare they call them ‘residents’ when they are treated like prisoners? Shame on the government and its representatives, shame on the state.
The importance of support
The people we spoke to on the phone reiterated how important support is to them:
“Thank you very much, everyone.“
“We saw you come to the centre, it’s very kind of you.“
This kind of gathering in front of the centres reminds us how important it is to show and shout our support for the people that the Belgian state detains in these centres. To show them that they are seen, heard and supported from the outside. To show them that we are against these places of detention and death.
In this text, YLV shares his account of his visit to a detention centre. He describes his experience of bodily control: ‘you don’t enter a detention centre, you dissolve into it, step by step’.
Through this account, he reflects on what this prison system reveals about the role of detention centres in migration policy and the border system more broadly.
‘Detention centres are not an exception, they are the culmination of a routine policy of sorting, exclusion and deterrence.’
If it is already difficult to bear spending an hour visiting these places, one dares not imagine the extent of the impact of detention on all those forced to spend weeks or months there, under the threat of deportation.
DOWN WITH DETENTION CENTRES DOWN WITH STATES AND BORDERS FREEDOM FOR ALL
A few days ago, I was asked to visit a young Palestinian exile who had been detained for a month at the Steenokkerzeel closed centre (127 bis), after being arrested as he left a rally in support of Palestine on the Place de la Bourse, in the centre of Brussels. This request was made explicitly to me as a social scientist working on (anti-)migration measures. The visit aimed to document not only his journey and the reasons for his arrest, but also the concrete conditions of detention in one of the central spaces of Belgium’s policy of controlling foreigners.
The 127 bis centre in Steenokkerzeel is not simply a prison building, it is literally a system, i.e. a set of practices, discourses and techniques designed to make a certain population – foreigners, undocumented migrants, undesirables – visible, controllable and governable. Located in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of Zaventem airport, the complex is caught between the tarmac, the national highway and empty fields. The comings and goings of planes taking off and landing provide a constant soundtrack, an ironic reminder of a freedom of movement reserved for others, but also a permanent echo of the threat of imminent deportation.
I have, of course, been familiar with these spaces for several years, at least in theory: I have studied and analysed them in some of my research. I have also demonstrated there dozens of times, shouted my rage in front of their gates, waited with others for silhouettes to appear at the windows. About fifteen years ago, during a demonstration in front of the Vottem centre, the heavy green metal door was climbed over, while the inner gate gave way under the collective pressure, allowing a glimpse, for a few minutes, of the inside of the courtyard and the faces behind the bars. This moment of intrusion, snatched from the logic of control, carried a subversive intensity: that of contact, of an exchange of glances across the border. We had invaded the courtyard, exchanged a few words and gestures with the prisoners, before being arrested en masse. It was a moment of rupture, almost a celebration for the young activist that I was, a collective irruption into a space that the state usually keeps out of sight, a breach opened in a system of confinement designed never to be crossed.
Today, I experienced the opposite: the inside under control, access managed, hospitality supervised. So I entered a closed centre ‘legally’ for the first time. I hesitate to say ‘enter’ because the term takes on a cynical tone in a place specifically designed to prevent any exit. You don’t enter a closed centre: you dissolve into it, step by step, even as a visitor. Three layers of barriers, identity cards to present, a metal detector, no telephones or pens allowed. It is a kind of reverse humiliation ritual, where visitors submit to a discipline of access, a reduction of their ability to observe, write and remember. It is a space that neutralises, even before contact, any possibility of free observation.
On that day, there were three person were visited by five visitors. The visiting room, a container measuring approximately sixty square metres, encapsulates the panoptic logic of the institution. Four cameras, two guards. Visitors sit on one side of the table, with their backs to the guards; the detainees face them, keeping them constantly in their field of vision – a silent reminder of the hierarchy of bodies and gazes. The length of the table acts as an administrative boundary. The atmosphere is stifling, as if even the air itself were under surveillance. Everything is designed to prevent any intimacy, any possible complicity, any emotional exchange: the ceilings are low, voices are hushed, almost whispered, and there is a faint but continuous murmur. It is as if speaking too loudly might breach the fiction of control. The guards, on the other hand, laugh loudly, as if mocking the forced discretion of our voices. The guards laugh loudly, as if to remind us that light-heartedness is not forbidden to them. This spatial arrangement not only organises surveillance, it also produces a moral asymmetry. The visitor becomes the subject of speech that must be kept low, at a distance, under the gaze of authority. Reduced to discretion, the visitor unwittingly becomes part of this theatre of control.
From where I am sitting, I can only see a patch of sky through the two-thirds obscured windows. A beige sky, typically Belgian, without promise. Below, two rows of barbed wire. The green fence. More cameras. From where I am sitting, the world exists in only two colours: the green of metal and the grey of the air.
‘It’s not a prison,’ people often say as a euphemism. This phrase is at least accurate in one respect: in the ‘camps for foreigners’ – the words are cold, but the violence is burning – people are locked up without trial, without a defined term and without any prospects. A machine for suspending time, for hypothesising the future. Waiting is its main technique of domination; an endless temporality, indefinitely extendable, without any legal framework, without any clear outcome.
Sitting opposite me is H., a 21-year-old Palestinian man (almost twenty years my junior). His face undoubtedly bears the marks of detention – a little thin, drawn features – but it remains that of a very young man, still full of gentleness: bright eyes, a well-groomed beard, a shy and discreet smile, as if restrained but very much present, clearly happy to receive a visitor. I listen to him tell me his story, but in a space that is not conducive to such a conversation – monitored, noisy, constrained – I feel almost embarrassed to be taking up these few minutes of privacy that he should have had with his girlfriend, whom I accompanied to come and see him. A youth that might seem ordinary if it weren’t for the many exiles he has endured. Originally from Gaza, he left more than two years ago, travelling through Egypt, then Turkey, before crossing over to Greece. In Greece, he obtained protection status and worked in agriculture before being swindled by his employer – left with no recourse and no salary. So he left again, this time for Belgium, where an uncle lives. Once in Brussels, he worked in a restaurant, began training as a DJ, made friends, met a girlfriend and started a new life. He also took part in the daily gatherings at the Brussels Stock Exchange in support of Palestine, his country ravaged by a genocide whose scale we are all aware of. It was there, at the end of September, that he was arrested for no apparent reason as he was leaving the premises with his girlfriend.
Since then, he has been locked up. Not in a place, but in limbo. A space where nothing moves forward, where every day could be the same, where the horizon is administratively empty. He also tells me about Mahmoud, his 26-year-old friend, also Palestinian, who was arrested under the same circumstances and who took his own life in the same centre a few days after his incarceration. The words hang in the air, drowned out by the hum of the visiting room’s ventilation system and the ambient hubbub. Like many others, H. is what is known as a Dubliné: threatened with deportation to Greece, the country where his fingerprints were registered. A country where he no longer knows anyone, where he has never had a home, and which he remembers for its violence, deception and everyday racism. But he has no intention of returning there. He says it bluntly: what he wants is to stay here. Here, where he works, where he loves, where he has plans for the future. Deportation would be less a return than an imposed uprooting. He is not asking for an exception, he is simply asking to be allowed to stay where he already lives. H. is here, H. belongs here!
When I left the centre, I thought I felt anger. Instead, it is a feeling of shame that dominates. Not an abstract or moral shame, but a political shame: the shame of belonging to a society that produces and administers these kinds of spaces, fully aware of their deadly causes and effects. A society that has created this: rooms without light, dividing tables, the laughter of guards, overhead cameras. Shame on the bureaucracy that has turned human suffering into procedure, exile into fault and solidarity into crime.
In this place, state xenophobia is not only visible, it is palpable: in the weight of the doors, the gaze of the guards, the neutralisation of movement, the distancing of bodies. Here, everything conspires to produce the foreigner as a figure of radical otherness, as a non-citizen, as a non-person. This is precisely what these walls and layers of green barriers do: they manufacture foreignness. They transform lives that are situated and rooted into files to be moved and bodies to be expelled.
Faced with this cold machinery, what remains? Perhaps, as always, the cry – the one we utter in front of the gates of shame, during demonstrations. Perhaps also the need to write, to bear witness, to document this banality of administrative violence. But beyond denunciation, we must consider the continuity between these spaces of confinement and the entire migration system. Closed centres are not exceptions; they are the culmination of an ordinary policy of sorting, exclusion and deterrence. The centres embody what Belgian and European asylum and migration policy produces in the background (i.e. in a less visible but nevertheless constant way): a diffuse internal border that is no longer located solely at the geographical limits of Europe, but has extended into cities, institutions and the law itself. This border is not just barbed wire. It also resides in files, procedures, police checks, administrative statuses and legal categories that decide who can move around, who can work, who can love, who can stay and who must disappear from view.
Finally, we can simply state that this necropolitical mechanism is not inevitable, and repeat a few simple words: Papers for all. Destruction of detention centres. Freedom of movement.
These are not naive slogans. They are antidotes to the shame we feel when we approach a detention centre.
Freedom for H.. Freedom for all those who are locked up!
We are relaying the voices of activists involved in supporting pro-Palestinian struggles. They have launched a petition calling for the resignation of the Minister for Asylum, Migration and Social Integration, Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA). This petition follows the treatment of Palestinians detained in closed centres and the death of one of them, last September in the 127bis closed centre in Steenokerzeel.
We support these demands. We call for the permanent closure of all detention centres, the release of all those detained there, and freedom of movement and settlement for all!
To demand the resignation of the Minister for Asylum, Migration and Social Integration, Anneleen Van Bossuyt, and the repeal of the measures and laws established under her authority since 3 February 2025.
Two key events:
> On 7 October 2025, Mahmoud Farjallah, a 26-year-old militant refugee from Gaza, died at the 127bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel, adjacent to Zaventem airport.
Mahmoud’s body was found by staff at the detention centre. He was declared to have committed suicide by hanging himself. No detainee can confirm this version of events. They had to literally fight with security staff in order to see their companion’s body and pay their last respects.
Before being detained in this centre, Mahmoud had overdosed on Lyrica (pregabalin, used in the treatment of epilepsy and neuropathic pain and known to be the drug of choice for many refugees due to its euphoric and disinhibiting effects) and the Immigration Office was aware of his toxicological and psychological distress.
There were then several suicide attempts at the detention centre. The minister and the centre’s staff assure us that they did everything in their power to help him, but we know that that after each suicide attempt, he was placed in solitary confinement and excessively sedated, and that the only psychological support available at 127bis is a psychologist employed by the Immigration Office who is often unavailable, offering consultations with Google Translate and advising detainees to ‘play billiards’ to resolve post-traumatic stress and suicidal tendencies. The medical and psychological services provided in closed centres are crude and inadequate. Many detainees report excessive distribution of drugs with severe addiction risks, such as Tramadol (an opioid analgesic) and Lyrica. When we try to bring in trusted, high-quality healthcare professionals from outside, such as MSF doctors, visits are obstructed or sabotaged.
Note from the Ulysse mental health service on the pathogenic effects of events related to the war and invasion of Gaza on people of Palestinian origin living in Belgium (20 June 2024):‘In November 2023, our department published an open letter to alert the authorities to our concern about the blatant deterioration in the psychological state of Palestinian patients since the start of the war.’
‘At the time, we already emphasised the urgent need for solutions to be put in place in terms of accommodation, psychosocial support and the right of residence for these people, which are essential conditions for us to be able to carry out our care missions.’
‘The latter present the most serious and worrying clinical pictures. There is serious concern about a series of mental breakdowns, psychiatric decompensation, endangerment and suicidal acts.’
Two days before his death, Mahmoud made another suicide attempt. As usual, he was punished and placed in solitary confinement. He emerged in a state of alarming stress and panic, according to his fellow inmates.
– Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt, questioned on this subject by four members of parliament in the Home Affairs Committee on 21 October 2025, said that ‘forty “contacts” had been recorded, including ten consultations with the centre’s doctor’. We therefore request medical certificates and contact reports attesting to the veracity of his statements.
– The Immigration Office ensured that Mahmoud Farjallah’s funeral took place as quickly as possible. An autopsy should have been performed to check the level of drugs in his blood. We demand the truth about Mahmoud Farjallah’s death through legal action. What can we expect from the internal investigation conducted by the Immigration Office?
> On 14 October 2025, during the national mobilisation, the Immigration Office was targeted by demonstrators. Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt’s argument is that of a reaction without cause: ‘thugs’ came to attack this building and cause unacceptable material damage.
On that day, the police had been deployed in force at the Immigration Office and the closed centre at 127bis because the minister knew that she would be targeted and incriminated for her choices and relentless efforts, which had led to the recent detention of a number of militant Gazan refugees and the death of one of them.
The surrealism was such that the Minister immediately set up a ‘psychological support unit’ to assist the employees present in the building that day, but did nothing to provide psychological support to the detainees at 127bis after the shock and grief caused by the death of Mahmoud Farjallah. She even withheld information, endangering the lives of others, by denying journalists the existence of the hunger strike undertaken by some of the detainees.
Foreigners are disparaged and animalised.
It is the word of the detainees against that of the minister and the Immigration Office. The aim is to weaken and destabilise prisoners so that deportation appears to be the only positive outcome to their situation.
Anas Hmam, a Moroccan refugee and political prisoner at the Vottem detention centre, who has been transferred numerous times, was a fellow prisoner of Mahmoud Farjallah and had publicly raised the alarm about his companion’s distress: «The silence weighs heavily. This silence is a weapon; it is what allows detention centres to exist. It is what allows deportations to take place in the shadows.‘ ’When you fall ill, it is not a doctor who awaits you, but indifference. When you collapse, when you want to end it all, it is not the hospital that opens its doors to you, but the dungeon. The dungeon as a response to pain. The dungeon as punishment for agony: that is the inhuman treatment reserved for the undesirables.»
Reprisals against detainees who speak out are immediate: isolation, transfer to another closed centre, confiscation of telephones, harassment, beatings, deprivation of visits, being tied up naked for 24 hours, sexual abuse, deliberate and punitive medical negligence, incorrect identification numbers on medical certificates, medical certificates with minimised or false content to hinder asylum procedures, etc.
– The minister is covering up these practices: failure to assist persons in danger. We want European and international attention to be focused on the conditions of detention in closed centres in Belgium and elsewhere.
Investigations must be launched immediately into the methods used and the varying degrees of cruelty from one centre to another.
– We call for an end to this carnage and demand compensation for the moral and physical damage caused by the policies pursued by Minister Anneeleen Van Bossuyt, in particular through the release of militant Gazan refugees still in detention, the return of those already deported to Greece, and the immediate acceptance of their refugee status in Belgium.
On Tuesday 14 October, as 180,000 people took to the streets of Brussels to protest against Arizona, a wing of the 127bis detention centre began to revolt.
From early in the morning, detainees noticed a heavy police presence around the centre, without being given any reason for it.
Later that evening, detainees discovered bedbugs. Several bedbug infestations had already been the subject of protests in recent months. However, the centre’s management never took appropriate measures. The discovery of this new infestation led to an impressive revolt. Detainees in the adjacent wing, who observed the events from their windows, described a major ‘outburst’: the detainees allegedly ‘smashed everything’, including furniture, televisions and beds, to such an extent that this wing is currently no longer functional.
During the evening, the police entered massively, with more than 20 vans. Then the detainees from the wing in question were all transferred by bus. It seems that some are in solitary confinement, and others are in the detention centre in Bruges.
The next day (15 October), the 127bis refused all visits.
As of today, we have been unable to discover whether anyone was injured. We are awaiting further news.
Two weeks after Mahmoud’s tragic death, the detention centre remains a place of death, violence and suffering. Let us keep our eyes open, stay informed and mobilise in support of the people whom the Belgian state detains, imprisons and abuses in these death centres.
Seven years ago this very same day, on 9 October 2018, we learned of the death of Gebre Mariam, a 36-year-old young man from Eritrea, who had been detained for four months at the Vottem detention centre (Liège).
The memory of Gebre’s death echoes the tragic suicide of Mahmoud just a few days ago.
Seven years later, detention centres are still just as destructive.
Gebre was threatened by the Belgian state with deportation to Bulgaria, a country that had granted him asylum and he refused to be deported back to. He had received an order for his release from the Council Chamber, but the Immigration Office had appealed against this release. He therefore remained in detention, fearing a new attempt at deportation. He had already suffered physical and racist violence in Bulgaria and feared for his life.
Grebre suffered greatly from his detention. A few hours before his suicide, his fellow detainees reported to the CRACPE (Collectif de Résistance aux Centres pour Étrangers) that he had been transferred to another wing by the center’s staff for an unknown reason and kept isolated in a room.
The news of Gebre’s tragic death devastated and deeply upset his co-detainees and other people of Eritrean origin in the centers. Four days after his death, 400 people gathered in his memory in front of the closed center in Vottem. Some people had red paint on their hands, carrying a clear message: “The state has blood on its hands”.
Let us remember that suicidal acts are unfortunately not uncommon in the extremely violent context of detention. We think of Mr A., of Ethiopian origin, who took his own life in March 2024 at 127bis, even though his mental distress was well known to the centre’s staff. We think of all the others, whose names we sometimes do not even know, who saw death as the only way to end the persecution by the Immigration Office. We also think of the all too many people who attempt suicide to express their suffering and despair caused by Belgian and European migration policies.
Suicides in detention centers and prisons are unlike any other act. Every year, the state deprives thousands of people of their lives, their loved ones, and their futures. Shame on the state and those who represent it!
More generally, we think of Gebre, Mawda, Baudouin, Semira, Tamazi, Mahmoud, and the countless (and too often unnameable) people who have died because of borders and prisons.
Today, seven years later, we have not forgotten you, Gebre. We do not forgive them.
Since Mahmoud’s death yesterday at the 127bis closed centre (near Zaventem), five of his comrades have been put in solitary confinement and forcibly transferred to three different centres: two in Bruges, two in Vottem (Liège), and one in Caricole (also near Zaventem). Their phones have been taken away and they are being deprived of all contact. Nothing has been put in place by the centre to allow them to grieve in peace, quite the contrary.
An attempt by the centre and the Immigration Office to discourage and muzzle resistance from within.
The five people transferred were those closest to Mahmoud and who had the strongest ties to the Palestinian community outside.
Mahmoud’s comrades were in mourning and had started a hunger strike together. One detainee told us yesterday that around 80% of the detainees at 127bis had started a hunger strike.
That same afternoon, they were put in solitary confinement and transferred away from their comrades.
In the evening, a small group of people gathered in front of the centre to show and shout their solidarity with those in detention. Messages of support and anger were exchanged. Following this, the centre’s staff organised a search of all the rooms, further exacerbating the climate of repression.
Mahmoud’s death is an unspeakable tragedy, and the Belgian state has blood on its hands.
Shame on you!
Resistance is organising, the people will not forget.
But let us not forget all the people locked up in these centres of death, often for months, sometimes for a year or even several years.
Whether you come from Palestine or elsewhere, we are thinking of you.
The detainees at 127bis alerted us this morning that a man had committed suicide during the night at the centre. The man was Mahmoud Ezzat Farag Allah, a Palestinian who had been detained at the centre for three months.
His fellow detainees tell us that Mahmoud’s mother had just died in Palestine when he arrived at the detention centre. The rest of his family is still in Palestine: our thoughts are with them.
His fellow detainees are outraged. They have started a hunger strike at the centre and made a banner with his name on it. They tell us, ‘Today it’s Mahmoud, tomorrow it will be someone else. We have to do something, the security guards are laughing at us. We have to do something.’
Every year, detainees report an average of 2-3 deaths in the centres. We think of Tamazi Rasoian in 2023, Baudouin Pandikuziku in 2025, A. in 2024, Semira Adamu in 1998, Gebre Mariam in 2018, and so many others (some of whose names are unfortunately unknown). We also think of all those whose deaths will never be known, kept hidden by the Belgian state.
It is clear that those responsible for Mahmoud’s death are the Belgian state, the Immigration Office and all the institutional actors involved in repressive migration policies. The state that imprisons, expels and kills.
Detention in closed centres is violent. It pushes people to their limits. It murders.
Let us remain mobilised and ready to gather in memory of Mahmoud and all those who have died because of borders and prisons. Let us gather in support of his fellow detainees and the thousands of people locked up every year by Belgium in its centres.
For several days now, Guinean nationals detained in closed centres have been alerting us to deportations planned for this week to Guinea. The deportation attempts we are aware of were scheduled from the 22nd to 27th of September and concern people detained at the centres in Vottem, Bruges and Merksplas.
In case the Immigration Office wants to deport a foreign national who does not have a passport, the embassy of the country in question plays a key role: it is responsible for officially confirming the person’s nationality and issuing a laissez-passer (a travel document that replaces a passport). Without this document, the deportation cannot theoretically take place. In short, whether or not people can be deported depends on Belgium’s relations with the embassy of the country concerned.
It is not a coincidence that deportations to Guinea are planned. Just a few months ago, the Guinean embassy stated that it would refuse to issue laissez-passers to people who had been living in Belgium for several years, had established family ties here, or were particularly vulnerable. The embassy asserted the need to meet with the person concerned for a thorough examination of their personal situation before making a decision on the laissez-passer.
Today, however, flights are announced without the embassy being able to hear from the individuals concerned about their specific situations. The Immigration Office also refuses to provide proof of the issuance of laissez-passer to those threatened with deportation and their lawyers. In the centre, social workers (who are referred to as return assistants) reportedly told people that they would only have access to their laissez-passer upon arrival at the airport. The detainees concerned are worried, doubt the authenticity of the documents, and fear collective deportation to Guinea. Many of them have family in Belgium and fear repression upon their return to Guinea.
New agreements with Guinea
Last month, Guinea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Morissanda Kouyaté, visited Brussels and met with the Minister of Asylum and Migration, Anneleen van Bossuyt. Together, the two re-established ties between Belgium and Guinea to agree on the repatriation of Guinean nationals present ‘illegally’ in Belgium.
Nous avons besoin de nos ressources humaines. Nous ne voulons pas qu’elles partent, et celles qui sont parties, nous voulons les attirer pour qu’elles reviennent. Donc, on n’est pas un pays qui pousse ses citoyens à la migration illégale’.’
Morissanda Kouyaté
During this meeting, both ministers agreed on one shared objective: to facilitate the forced deportation of Guinean nationals in detention centres. It therefore seems clear to us that the planned deportations are a direct consequence of these agreements. Despite the contradictory statements made by the Guinean embassy, there appears to be a risk of more regular deportations to Guinea in the future. The deportation notices received this week are proof of this: Belgium’s political and diplomatic agreements with third countries have direct and rapid consequences on the deportation of people in detention centres.
Since October 2024, groups of Guinean people and activists have been mobilising and demonstrating in front of the Guinean embassy and the Immigration Office to protest against the embassy’s issuance of laissez-passer. To our knowledge, no laissez-passer have been issued by the embassy since February 2025.
The lack of transparency on the part of the Belgian state and the Guinean authorities regarding the situation of Guinean nationals in detention centres is alarming.
Fortunately, most of the detainees who received flight reservations this week were able to refuse deportation, as no escort was arranged. However, we fear that this first wave of reservations is part of a strategy by the IO to deport them en masse in a second attempt, either by commercial flight or by collective flight, this time with an escort!
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.
From his isolation cell in Merksplas, Anas shares a few words about his situation: violation of rights and repression on one side, struggle by any means necessary on the other.
Anas requested access to medical care, which was denied. This is sadly very common in closed centres: while the context of detention undermines people’s physical and mental health, detainees report an almost total lack of adequate care.
Even in the most serious cases, the authorities at the centres encourage the deterioration of people’s health. There have been cases where detainees, not knowing what else to do, have called an ambulance, only for the centre to refuse to let it in.
These are very serious threats to people’s lives. In this context, the only means of resistance available to people is sometimes to put their health at risk, for example by going on hunger or even thirst strikes, as is the case here with Anas.
Anas also tells us that he filed a complaint; to our knowledge, no complaint has ever led to anything. This complaint system seems like nothing more than a smokescreen to give the appearance of compliance with laws designed to protect rights, except that the only laws that apply in detention centres are those of racism, classism and xenophobia.
In response, Anas finds himself in solitary confinement for daring to speak out and assert his rights. It is a classic mechanism that is used in closed centres: the slightest sign of resistance exposes people to repression (solitary confinement, transfer, deprivation of telephone privileges, threats).
Strength to him and to all those who are locked up! Freedom for all!
The government had announced it, and now it’s happening: since last week, the first Frontex agents have been on duty at Zaventem airport.
The government’s goal is clear: the Minister of the Interior (Quintin, MR) and the Minister of Asylum and Migration (Van Bossuyt, N-VA) are delighted with this new collaboration. With the support of Frontex, they want to increase the number of deportations by plane.
‘Anyone staying illegally in Belgium must return to their country as quickly as possible. Thanks to Frontex’s intervention, we can speed up the pace of return operations.’ (Van Bossuyt)
The Frontex agency is the armed hand of the European Union: officially, in the words of the EU, Frontex ‘guarantees the safety and smooth functioning of external borders by ensuring security’. In reality, Frontex is a deadly agency, already responsible for the deaths of thousands of people every year at the borders of Fortress Europe.
The Belgian government constantly complains that a number of deportations ‘fail’: indeed, many people resist (to our great delight) attempts to deport them, sometimes with the support of fellow passengers on the plane. Until now, these deportations have been carried out with a police escort (often six police officers to bring the person onto the plane, then two for the duration of the flight), handcuffs and shackles (on the hands, and regularly on the feet), sometimes with a gag over the mouth and hidden at the back of the plane behind a curtain. These deportations are already moments of extreme violence for the people the state is trying to deport, both psychological and physical violence. We can only fear the worst with the new ‘collaboration’ between police officers and Frontex.
The deployment of Frontex in Belgium follows the adoption of the Frontex law in May 2024 by the political majority (at the time, Vivaldi). In April 2025, the Council of Ministers then voted on a royal decree allowing Frontex agents to operate on Belgian territory (in the presence of and in collaboration with the police).
The practical details of Frontex’s deployment in Belgium remain very vague, and it is not yet clear how it will actually work (although their presence has been announced for major transport hubs such as airports and railway stations). We expect the worst.
Together, let us remain vigilant about the extremely worrying turn that Belgian migration policy continues to take. Let us follow the laws that are passed and enforced, and closely monitor the work carried out by civil society activists (notably the Abolish Frontex collective).
Borders kill. Down with borders.
ABOLISH DETENTION CENTRES ABOLISH BORDERS ABOLISH FRONTEX ABOLISH POLICE FREEDOM FOR ALL
From 1998 to 2025: it has already been 27 years since Semira Adamu, then detained at the 127bis detention centre, lost her life, murdered by police officers who suffocated her during their sixth attempt to deport her by plane.
27 years later, the fight against the detention and deportation machine continues in many forms.
The day before the demonstration on 20 September, organised in Charleroi to protest against the planned construction of a detention centre in Jumet*, we are pleased to invite you to take part in a day in memory of Semira Adamu, which will take place at the Zone Neutre collective’s occupation!
📆 Friday 19 September 2025 (12 noon-11 p.m.) 📍 Zone Neutre collective occupation – 1 Square de l’Aviation, Anderlecht (Brussels)
PROGRAMME
12 noon: Opening & bouncy castle
3 p.m.: Start of the football tournament (arrive early to register your team!)
6.30 p.m.: Collective recording of the Lance-Pierre podcast** (with Getting the Voice Out & Radio Panik) -> Note: the podcast recording will be in French only.
8 p.m.: Meal
We are planning:
🎪 A children’s area 👕 A serigraphy workshop (bring your T-shirt!) 📃 News tables 🍻 A bar
(+ more info to come on the programme)
Come along and join us!
❤ Freedom of movement and settlement for all ❤
Organised by Zone Neutre & several anti-border collectives
✊ *DEMONSTRATION IN CHARLEROI ✊
On 20 September in Charleroi, a demonstration is being organised to protest against violent, racist and inhumane Belgian and European migration policies.
❤ This march will commemorate the life and struggle of Semira Adamu, an undocumented activist killed by the police during a forced deportation in 1998. We do not forget, we do not forgive, and we continue her fight.❤
Once again this year, the mobilisation is particularly denouncing the planned detention centre in Jumet, scheduled for 2028. If it goes ahead, this centre would be the largest administrative detention and deportation facility in Belgium. It is part of a national plan initiated by the far right to criminalise, imprison and deport people who the state has deprived of their papers. Charleroi supports this project, despite local opposition from citizens. The city of Charleroi uses security-focused and racist rhetoric to justify its support, criminalising exiled people.
In memory of Semira, Mawda, Tamazi, Baudouin and so many others.
In solidarity with all those who have been abused, persecuted and killed by dehumanising migration policies.
Let us come together, demand freedom of movement and settlement for all, demand the closure of detention centres and the abandonment of plans to build these prisons that dare not speak their name. Let us demand an end to repatriations and state violence against undocumented migrants.
🥁📢See you on 20 September at 2pm, Place Buisset (Charleroi). Let’s be countless in our rejection of the political projects of the far right🥁📢
🎙️ **LANCE-PIERRE PODCAST RECORDING 🎙️
We are offering a collective recording of the 6th episode of Lance-Pierre, the podcast that breaks down borders. Lance-Pierre echoes the struggles of people detained by the Belgian state in detention centres. This podcast from Getting a Voice Out will be recorded in collaboration with Radio Panik and broadcast live on their airwaves.
In this sixth episode, we will talk about multiple forms of resistance. Those that take place during deportations, but also those that take place inside and outside detention centres (notably with the Zone Neutre collective).
Note: the podcast recording will be in French only.
On 20 September in Charleroi, a demonstration will be held against violent, racist and inhumane Belgian and European migration policies.
❤ This march will commemorate the life and struggle of Semira Adamu, an undocumented activist killed by the police during a forced deportation in 1998. We will not forget, we will not forgive, and we will continue her fight.❤
Once again this year, the mobilisation particularly denounces the planned closed centre in Jumet, scheduled for 2028. This centre would be the largest administrative detention and deportation facility in Belgium and is part of a national plan initiated by the far right: to criminalise, imprison and deport undocumented migrants. Charleroi supports this project despite local citizen opposition. The city of Charleroi uses security and racist rhetoric to justify its support for the detention centre, criminalising people on the move.
In memory of Semira, Mawda, Tamazi and Baudoin, in solidarity with all those who have been victims of violence, persecution and murder as a result of dehumanising migration policies, let us unite, demand freedom of movement and settlement for all, demand the closure of detention centres and the cessation of construction plans for these prisons that hide behind a different name. Let us demand an end to repatriations and state violence against undocumented migrants.
🥁📢See you on 20 September at 2 p.m. at Buisset Square. Let us join forces to reject the political and extreme right-wing project. 🥁📢
Testimony from a man who survived an attempted deportation (to a country that is not even their own), after being tortured by the police on the plane and in the van after being taken off, thanks to the protest of the passengers.
These practices are common and highly concealed, the person has little recourse to file a complaint, and the police allow themselves to act on their violent impulses with complete impunity.
Here is an excerpt:
“Then I saw them talking to themselves, and talking to me as well, that, yeah “You can come back anytime you want.” I said; “It’s not a problem of me coming back anytime I want. The problem is where you’re taking me is not where I belong to. So, it’s really, really, really not good feelings for me.” So, from there, I start to get scared, because of the movement they are doing there.
They start to show me another face, not the same face they had for me when they were with me in the immigration room. I see different faces, all of them. The talking was different.
So, I got scared.“
Transcription:
In that day, I didn’t expect I’m going to face, like, torture. I’m going to be tortured, and I’m going to face abuse and violence. I didn’t think about it, because I was just sitting down in the immigration room, just waiting for them to do what they want to do, because they said they want to take me to a country whereby I’m not belong there, I’m not from there, I’m not born there.
Then I tried to convince them that I’m not from there, but they still say, no, you are from there. And then I say, what shows that I’m from there? Then they could not give me tangible reasons. They said; “Yeah, we have to take you, because, yeah, we have to.”
So, after a few minutes, I saw myself, I saw them holding something like a bag, like bulletproof bag, with a lot of lockers. So, when I saw it, my heart, like, I just breathed in. I just accepted everything that was coming, because, and I was really chill. I was telling them, yeah, if I go, they will see that I’m not from there, they will bring me back. Then they said; “Okay, no problem, let’s do our work.” Then they put that thing on me, like a cloth, they just wear it on me, and they tell me to put my hand in the pocket, I put my hands in the pocket, and they lock it.
But, when they lock it, I was just sitting down, waiting for them, for some few time. Again, I was just sitting down alone, just talking to myself, silence. I said, what is gonna happen here? What, what is going on here? So, after they told me, okay, come with us, let’s go.
I followed them. I sit in their van, they took me around, around, around in the airport. Then we arrived to the plane.
So, I saw the plane, I moved to the plane with them, I sit down. Then I saw them talking to themselves, and talking to me as well, that, yeah “You can come back anytime you want.” I said; “It’s not a problem of me coming back anytime I want. The problem is where you’re taking me is not where I belongs to. So, it’s really, really, really not good feelings for me.” So, from there, I start to get scared, because of the movement they are doing there.
They start to show me another face, not the same face they had for me when they were with me in the immigration room. I see different faces, all of them. The talking was different.
So, I get scared. I really, really get scared, because it’s not something I’m gonna tell people. It’s not funny, it’s really, really, really crazy.
Yeah, it’s like a terrorist thing. Like, when they say somebody is a terrorist, like, yeah, the way they put him, yeah, something like that. So, I didn’t see myself that I am an abuse to the society, or I am a terrorist, or I am a criminal.
I didn’t see myself like that. So, and the treatment they let me pass through, it really make me scary, and make me feel like I am not a human, and make me also feel like, yeah, at the end of all this, I’m not gonna be normal anymore. You get me? So, it really hurt me.
It really get me scared. It’s like somebody put a knife in my… Tie me, my legs, my hands, and put a knife in my neck and cut me. And I said every word, and the person didn’t listen, and still kill me.
This all what I was feeling. I would not like these things to be continue on. It’s really not okay.
Because for human being, actually, our mind is our mind. We move with our mind. That’s why we have mind. So, if this mind cannot think good, like it cannot feel good, like you have only panic, panic, panic, panic, at the end of the day, it’s bad. Because if something is really scary, maybe it’s not the thing gonna kill you, but maybe you can fall in some place, or fall in a hole because you are scared. And to the people, to the whole world, you know, to everywhere, everybody, I would not like anybody to pass through this.
Because it’s life or death. That’s what I see it, that’s how I call it. When I was in the plane, they told me, yeah, you have to, we have to hide you from the passengers.
Then I said, why? I’m also a passenger. Oh, what’s wrong? He said; “Yeah, because the way we put you, we lock you up. Yeah, you have to bend your head down to the seat.”
And I said, okay, it’s no problem. So, I bend my head down to the seat. Then, after a few minutes, after maybe five minutes, it was not enough.
The guy told me, the policeman told me, you have to go down more. I said; “I cannot go down, I have problem in my back. I can’t go down more.”
It’s enough, because I was like this for some few minutes. Now you tell me, no, I have to go down again. I cannot.
So, from there, he said, let me show you. He hold my head. The other one sitting beside him also hold my back, push me down, till my head was down.
Down, down, in between my legs, down to the seat, front seat. I tried to resist a little bit, but afterwards I could not again resist. I said, please, I cannot breathe.
It’s too hard for me. My back is really hurting me. He said; “Yeah, just for a few minutes, when the plane is full, we’re gonna let you up.” Or when the plane is in the air, we’re gonna let you. Yeah, he said; “When the plane is in the air, we’re gonna let you up.” And imagine, it’s almost 30 minutes, or how many minutes? And I’m like that.
So, I could not, till I had the blood come from my mouth to the jeans that he was wearing. That was the right side, the person who was holding me. Then I said, please, please, I cannot.
Just let me come up and breathe a little bit, and I go back again down. Or you put me in the position before, not now, this position, this position I cannot. So, from there, the other person uses elbow.
How can you use your elbow to push somebody’s back? It’s not possible. That means you are hitting the person. So, I only feel back.
Somebody is hitting me from the back of the elbow and pushing my neck at the same time. Whilst my hands are being locked across my waist, close, tied across my waist, and the seat belt also of the plane is being put in my body. And the two side where you have to bring it down, where if you sit in the plane, you can relax yourself.
If it have two side where you can relax your arms. Also, that one was pulled down. So, I was really suffering.
And people saw me because I see people walk towards that side where I was, both right and left side. I hear people’s footsteps. I see their legs, but I cannot see their face.
So, I hear people say; “Ah, why, why, why this? Why this? Why are you doing this? Why are you treating this boy like that? I pass here to go to toilet. I come back. This boy is still like that. He’s suffering there. He’s not a baggage. He’s not a bag that you have to try to push it down. He’s a human being. He cannot bend like that. If you bend like that, you think you can walk? No, bring him up. Let him sit.”
Then I hear talking, blah, blah, blah. They go.
Another people come. They see me. They talk.
Another people talk, talk. A lot of people. And from there, they said, no, they don’t leave me.
So, me too, I try to raise myself up. They push me down. I try to raise my head up.
They push me down. Then at the end, they strangle my neck with their arms. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I try to talk, but I think when I talk, my sound, my voice is not coming out. Because I was really, my voice was gone. So, when the people hear that, because before my voice was different, then my voice changed.
So, they try to come back again and talk to them. And they’re still insisting. So, they try to fight them.
They try to, yeah, attack the police in the plane. And the police see that, no, it’s too much. So, that time, the plane is full and everything is closed.
And the plane wants to take off. So, the pilot has to stop and open everything, open the doors back. Then from there, they take me up.
When they take me up, I could not stand. I was bent down. I was bent because when I stand, I feel too much pain.
I could not. I have to bend sideways. So, they hold me on the steps to go down.
Then I fall down. So, I said, ah, I shouted. I said, ah, why I’m falling down? You guys holding me and you push me.
They say, yeah, we didn’t push you. Well, they pick me up again. We finished the walking on the steps.
Coming down, push me in the car, step on me. I said; “Ah, you want to kill me?” Then they sit down, talk bullshit to me, insulting me, telling me how bad it was. I was just looking at them because I was not really on myself anymore.
I didn’t know where I was. Because when they were talking, I could not say anything. I was quiet.
I want to talk, but when I try to talk, my talk is not coming out. So, I just be there like that, lying down in the car. So, they took me back to their office in the airport.
They hold me with both left hand and right hand because I could not walk. So, they dropped me in the room, the camera room, small room. I was there for a little time, lying down, just trying to breathe.
I said, I need a doctor. Then the doctor came, checked me out. Then after they go, asked me if I cannot breathe for a while.
I said, I don’t know because me, I have a little bit of pain in my back. But I can do many things. My back pain cannot come because it’s not that I have pain every day.
No, I do hard work and I don’t have back pain. So, because of the position they put me, that’s why I could not breathe. The doctor said; “Okay, I should go” and he go.
So, these things is really, really scary. It makes me like, yeah, I am dead and I’m wake up again. Because all that time in the plane, I was really, really tired.
I was tired. I was really tired, really, really tired. I could not do nothing.
I said, what the fuck? What the fuck? You guys want to kill human being or what? What the fuck? What is all this treatment? It was too much abuse, too much violence. Because me, I was already weak. So, when he hits me, I don’t know who hits me.
And I don’t, I only feel pain, then I shout. So, at the end of the day, it makes me really mad. Like, it makes me, I could not think reasonable anymore.
I don’t know what is this. I don’t even know nothing. I was just blacked out.
I was just, this boy is dead already. This boy is dead. I was just, I’m low.
I still have sometimes bad feelings, you know? Like, how to say it? So, like, it’s thinking that flash in my mind, you know? The thing that I passed through every, every, every, I cannot say more than two hours in my life, living here in the Center (Merksplas). Now, it just comes flashing in my mind. Then I try to let it, because it doesn’t make me even to feel.
I’m happy. I thank God, my life. But, you know, the energy I have, me, I’m somebody who, I don’t know how to explain, but I’m really social, you know? But this time around, it’s like I have another energy in me, not good, like scary, scary, you know? So, it makes, I don’t talk to, I don’t talk, I don’t talk to people who want to talk to me.
But sometimes I say one, two, three, four, five things, then I run away, like, I don’t want to continue the conversation. I cannot say it’s because of that, because of him, because of her, no. Sometimes, you know, the politics is always, always corrupted, you know? Because when you are not inside, you don’t see what is inside.
But when you are inside, it’s always, always corrupted. It’s never, never straight. Because there are people in there who, they have given their Soul to something else, you get me? So, when you give your Soul, then you are not in the, in the circle of the other human being, you get me? You are in another circle.
But it’s not all of them. There are some people who are God-fearing, who don’t do that. But most of them, they are like that.
They are corrupt, because they have given their Soul. They have sold their Soul, okay, to another society, whereby, yeah, that circle, it’s like this. They have to do like that, no matter what, okay? But in the other way also, as I’m explaining, this politics is all about money.
Because this immigration thing here, it’s about money thing, okay? I cannot say it’s about racism. I don’t know, but I cannot say that, but it’s about money thing. It’s about money thing.
It’s about money, because money coming, because there are more immigration, okay? But if there is less immigration, money don’t come. So, you have to, they have to show that, yeah, we are working. And for me, it’s really not good.
But I cannot change it. I can try to make something, to change it. But I cannot change it, because why? Why I cannot change it, is because, if every country in the World, sit down and talk about the reality, not the vanity.
Yeah, everybody sit down and talk about the reality and not the vanity. But it’s difficult, because most of these people, they are not president. We don’t call them, me, I cannot call them they are president.
They are evil, let me say that. Because the heart they have is different heart. Because if they do something like; “Oh, what the fuck, what’s going on?” Every country president is doing the right thing.
“Oh, I don’t want you to send my country people. I don’t want this. Don’t do this.”
It’s negotiation. But most of the countries, the president, they are corrupt. Like most countries, they have colonized by other countries.
This thing is the problem that happened today. Because of that, yeah. Because of this, this is the big problem.
Because most countries have colonized from other countries. So it’s like, you are my leader. Oh, I’m your leader.
Okay, this is the problem. That’s why today these things are fucked up.
For the past month, detainees have been reporting frequent escape attempts at detention centre 127 bis.
According to detainees, seven people have managed to escape.
Several others who attempted to escape were placed in solitary confinement or transferred to another centre. .
Others were placed on a collective flight to Morocco at the end of July.
We have received some details
– One man simply climbed over the barriers in broad daylight
– Three other men dismantled their window frames during the night and made their escape . The staff only noticed it about 30 minutes later.
Following this, one wing was invaded by security on Saturday 09/08/2025. All the prisoners were searched, sometimes naked, and then placed in the courtyard for several hours while security searched all the lockers.
During this time, a visitor observed that guards were checking the fences and looking for sections that could be cut.
On 29 July, a man detained at the Merksplas detention centre (Antwerp) alerted us that the detainees there were suffering from insect bites.
“We’re scratching ourselves all over. Please do something.”
The infestation began in one of the centre’s blocks (block 3). One of the detainees told us today that a fellow detainee from that block had just been transferred to another centre, covered in bites.
“We found bedbugs in two rooms. They were closed, but not the others.”
“I’ve been scratching for three days.”
“There’s no food, no medical service, people are sick, people are suffering.”
“It’s shit here.”
Almost a year ago, people locked up in the Merkplsas centres, as well as in Bruges and Steenokkerzeel (127bis), already informed us of a similar health situation1. They told us: ‘It’s becoming unbearable,’ pointing to the passivity of the staff in the face of this serious problem.
Following this, last September, several people detained at 127bis organised a protest to voice their demands2:
“They have to close this centre. Or destroy it, but that’s just a dream. At the very least, it needs to be renovated and disinfected. […] It’s becoming really urgent. This is not a life, it affects us mentally and physically.”
Around 15 people decided to spend a night outside in the rain to protest against the unacceptable conditions.
The Merksplas detention centre (in operation since 1994) is one of six detention centres in Belgium. Recently, the government invested €5 million to renovate one of the blocks and increase the detention capacity by 40 new places3. This work has just been completed. In total, the Merksplas detention centre can now hold up to 180 people.
To mark the inauguration of this renovated block, we learned from an article in the Flemish media outlet HLN that a cynical simulation exercise was staged in which a undocumented person was brutally treated while resisting, in the presence of the Minister for Asylum and Migration, Anneleen Van Bossuyt. The latter made the odious statement after the exercise that it is ‘not that easy to put undocumented migrants on a plane’. No mention, of course, of the difficulties of life in a detention centre for those detained there by the Belgian state, nor of the violence of deportations, nor of the current health situation.
While millions of euros are being invested by the government in strengthening the detention and deportation system, those locked up must try to survive in rooms infested with bedbugs. These appalling living conditions give us an idea of the level of dehumanisation of border management policies.
On January 31, 2025, the new federal government finally unveiled its long-awaited coalition agreement. From the very first lines of the preamble, the tone was set: Bart De Wever, newly appointed Prime Minister under the banner of the N-VA, made no attempt to hide the harshness of the policies to come. He warns that the road ahead will not be “a walk in the park” and that the measures announced will require “sacrifices from all members of our society.”
But beyond this rhetoric of firmness, the text is repugnant both in its wording and in the justifications it puts forward.
Indeed, throughout the paragraphs of this document, there is a clear desire to stigmatise certain categories of the population. The arguments put forward by the government are based in particular on the alleged “massive influx of migrants” and on a barely veiled criminalisation of these people.
This approach, far from being neutral, fuels fears and divisions, while legitimising restrictive and discriminatory measures. The text does not merely announce reforms: line by line, it distils an anxiety-inducing, racist, and biased vision of society that can only inspire unease and indignation.
Our collective wants a world without borders and walls, where everyone can live and travel wherever they want. As might be expected, this is far from what is in store for the coming years, both in Belgium and in Europe.
Almost six months after the publication of the Arizona government agreement, we would like to revisit the main points concerning “Asylum and Migration.” This is to keep a clear record of the historic moment we are living through, of the ever-deepening shift towards a society fuelled by fear and repression.
The ‘closed centres master plan’ in Belgium is a strategical plan launched by Theo Francken (N-VA) when he was Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration (between 2014 and 2018). This plan aimed to strengthen migration control, with several objectives announced:
Increasing the detention capacity of closed centres (i.e. the number of centres);
Speeding up deportation procedures;
Deterring migration to Belgium, in particular by strengthening detention measures (the idea was to make Belgium less attractive to people wishing to apply for the right to stay).
Since Francken, it is the Flemish Christian party CD&V (conservative and right-wing) that has been responsible for asylum and migration in the federal government. The fact that it is officially positioned less to the right than the N-VA has not prevented the CD&V from being fully aligned with the same racist and repressive ambitions: the two people who have held the position of Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration (Sammy Mahdi and Nicole de Moor) have pursued Francken’s objectives, including his ‘master plan’ for closed centres.
With the Arizona government, the N-VA is back in charge of asylum and migration (with the position being upgraded from secretary of state to minister), with Anneleen Van Bossuyt. She seems ready (and already on her way) to implement the ‘toughest migration policy ever in Belgium’.
Unsurprisingly, Arizona has announced the continuation of the closed centres master plan and even more repression, detention and deportations, in a climate of racism and fascism.
Their message: “Strengthen migration control“ Our response: Everyone must be free to travel or settle where they wish.
More and more closed centres
To increase detention capacity, Francken’s master plan included the building of six new closed centres. The stated goal was to double detention capacity from the current 600 places to around 1,100. The closed centre for women in Holsbeek was already part of this master plan when it opened in 2019. Today, between four and six other new centres are planned (in Zandvliet, Jumet, Steenokkerzeel and Jabbeke). Unfortunately, the building of the centre in Jumet (in the Charleroi area) is becoming more and more of a reality, despite protests (especially from the Ni Jumet, Ni Ailleurs collective).
The government agreement also mentions the creation of a special centre specifically for the increasing number of people suffering from medical and psychological problems related to drug addiction. Given that the psychological care provided to people detained in closed centres is already dire, we can expect the worst: the aim of such a centre is certainly not to provide care or better treatment for people.
The agreement also announces the creation of ‘Dublin centres’ exclusively focused on return (meaning forced deportation), in order to identify and deport even more quickly people whose fingerprints are registered in other European countries (and who, according to European law, must first be sent back to those countries before being deported from European territory).
Finally, the agreement confirms the ban on the detention of children, but this is not guaranteed in the long term: it plans to review the law after two years, which suggests that a legal return to the detention of children remains possible in the future. In any case, in reality, children often find themselves locked up in centres (because bone tests falsely determine them to be adults).
Their message: “As many centres as possible, to control who stays on our territory“ Our response: Burn down your closed centres and all your prisons.
Belgian prisons outside Belgian territory
Belgian prisons are overcrowded, and the current penal policy is to lock up more and longer. This logic of imprisonment makes no sense: prison has no effect on crime, which is actually falling (while prison sentences continue to increase). The logic of punishing, repressing and imprisoning is at the heart of the ambitions of a racist and security-obsessed state. In Belgian prisons, a large number of people who have been deprived of their residence permits are locked up. Some of these people have lost their residence permits as a result of their ‘offences’ (sometimes for minor offences, such as driving without a licence or non-violent theft). Once they have served their prison sentences, these people are sent directly to detention centres with a view to their expulsion from the country (our collective refers to this as ‘double punishment’).
Since Belgian prisons are full, the Arizona government says it will conclude agreements with other European countries (such as Kosovo and Estonia) to build (or rent) prisons there for convicted persons who do not have residence permits. In this case, these people will be directly deported to their country of origin at the end of their prison sentence. These remote prisons will further invisible and silence those imprisoned, even more than they already are. They risk increasing their isolation, when they are already highly marginalised due to the loss of their residence permits and their criminalisation. It will complicate (or even make impossible) their access to visits, social support and legal remedies, which may exacerbate their vulnerability and psychological distress.
The externalisation of prisons also raises major questions about respect for fundamental rights and Belgium’s ability to guarantee detention conditions that comply with international standards (given that the detention of foreign nationals in Belgium has already been criticised and condemned for inhuman or degrading treatment).
This externalisation does not address the structural causes of prison overcrowding or the growing criminalisation of undocumented migrants: building Belgian prisons abroad would simply displace the problem of overcrowding outside Belgian territory, making the horrors of detention more distant and less visible to the Belgian population and to groups or organisations fighting against detention or monitoring respect for human rights.
The people whom the state deprives of papers are part of the section of the population living in Belgium that is most criminalised by the racist, security-obsessed and capitalist state. The Belgian authorities take advantage of this to accuse these people of being ‘criminals’ and to justify the need to deport them from Belgian territory. This is a simplistic, false, racist and fascist discourse that allows them to get rid of people they deem ‘undesirable’.
Their message: “Prisons far from our eyes and those of our citizens“ Our response: Fire to prisons and all other places of detention.
Extension of the maximum duration of detention
Today, the maximum duration of detention in a closed centre is theoretically eight months. Even then, the maximum of eight months is supposed to represent only exceptional situations:
The initial period of detention is two months.
This detention can be extended month by month, up to four times in a row (i.e. a maximum of six months in total).
In the event of refusal to cooperate or obstacles to deportation, detention can be extended for a further two months (i.e. up to eight months: again, theoretically in exceptional cases).
But the reality is quite different: people detained in centres remain locked up for much longer. Each time an expulsion attempt fails, the person is returned to the centre and the clock is reset. Some people with whom our group is in contact have been locked up for one or two years, with no release date.
However, according to the government agreement, the maximum detention period is being extended to 18 months. Given that the maximum was theoretically limited to 8 months today, but that in reality some people are already being detained for 18 months, it is worrying to think what this new official ‘limit’ will mean…
On the other hand, judicial review of the time limit remains in place. In other words, extensions of detention can (for the time being) only take place in the context of a court hearing. However, even with judicial review, the Immigration Office currently has no difficulty in systematically extending detention: it is a mere formality.
In the agreement, the government says it wants to keep detention times ‘as short as possible’. This is already false, since it increases the maximum duration to 18 months. But it is also misleading, because it does not mean that it wants to keep people locked up for as little time as possible: the government simply wants to deport them as soon as possible.
Their message: “We’ll keep you locked up until you break“ Our response: Even one hour in detention is too much: freedom for all!
No more asylum applications during detention
‘We are resolutely opposed to the practice of submitting undue asylum and residence applications from closed centres for the sole purpose of delaying or preventing return. We will make full use of the possibilities offered by European regulations in this area.’
The government will systematically prevent any attempt to submit a new asylum or residence application from a closed centre. This means that a person who is arrested and detained in a centre, and who has not yet submitted an asylum application, will no longer be able to do so and may be deported.
This is a very serious measure: today, submitting a new asylum application is sometimes the last resort for people who are threatened with deportation.
Recently, we shared the testimony of a man who applied for asylum to block his imminent deportation: he had received an order to leave Belgian territory (OQT), even though the Immigration Office had wrongly judged that he was not the father of his own child. The only thing that could help him at that point was to submit a new asylum application, as all other legal avenues had been denied.
Their message: “When we lock you up, you have no rights“ Our response: Access to asylum for all!
——————– DEPORTATIONS ——————–
Deport more and more, faster and faster
“A consistent and compliant return policy is a priority for this government. Once a final decision has been made, it must be implemented and the person receiving an order to leave the country must comply with it quickly. Last year, tens of thousands of OQTs were issued. But many of them are not enforced, and the majority of foreigners who are refused entry on illegal grounds do not leave. Things must change. This government is aiming for a significant increase in the number of returns. “
The Arizona government is clear and explicit about its desire to increase the number of forced returns of foreign nationals as much as possible. From now on, the order to leave the territory (OQT) is a genuine deportation contract: it details all the obligations of the persons concerned and the penalties incurred in the event of non-compliance.
In addition to so-called ‘voluntary’ returns (notably through ICAM appointments), the government plans to tighten forced return procedures (deportation by plane, with police escort, handcuffs, etc.).
Their message: “Undesirables must be removed from our territory by any means necessary“ Our response: Everyone has the right to choose where they want to live.
‘Voluntary’ returns: mandatory ICAM appointments
‘This government is aiming for a significant increase in the number of returns.’
The previous government (Vivaldi) had introduced a repatriation measure, which it presented as an alternative to detention in closed centres: the ICAM (Individual Case Management) system. The Immigration Office said it was inspired by social work, offering people without residence permits ‘tailor-made’ interviews with ‘return coaches’ to give an opinion on the person’s situation and their chances of obtaining the right to stay. In practice, the ‘coaches’ offer people ‘voluntary’ return and explain the risks involved if they do not agree to cooperate. The ICAM model is praised internationally as a good practice aimed at providing ‘individualised and rights-based’ support, but this is completely false: ICAM appointments are mainly used as a monitoring and control tool for the Immigration Office, which then justifies detention and deportation on the grounds of ‘refusal to cooperate’.
It should also be noted that the Immigration Office employs ‘return assistants or coaches’ in closed centres, whose job is to convince detainees to accept voluntary return by plane.
Arizona has made ICAM mandatory. Pilot projects will also be tested to accompany families (whose asylum has been refused) throughout the return process.
The practice of so-called ‘voluntary’ returns is misleading and deceptive. In the majority of cases, those who are offered ‘voluntary’ return are in a situation of despair: their asylum application has been rejected, they have no means of regularising their status and they face the threat of detention or forced deportation. The ‘choice’ to leave is often made under intense pressure: administrative, psychological or even physical (with the principle of solitary confinement). This return is therefore forced in reality, but disguised as ‘voluntary’.
Their message: “If you don’t accept that we’re kindly forcing you, we’ll use stronger methods“ Our response: A return made under pressure is not voluntary. Stop all deportations!
Diplomatic manoeuvring to encourage deportations
“We link bilateral aid, entry visas, security and defence cooperation, trade and economic cooperation to the conclusion of return agreements and the effective readmission of third-country nationals. […] Sanctions are provided for in the event of non-compliance with the agreements concluded. Optimal cooperation on return is becoming a key issue in the context of a comprehensive government approach towards third countries, the so-called “whole of government” approach.”
The government notes that many orders to leave the country remain unenforced and that the majority of people do not return to their country of origin of their own accord. To remedy this, Belgium will now use links with third countries that are not directly related to immigration (such as trade agreements, bilateral aid, development cooperation, security and defence agreements, etc.).This means that if Belgium’s partner countries do not sign and implement return agreements for their nationals without residence permits in Belgium, the Belgian government will apply sanctions in other areas.
Their message: “We are all-powerful and can extend our power beyond borders“ Our response: Stop neo-colonial practices and the exploitation of migration for geopolitical ends. Freedom of movement and settlement for all!
——————– ARRESTS ——————–
Hunting down undocumented persons and raids at home
“If necessary, the person intercepted is placed in administrative detention and, on the instructions of the Immigration Office, immediately removed or transferred to a closed centre or residential unit with a view to removal. This measure applies to foreigners who have received an OQT and who pose a threat to public order, or who pose a threat to national security due to acts of extremism, radicalism or terrorism, or who have been convicted of serious crimes.”
Arizona plans to strengthen cooperation between police and immigration services (as part of the HIGH TROUBLE project). The aim is to facilitate arrests at home, so that people classified as ‘multiple offenders’ can be arrested and deported directly. Information on the places of residence/domiciles of foreign nationals who do not (yet) have a residence permit will have to be centralised and made accessible to all relevant services. The objective is to increase returns (‘voluntary’ and forced), officially for people ‘who represent a danger to public order’ (a very vague term that could be interpreted in many ways, allowing for the arrest of virtually anyone).
In practice, this means that the Immigration Office and the police now have the right to arrest people directly at their homes.
The implementation of these measures is already beginning to be seen: on 18 July 2025, the Belgian Council of Ministers approved a draft bill authorising house searches.
Their message: “Arrests everywhere, anywhere, anytime“ Our response: The police create insecurity. Racist state, police complicity: abolish the police institution!
Frontex troops on Belgian ground
The Belgian Council of Ministers recently adopted a Royal Decree (proposed by the Minister of the Interior, Bernard Quintin) which now authorises Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) to actively operate and deploy on Belgian territory. This decision is in line with the government agreement, which emphasises strengthening internal security and a stricter migration policy.
The legal framework enabling this cooperation between Frontex and Belgium was voted on during the previous legislative term, but the new decree now sets out the specific conditions for the deployment of Frontex (armed) officers (who will always operate under the authority and in the presence of the Belgian police). Frontex’s areas of intervention in Belgium mainly include assistance with external border control (at Brussels-Zaventem airport, but also at major railway stations and international travel hubs), as well as assistance with deportations by air (including for persons convicted of criminal offences).
Frontex’s activities in Belgium will be monitored by the Comité P (the monitoring body for the police services). The stated aim is to prevent abuses and ensure that interventions comply with the legal framework and fundamental rights. However, the Comité P is a monitoring body that does not inspire much trust, given the way in which they almost systematically protect police abuses and violence.
Criticism of Frontex is widespread and well documented. Several international and European organisations (as well as institutions such as the European Parliament and the European Court of Auditors) have pointed to serious violations of fundamental rights during Frontex operations: illegal pushbacks, ill-treatment, lack of personal data protection, discrimination and lack of transparency in the follow-up of complaints, etc. In Belgium, human rights and no borders collectives and associations have expressed their concern about the lack of clarity surrounding the powers and responsibilities of Frontex personnel in Belgium. Frontex military personnel will be present on Belgian soil from 2026, and only then will it be possible to directly observe the consequences of this new mechanism.
The deployment of Frontex on Belgian territory reinforcesa repressive approach to migration, which is completely opposed to perspectives such as reception, collective regularisation andsocial security for all.
Their message: “More money, more weapons, more human resources to make every inch of OUR territory impenetrable“ Our response: Abolish Frontex. A world without borders is possible.
————– CONCLUSIONS & OUTLOOK ————–
The migration policy currently being pursued in Belgium clearly reflects the orientation of a state that has veered sharply to the far right. The measures adopted (tighter controls, centralisation of procedures, restriction of access to fundamental rights, etc.) are representative of an ideology that places repression, exclusion and stigmatisation of foreigners at the centre of public discourse and political action.
Under this far-right government, the law is no longer a safeguard for the most vulnerable: it has become an instrument of selection and arbitrary decision-making. Systematic violations of procedural guarantees, abusive detention, unfounded expulsions and the criminalisation of migration are becoming the norm. Foreigners, labelled as ‘undesirable’, are deprived of a voice, of recourse and of any effective protection. The (already rare) institutional counterbalances are weakened or reformed to serve the political objectives of those in power.
This policy, based on control, fear and closure, is accompanied by the normalisation of state racism and a profound questioning of democratic principles. In the face of this authoritarian drift, it is urgent to recall that human dignity, access to justice and unconditional respect for fundamental rights must remain at the heart of all public policy. It is clear that the Belgian state has not been guided by these principles for a long time, and that the state system itself produces inequalities and violence.
Closed centres prove to us every day that not all lives are equal and that not all humans are treated equally. The turn taken by Arizona goes even further: by legalising repressive practices, weakening the mechanisms available to defend people in exile, and enshrining in law an increasingly overt policy of exclusion and repression.
Let’s stand together to fight these fascist, racist, and deadly policies and institutions. Let’s defend an open society, without borders or walls, with solidarity and community at its core. A society where everyone has a place, no matter where they come from.
Let’s not turn a blind eye to fascism and state racism, in Belgium and elsewhere!
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL NO TO DETENTION NO TO BORDERS NO TO DEPORTATIONS PAPERS FOR EVERYONE FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE
On January 31, 2025, the new federal government finally unveiled its long-awaited coalition agreement. From the very first lines of the preamble, the tone was set: Bart De Wever, newly appointed Prime Minister under the banner of the N-VA, made no attempt to hide the harshness of the policies to come. He warns that the road ahead will not be “a walk in the park” and that the measures announced will require “sacrifices from all members of our society.”
But beyond this rhetoric of firmness, the text is repugnant both in its wording and in the justifications it puts forward.
Indeed, throughout the paragraphs of this document, there is a clear desire to stigmatise certain categories of the population. The arguments put forward by the government are based in particular on the alleged “massive influx of migrants” and on a barely veiled criminalisation of these people.
This approach, far from being neutral, fuels fears and divisions, while legitimising restrictive and discriminatory measures. The text does not merely announce reforms: line by line, it distils an anxiety-inducing, racist, and biased vision of society that can only inspire unease and indignation.
Our collective wants a world without borders and walls, where everyone can live and travel wherever they want. As might be expected, this is far from what is in store for the coming years, both in Belgium and in Europe.
Almost six months after the publication of the Arizona government agreement, we would like to revisit the main points concerning “Asylum and Migration.” This is to keep a clear record of the historic moment we are living through, of the ever-deepening shift towards a society fuelled by fear and repression.
Asylum applications are already a real struggle. People who are forced to go through these procedures are dehumanised, infantilised, inspected and put under pressure by the Belgian administration. Already far too long, inaccessible and unfair, these procedures are set to become even tougher.
The strengthening of the ‘duty to cooperate’ now requires asylum seekers to hand over all their digital data (phones, tablets, computers) to the administration as soon as they submit their application. This is a serious intrusion into the privacy of these people, which is now legalised, putting them under constant surveillance. It places additional psychological pressure on people who are often already traumatised. ‘Refusal to cooperate’, an application that the administration deems late, or the slightest suspicion of fraud become potential grounds for rejecting an asylum application.
This logic reverses the fundamental principle of the right to asylum, since it is no longer up to the state to prove that there is no need for asylum protection: it is up to the individual to demonstrate, under surveillance and in a hurry, the legitimacy of their request for protection.
The real-life consequences are serious: even the smallest mistake, delay, or reluctance to give personal info can lead to an immediate rejection of the asylum application. The rush to process cases (under the pretext of complying with European standards) risks leading to rushed decisions, without a real consideration of each person’s individual situation. The increase in implicit withdrawals, the strict application of Dublin decisions (return to the first country of arrival in the EU) and the drastic limitation of the right to submit additional applications make access to international protection virtually impossible for many people in exile.
Their message: “Your story belongs to us” Our response: Asylum and protection for all!
One rejection, and that’s it
It will no longer be possible to submit a new asylum application after a previous application has been rejected. Submitting multiple consecutive asylum applications or initiating repeated appeal procedures for individuals who have been denied asylum is considered to place ‘unacceptable pressure’ on the asylum and reception system. The government therefore plans to make full use of the margins offered by European law to manage this so-called pressure.
In particular, it is considered to:
limit the number of successive asylum applications
make these procedures non-suspensive (meaning that a second asylum application being processed does not necessarily extend the right to stay: even if their second application is still being examined, a person could be forced to leave Belgian territory, even if there is no response yet to their application, which is still pending).
Furthermore, if a person has already submitted an application for protection in another EU country and has received a decision, any new application in Belgium will only be examined if new and significant elements are presented. Otherwise, the application will be declared inadmissible.
All of this could expose people to quick deportations, without the chance to add new info to their case or get extended hospitality in the meantime. The government says this is to stop people from ‘asylum shopping,’ but that’s a bad argument because it ignores the reality of migration and dangerous situations (which can change over time).
Their message: “No more ‘asylum shopping‘” Our response: Right to asylum without policing or intrusion into private life!
Limited access to refugee status
The government plans to narrow access to refugee status by interpreting protection criteria in an increasingly restrictive way.
The clearer distinction between refugee status and subsidiary protection aims to limit access to the most protective rights as much as possible: subsidiary protection is for people who don’t meet the criteria for refugee status but who are still facing serious dangers. It is a less stable, more precarious and more limited status.
This restriction on access to refugee status risks depriving people in danger of the status and rights that truly protect them.
Their message: “We are the ones who decide the level of danger you are in” Our response: Asylum and maximum protection for everyone, regardless of their situation!
Severe restrictions on social welfare
From now on, new arrivals in Belgium (so-called ‘primo-arrivants’) will have to wait five years before they can access social welfare. Access to these benefits is no longer considered a fundamental right, but a privilege subject to strict conditions. This approach reflects a utilitarian and meritocratic view of integration. Integration is not seen as a collective and supportive process: it is a reward, only available to those who meet the government’s strict expectations.
“New arrivals are expected to make an effort to become active and integrated as quickly as possible. Indeed, before being able to obtain a permanent right of residence, they must continue to meet the conditions for entry and residence, including having sufficient means of subsistence.”
Refugees who are already receiving social welfare will be required to follow a ‘reinforced integration programme’ (set up by the government in collaboration with other levels of authority in Belgium). If they fail to comply with these obligations, their financial aid may be reduced.
Furthermore, for people who are granted subsidiary protection, their access to social welfare will be even more limited: financial assistance will be conditional on ‘bonuses’ awarded on the basis of their integration efforts.
In practical terms, the strengthening of mandatory ‘integration’ programmes, coupled with the threat of financial penalties, establishes a system of constant control and surveillance of migrants. They are continuously scrutinised and evaluated, not only on their ability to integrate economically, but also on their supposed adherence to so-called ‘Western values’.
This policy does not promote any real and lasting ‘integration’ into society: it creates constant pressure and social insecurity for people who have recently arrived in Belgium. With its arbitrary conditions and criteria, the government will only exacerbate their precariousness, hinder their autonomy and reinforce inequalities. The government continues to view integration as a punitive obstacle course rather than a shared project based on solidarity, community and respect for everyone’s fundamental rights.
Their message: “In order to stay in Belgium, you must be able to pay” Our response: Financial aid for all!
The ‘SPF Migration’: harmonisation to better centralise power
The Belgian government plans on merging several official services related to asylum and migration under a single large structure called SPF Migration.
The Immigration Office
The General Commission for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA)
Fedasil
The Council for Immigration Litigation (CCE)
The government’s stated objective is to ‘better coordinate’ the entire migration process, “rationalise” staff and adopt a “common approach” at all stages of the procedure.
This institutional regrouping will enable the new Ministry of Asylum & Migration to issue general guidelines to the CGRA and strengthen the judicial section of the Immigration Office, in particular by maximising detection and interception capabilities and considering its integration into the police force.
The government also insists on the need to ‘ensure the neutrality of all staff’: it argues that this is to ‘combat discrimination’ and to affirm ‘fundamental values’ (such as the separation of religion and state and equality between men and women). Measures such as the introduction of a uniform or dress code are being considered to guarantee this supposed neutrality in all interactions with service users. Beyond the threat this may pose to women who wear the headscarf, it also means that people seeking asylum will find themselves facing uniformed and cold staff in an almost dystopian atmosphere.
In concrete terms, this reform aims to ‘centralise and harmonise’ the processing of asylum and migration cases, speed up procedures and strengthen control over the entire journey of foreign nationals.
The expected consequences are numerous:
Centralised management, and therefore a risk that procedures will be simplified and accelerated, without allowing for nuance or flexibility.
Standardisation of practices, which will make it harder to take individual situations into account.
Stronger administrative and police control over foreigners.
A ‘rationalisation’ of staff, with a risk of less empathy in the processing of cases.
Generally speaking, the government plans to have asylum and migration services systematically appeal decisions deemed ‘too favourable’ in relation to the government’s intentions: this will lengthen processing times and create more obstacles for people seeking protection.
Finally, the government has announced a managerial approach with numerical targets for the administration: Anneleen Van Bossuyt (Belgian Minister for Asylum and Migration) recently indicated that she wanted to impose numerical targets (KPIs, key performance indicators) on asylum judges in order to increase productivity and reduce backlogs in the processing of cases. This measure, criticised by judges for its potential infringement on the judicial system’s autonomy, is part of a policy aimed at limiting the number of refugees accepted and achieving savings of €1.4 billion on asylum and migration by 2029. The minister also wants to impose this managerial system on all other services (OE, CGRA, etc.). In other words, the codes of the private and capitalist world, focused on efficiency, performance and productivity.
People of foreign origin will thus find themselves faced with an even more bloated administration, even less accessible, and even less sensitive to their specific needs.
Their message: “All levels of power under our control” Our response: ‘Counter-powers everywhere, then no more power to the state at all!’
Against the law: less power for CCE decisions
In immigration law (as in all other areas of law), appeal procedures are essential because they are often the only means of defending oneself against unfair or hasty decisions taken by the administration (such as deportation or denial of residence permit). In a system where the Immigration Office wields significant, sometimes arbitrary power, appeal procedures help to restore a minimum of balance and attempt to ensure that people’s fundamental rights are respected. However, the Arizona government wants to reduce the number of appeal options and focus on written procedures (which limits people’s right to defend themselves in person)
The government also plans to make appeal procedures non-suspensive: this means that an appeal against a decision (such as an order to leave Belgian territory) does not block its immediate enforcement. In other words, even if a person challenges the deportation decision, they can be deported before the court has issued its decision: this deprives the appeal of its protective effect.
Furthermore, lawyers who tend to easily file appeals deemed abusive by the Council for Immigration Litigation (CCE) could now face sanctions. This could discourage some from fully defending their clients in asylum procedures, which constitutes a dangerous obstacle to access to justice.
Without any real possibility of challenging court decisions, the risk of human rights violations is immense. Appeals are not a formality: they are an essential condition for ensuring that the principles of the rule of law apply to everyone.
Judicial independence is also undermined:
The government is generalising fixed-term appointments (five years, renewable) for judges to the Council for Immigration Litigation: currently, the appointment of judges for life is a fundamental principle for guaranteeing their autonomy.
The government will also be able to intervene in the composition of the courts and in the decision to refer a question for a preliminary ruling (i.e. a question to be addressed to another court because it falls within another area of jurisdiction), which constitutes a serious interference in the functioning of the justice system.
The new government has already taken action: in May 2025, Bart De Wever signed a letter written by several European governments, in which the role of the European Court of Human Rights is called into question with regard to asylum and migration. This letter was written and co-signed by the Belgian government alongside other far-right leaders (including Giorgia Meloni, for example). This move also clearly challenges the democratic values and fundamental rights that Belgium has always claimed to defend.
Their message: “We control the law and everyone who applies it” Our response: Independence of the judiciary, and justice for all!
Let’s not turn a blind eye to fascism and state racism, in Belgium and elsewhere!
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL NO TO DETENTION NO TO BORDERS NO TO DEPORTATIONS PAPERS FOR EVERYONE FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE
On January 31, 2025, the new federal government finally unveiled its long-awaited coalition agreement. From the very first lines of the preamble, the tone was set: Bart De Wever, newly appointed Prime Minister under the banner of the N-VA, made no attempt to hide the harshness of the policies to come. He warns that the road ahead will not be “a walk in the park” and that the measures announced will require “sacrifices from all members of our society.”
But beyond this rhetoric of firmness, the text is repugnant both in its wording and in the justifications it puts forward.
Indeed, throughout the paragraphs of this document, there is a clear desire to stigmatise certain categories of the population. The arguments put forward by the government are based in particular on the alleged “massive influx of migrants” and on a barely veiled criminalisation of these people.
This approach, far from being neutral, fuels fears and divisions, while legitimising restrictive and discriminatory measures. The text does not merely announce reforms: line by line, it distils an anxiety-inducing, racist, and biased vision of society that can only inspire unease and indignation.
Our collective wants a world without borders and walls, where everyone can live and travel wherever they want. As might be expected, this is far from what is in store for the coming years, both in Belgium and in Europe.
Almost six months after the publication of the Arizona government agreement, we would like to revisit the main points concerning “Asylum and Migration.” This is to keep a clear record of the historic moment we are living through, of the ever-deepening shift towards a society fuelled by fear and repression.
To limit the number of arrivals on Belgian territory, the government plans to increase its dissuasive campaigns. The objective is clear: to discourage people it deems “ineligible” from applying for asylum in Belgium by highlighting the harsh reception conditions and rigorous procedures. The government itself states:
“We are intensifying and modernising dissuasive campaigns, including online. We are investing in new, more interactive forms of communication that allow us to better inform certain target groups. “
The consequences of this dissuasive strategy are severe for those affected. By massively disseminating messages that highlight obstacles and restrictions, the government is creating a climate of fear and uncertainty for people seeking protection. Many, discouraged by these campaigns, may decide not to seek asylum (even in cases where they are fleeing situations of real danger). Others may turn to irregular and dangerous routes, lacking access to a clear and accessible asylum procedure.
Furthermore, these campaigns are generally misleading and do not take all factors into account. For example, messages on social media stating that people benefiting from protection in another EU country must return to their own country. Or when the director of the Immigration Office visited Guinea, stating that there was very little chance of people of Guinean origin obtaining protection in Belgium.
This policy of dissuasion, far from addressing the causes of migration, further weakens vulnerable people and exposes them to poverty, isolation, or violations of their fundamental rights.
Their message: “Belgium is not for you” Our response: Everyone is welcome, everywhere.
“Good” and “bad” migrants
Unsurprisingly, Arizona draws a clear distinction between “desirable” migration (i.e., “expatriates”) and ‘undesirable’ migration (i.e., “immigrants”). This distinction is based on deeply racist, capitalist, and neo-liberal criteria, which classify individuals according to their supposed ability to be “beneficial” to the country. This logic pits those considered to bring cultural and economic value to the state against those who are excluded from it. Only skilled migrants, students, and workers are seen as a positive contribution:
“Migration can be beneficial, but only if it is controlled and attracts people who actively participate in the economic and social fabric of the country.”
Any other profile is automatically classified as undesirable and therefore likely to be excluded from Belgian territory. People arriving through channels other than work or study must be “activated,” i.e., quickly integrated and made self-sufficient within their new community. To this end, entry requirements will be tightened: the government claims that this is to prevent these new arrivals from falling into poverty or precariousness, but also to introduce them as quickly as possible to the national languages, Western values and norms, and their rights and obligations. Those who do not meet these criteria will not be able to stay in Belgium permanently. The government claims that only this rigorous approach will enable migration to be a “success,” both for people of foreign origin and for Belgium.
However, even when migrants fit the description of profiles considered “profitable” by the government (employment, degree, studies, , etc.), they still have to manage to slip through the racist net: for example, a growing number of students from post-colonial countries are seeing their access to education restricted by increasingly strict conditions, sometimes to the point of losing their residence permits.
Even if the new measures are chilling, it should be remembered that this desire to increasingly close borders and restrict access to Belgian territory is not new: the Arizona policy merely reinforces a series of existing measures, and selectivity and exclusion are inherent in the current migration system.
Their message: “A place in our society only for those who deserve it” Our response: Everyone has the right to choose where they want to live, regardless of their reasons.
Regularisation as the only solution?
Today in Belgium, thousands of people live without residence permits, sometimes for many years. These people are victims of a deeply racist and inhumane migration policy that keeps them in extreme precariousness despite their strong and lasting ties to Belgian society. These people, invisible and deprived of rights, have nevertheless built their lives here, forged relationships, worked, and educated their children. But Belgium categorically refuses to allow them to regularise their situation and live with dignity.
In the face of this injustice, GVO supports the demands of undocumented migrants fighting for regularisation for all, without conditions.
Regularisation means granting a residence permit (temporary or permanent) to a person who was previously considered to be “in an irregular situation” (i.e., without valid papers to reside legally in the country). For those affected, generalised regularisation is the only fair and humane solution (within the current system) that allows them to emerge from the shadows and precariousness and to participate fully in the social, economic, and cultural life of the country in which they live.
Beyond the horizon of collective and unconditional regularisation, our collective is committed to abolishing the state’s filing system and the paperwork system, since this system inevitably leads to sorting and administrative control of who can and cannot be part of society.
Unsurprisingly, the Arizona government has taken a completely closed stance on regularisation. In the government agreement, it explicitly states that no collective regularisation will be considered:
“There will be no collective regularisation. Individual regularisation is an absolute exception and is solely at the discretion of the competent minister. As a matter of principle, if a foreigner wishes to come to Belgium, they must obviously do so in accordance with the procedures in force. Failure to do so fuels smuggling networks. If the person is fleeing their country for legitimate reasons, international protection statuses exist. “
This ideological stance criminalises undocumented migrants and denies the reality of their roots in Belgium. This discourse only exacerbates their exclusion and vulnerability, and deliberately chooses to ignore the structural causes that drive migration.
Worse still, this rhetoric fuels stigmatisation and hate speech, and closes the door to any humane and pragmatic solution that would make room for every person in society. Refusing to regularise their status condemns thousands of lives to invisibility, fear, and misery, in defiance of fundamental principles of justice and solidarity.
This policy is also hypocritical when we consider that in a whole range of sectors where conditions are often difficult (such as construction, hospitality, personal services, etc.), the economy relies on the employment (and often exploitation) of people whom the state denies papers.
Their message: “Your presence in our society is illegal” We respond: Papers for all, then a society without papers at all!
Even when residence is granted, it can easily be revoked
Obtaining a residence permit is often seen as a huge relief by those concerned, as it symbolises official recognition of their right to live in Belgium. However, with the new measures announced by Arizona, this sense of security is becoming increasingly illusory. From now on, the withdrawal of residence permits (which was already possible under Belgian law) will be facilitated and made systematic.
The agreement provides for increased and continuous monitoring of the conditions for granting residence: a residence permit may be withdrawn at any time during its period of validity if certain conditions are no longer met. This permanent instability of the right of residence threatens the legal security of foreign nationals, which is essential to their inclusion in society.
In concrete terms, this means that the authorities will also carry out periodic assessments of the security situation in the country of origin of protected persons. If Belgium considers that the danger that justified the protection no longer exists (for example, if a war or crisis is considered to be over), the person may lose their right to asylum and face immediate expulsion, even after several years of living in Belgium with “protection.”
The list of grounds for revoking residence permits is also growing: committing a crime (even a minor one such as driving without a license or non-violent theft) could result in the automatic loss of residence rights and expulsion from the country. Zero tolerance will also apply in cases of asylum fraud, particularly for refugees who return briefly to their country of origin without authorisation. The Immigration Office will then be able to request more quickly that the CGRA (General Commissariat for Refugees and Stateless Persons) revoke or withdraw protection status.
The consequences of these new rules are concrete and serious: they plunge people of foreign origin into constant legal uncertainty, prevent their integration, and expose them to administrative arbitrariness. By increasing the grounds for withdrawal and facilitating deportations, this policy increases fear, isolation, and precariousness. It weakens the social fabric by denying thousands of people the right to a dignified and stable life, and calls into question the fundamental principles of welcome and protection that should guide a society that claims to be democratic.
These measures demonstrate a political desire to make residency a precarious and unstable privilege, subject to constant surveillance and evaluation, rather than a stable and protective right.
Their message: “You will never truly be part of our society” Our response: Security for all!
Belgian nationality as a privilege for those who can afford it
Not only is the right to residence becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, but obtaining Belgian nationality is also becoming much more complicated with the new government agreement. The administrative fees for applying for nationality, which were previously €150, will be increased to €1,000 (with indexation planned). This is a considerable increase, placing Belgium among the European countries where naturalisation is most expensive.
This increase represents a major financial obstacle for many people, especially those with limited resources. It risks making Belgian nationality inaccessible to a significant portion of the population of foreign origin.
In addition, the conditions for access have been tightened: anyone wishing to obtain Belgian nationality will now have to pass a “citizenship exam,” which is a test on “fundamental values” (such as the neutrality of public authorities and gender equality) and a language test (the required level of which has been raised from A2 to B1).
These additional requirements can no longer be justified by simple social or economic integration… This risks excluding even more “candidates,” particularly those who have difficulty learning the language.
Furthermore, these citizenship tests raise important ethical and ideological questions: they assume that nationality is conditional on the integration of Western cultural norms and values. These tests (the exact content of which is not yet known) suggest the idea of a hierarchy of cultural norms. The notions of state neutrality and gender equality appear several times in the text, pretending to embellish fascist and inhumane ideas with beautiful values.
The grounds for refusing citizenship are also broadened, particularly in cases where there is a threat to public order, or if the “candidate” is receiving social assistance (which effectively excludes the most vulnerable people from the integration process).
In addition, the authority to grant nationality to stateless children will become federal. Currently, this authority still lies with the registrar. Transferring these procedures to the federal level could complicate and slow down access to nationality for children (as is already the case, for example, for people of Palestinian origin born in Belgium).
Finally, the loss of nationality for “fraud, fraudulent behaviour, falsification of documents, or marriage of convenience” will now systematically result in the loss of the right of residence.
This general policy of instability in the right of residence reflects a vision in which obtaining nationality is considered a favour, not a right. This further undermines the integration and stability of foreign nationals in Belgium.
“We consider obtaining our nationality to be a favour, not a right.”
Their message: “Being Belgian is a privilege, an exception that must be earned” Our response: Belgian nationality for all, then no nation at all!
Family reunification: stricter rules
The conditions for family reunification in Belgium have been significantly tightened. Provided for in the February agreement, these new reforms were voted on by the Internal Affairs Committee of the Federal Parliament on July 9 (despite a critical opinion issued by the Council of State). This is the penultimate step before their validation by the Chamber.
In order to bring a family member to Belgium, the “sponsor” and the ‘applicant’ will have to meet strict criteria (including passing language and integration tests) and prove their commitment to “Western” values (such as state neutrality and gender equality). A minimum age of 21 is required for both partners (to prevent forced marriages), and polygamous marriages (by proxy or involving minors) are systematically excluded. Income requirements have also been tightened: the sponsor must now prove that they have resources equivalent to at least 110% of the Guaranteed Minimum Monthly Income (plus 10% per additional person). This means that in order to bring a spouse and two children to Belgium, a person must earn €2,745 net per month. In addition, only certain types of income are taken into account: social benefits are excluded from the calculation (unless proof of active job seeking is provided for unemployment benefits).
People who have been granted international protection will now only have six months to bring their families to Belgium: the previous one-year deadline was already very tight given the complexity of the procedures.
In addition, the waiting periods for family reunification have been extended: individuals must now have resided legally in Belgium for two years from the date of obtaining their residence permit before they can initiate a family reunification procedure. For individuals who have obtained residence for medical or humanitarian reasons, this period is also increased to two years. The periods without conditions are reduced to the European minimum of six months.
In addition, checks on the “sincerity” of romantic relationships have been tightened: having a child together is no longer considered “sufficient proof” of the stability of the couple, but only a presumption of a couple (which the administration can question in case of doubt). The authorities are taking a very strict approach to combating fictitious relationships, and specific training is planned for civil registrars and diplomatic posts. At the slightest suspicion, a judicial investigation will be opened.
Certain categories of people are excluded from the right to family reunification, including those convicted of sexual offences, domestic violence, or gender-based violence, as well as those whose partner is a victim of abandonment. Repeated applications without new information will be declared inadmissible, and the automatic granting of a residence permit in the event of exceeding processing deadlines has been abolished.
Finally, unaccompanied minors (MENA) who obtain subsidiary protection will no longer have the right to bring their parents to Belgium.
In summary, these new measures make family reunification much more difficult and restrictive, lengthen reunification times, increase the precariousness and isolation of foreign families, and risk hindering their integration in Belgium in the long term. Under these new rules, it will be impossible for some people to bring their relatives to Belgium. It is not surprising that the government wanted to tighten the conditions for family reunification, as this is the most important (and also one of the safest) legal route for immigration.
Their message: “Your family is under our control” Our response: Family reunification for all those who want it.
Emergency medical assistance: scope reduced to almost nothing
Emergency medical assistance (EMA) is a system in Belgium that allows people without a residence permit to access certain essential healthcare services. It mainly covers care deemed essential to preserve a person’s life or health, but its scope is regularly the subject of debate and reform.
Certain types of care considered non-essential (such as orthodontics, fertility treatments, non-reconstructive cosmetic care, and certain dental prostheses) are now explicitly excluded from EMH coverage. A reform and harmonisation of the system is underway, in collaboration with the SPP Intégration sociale (SPP IS) and the CAAMI (public social security institution): tighter controls are planned, and a filtering system is being considered, inspired by the medical regularisation procedure.
However, in reality, only 10 to 20% of undocumented migrants currently use the AMU. Among the obstacles are:
bureaucratic red tape (for example, documents must be provided to the CPAS, which must conduct an investigation)
lack of information about their rights
precarious living conditions that hinder access to healthcare.
In practical terms, these changes will further limit access to healthcare for individuals, who will have to forego certain treatments that the state deems non-essential. This risks exacerbating social inequalities in access to healthcare, increasing medical insecurity, and delaying the treatment of certain needs. It will also force patients to go through more complex administrative procedures and increased monitoring of their medical situation.
Their message: “Our social security is not for you” Our response: Social security and healthcare for all!
The federal government is everywhere and centralises everything (overseeing federated entities and embassies).
In Belgium, the granting of visas and residence permits can sometimes be a responsibility of municipalities and diplomatic/consular posts. These entities are also responsible for performing marriages, registering legal cohabitation, filiation (the legal link between a child and his/her parents), etc.
The federal government provides for enhanced control mechanisms in its agreement. In the event of suspected fraud, abuse, or misapplication of the rules for granting visas or residence permits, the municipality or diplomatic post concerned may be subject to inspection.
This entails numerous risks. Being placed under federal supervision may be perceived as an infringement on the autonomy of municipalities or the specificity of diplomatic work (especially if the criteria for triggering an inspection or supervision are not sufficiently transparent or objective).
These measures also create a risk of politicising the procedure. Indeed, if the federal government considers that a municipality is too favourable to people of foreign origin, that municipality may then be sanctioned and placed under supervision by federal structures. This therefore further encourages a culture of fear and control.
The centralisation of power (in this case by the federal government) is one of the characteristics of authoritarian and undemocratic regimes.
Their message: “The same rules everywhere, decided by us” Our response: Decentralisation of state power, then no state power at all!
Let’s not turn a blind eye to fascism and state racism, in Belgium and elsewhere!
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL NO TO DETENTION NO TO BORDERS NO TO DEPORTATIONS PAPERS FOR EVERYONE FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE
On January 31, 2025, the new federal government finally unveiled its long-awaited coalition agreement. From the very first lines of the preamble, the picture is clear : Bart De Wever, newly appointed Prime Minister under the N-VA banner, makes no attempt to hide the harshness of the policy ahead. He warns that the road ahead will not be “a walk in the park”, and that the measures announced will require “sacrifices from everyone in our society”.
But beyond this rhetoric of firmness, the text is nauseating both in its words and in the justifications put forward.
Indeed, the document’s paragraphs reveal a clear desire to stigmatize certain population groups. The arguments put forward by the government are based on the alleged “massive arrival of migrants” and on the barely concealed criminalization of people on the move.
Far from being neutral, this approach fuels fears and divisions, while legitimizing restrictive and discriminatory measures. The text doesn’t just announce reforms: it distills, line after line, an anxiety-inducing, racist and biased vision of society, which can only inspire unease and indignation.
Our collective wants a world without borders and walls, where everyone can freely live and travel wherever they want. As you might expect, this is far from what’s in store for Belgium and Europe over the next few years.
Almost six months after the publication of the Arizona government’s agreement, we’d like to take a look back at the main points concerning “Asylum and Migration”. To keep a clear record of the historic moment we’re living through, of the ever-deepening tilt towards a society fueled by fear and repression.
Increasingly assertive opposition to what « reception » means
Although previous governments never really implemented a reception policy worthy of the name, the Arizona government currently in power is in line with this restrictive continuity, while going even further in the harshness of its measures.
The objective is clear: to drastically reduce the number of people arriving in Belgium and the number of asylum applications, and then to severely restrict the number of reception places available.
To achieve this goal, the government is skilfully playing with words: it is fanning the flames of fear and thereby justifying its inhumane policies. In its speeches, it mixes up the notions of ‘reception’ and ‘controlling the influx of migrants’, stating for example that “in order to make migration socially and economically positive again, and to offer a quality reception to refugees who really need it, we must control the influx of migrants. Uncontrolled illegal migration can no longer be tolerated and must stop. Our society can no longer cope with this phenomenon“.
The bare minimum, or no minimum at all
In practical terms, this means the gradual disappearance of temporary accommodation in hotels, followed by individual housing via the CPAS or other structures, leaving only collective centres for people. These centres, already overcrowded and difficult to access, are becoming the only option for people seeking protection, leading to a loss of autonomy, a deterioration in living conditions, a lack of privacy and the interpersonal tensions that all this can entail.
The assistance provided to ‘welcomed’ people will be reduced to the strict minimum, limited to a ‘bed, bath, bread and accompaniment’, without any financial compensation. Asylum seekers will no longer be entitled to the CPAS social integration income, even in exceptional situations such as family unity, minor status or family problems. Until now, these people have turned to the CPAS because of the lack of places in reception centres: now they will be refused any help, plunging them into extreme poverty and exposing them to the street.
Also, collective centres are often located far from towns, which cuts people off from all their support networks, essential services and aid organisations. This choice of location is not insignificant: it aims to dissuade people from seeking asylum in Belgium and to make their daily lives even more difficult.
Refusal to receive certain categories of people
Access to reception will be refused to many categories of people:
– those who have already applied for asylum in another EU country (whose application is still pending or has been closed)
– those who already enjoy protection in another Member State
– families with children who have received a refusal decision
– those who apply subsequently.
Nationals from countries with a low protection rate will also be subject to a fast-track procedure: this means that they will receive different reception treatment, with a focus on their return as soon as they arrive.
Conclusions : Towards the end of reception in Belgium?
The consequences of these new policies are dramatic. Deprived of financial assistance and housing, many people will find themselves on the streets, with no resources and no prospects. The geographical distance from collective centres will increase their isolation, making access to health, education and social support almost impossible.
Limiting reception to a strict material minimum is contrary to the dignity and fundamental rights of migrants and asylum seekers. Vulnerable people (MENA, women, LGBTQIA+, etc.) will not be able to receive appropriate support.
These measures offer no solution to the so-called ‘migration crisis’: they institutionalise precariousness, exclusion and stigmatisation, making the fundamental values of humanity and solidarity impossible.
Let us not close our eyes to growing fascism and institutionalised racism, in Belgium and elsewhere!
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL NO TO DETENTION NO TO BORDERS NO TO DEPORTATIONS PAPERS FOR EVERYONE FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE
Silenciées (Silenced) is a collection of testimonies from people who are or have been detained in detention centres in Belgium. These prisons, that do not speak their name, are where the Belgian state locks up and detains people who, in its eyes, do not have the “right papers”. The state imprisons them with a view to expelling them far away from the territory.
Our book also contains contextual information, militant texts, interviews with other collectives and illustrations.
Over the days, weeks and months of detention, the detainees tell their stories: the violence of confinement, the racism of staff and institutions, the total lack of access to the most basic rights, the expulsions, the solidarity that is organised, the resistance,…
Getting the Voice Out. Voices that are stifled, repressed, invisibilised, instrumentalised. Silenced.
Since 2010, our collective has been collecting testimonies from people held in Belgian detention centres. This book is a way of bringing their voices to you.
We dream of a world without walls and borders, where everyone can move and settle wherever they wish to, for whatever reason. A world with papers for everyone, or papers for no one. A world without nations, states or institutions. So that, finally, we can be free.
Where can you find the book in Belgium?
Silenciées is sold in Belgium (only in French at the moment) in the following bookstores:
In Brussels:
– Ici sont les Lions – Météores – Brin d’acier – Tulitu – Par Chemins – Les yeux gourmands – Chimères – Tram{e} – Poëtini – Tropismes
In Liège:
– Entre-temps
Silenciées is also available to order from it’s publishing house Petites Singularités.
Contact them by mail! asbl@lesoiseaux.io
Where can you find the book in France?
Silenciéesis sold in France in the following bookstores:
In Paris :
– Libralire – Le Merle Moqueur – Les mots à la bouche – Les nouveautés – Nouvel équipage
In Marseille :
– L’Hydre aux mille têtes – L’odeur du temps – L’histoire de l’œil – Maupetits – Transit
In Lille :
– Biglemoi
Silenciées is also available to order from it’s publishing house Petites Singularités.
Contact them by mail! asbl@lesoiseaux.io
Silenciées is priced at €13.12
All profits from the sale of the book go directly to support the struggles of people held in Belgian detention centres, and to cover the cost of recharging mobile phones inside the centres.
Would you like to support their fight financially?
You can also make a donation directly by bank transfer to account :
BE58 5230 8016 1279
(name: Collectif contre les expulsions)
Abolish all borders and the fortresses they create. No to detention and imprisonment. No to deportations. Freedom of movement and settlement for all!
A military/ charter flight departed from Belgium, supported by Frontex.
We are told that a dozen men and women, who had been locked up for several months in various detention centres in Belgium, were deported by a military charter on Tuesday 17 June 2025 to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Charter flights are deportation flights on aircrafts that are specifically chartered for this purpose, with no ordinary passengers on board, that depart from military airports.
The Frontex agency (European Border and Coast Guard Agency) assists Schengen Member States in organising joint return operations. During these flights, several European countries simultaneously expel people on board of the same aircraft. Frontex provides logistical and financial support for these operations. With a budget that is growing exponentially year by year (997 million in 2025), Frontex is Europe’s most funded agency. Though it is not new, we can expect this method of operating to be deployed more frequently, as agreements are sealed between European states and certain states on the African continent, with the support of the European Union and Frontex as their intermediary.
The day before the flight, the detainees were transferred from the Merksplas and Holsbeek centres to the 127 bis closed centre, located near the Zaventem airport area. They were then placed in solitary confinement before being escorted to the Melsbroek military airport, from where the aircraft took off.
The people deported from Belgium were not the only ones concerned in this collective deportation. It turns out that the military charter was the result of cooperation between Belgium, France, Cyprus and Croatia. That very morning, two small charter planes, one from France and the other from Cyprus via Croatia, transported people of Congolese origin to the Melsbroek military base in Belgium. These flights were operated by Air Charters Europe, a company frequently used to transfer people for collective expulsion, to join the NATO military flight to Kinshasa1.
Upon arrival at Kinshasa airport, deportees are generally subjected to identification procedures by the Direction Générale de Migration (DGM), and followed, in the case of special flights, by further questioning by the Agence Nationale de Renseignements (ANR). According to several sources, people are sometimes detained until a family member or close friend comes to identify them and pays the fees required for their provisional release2.
It is not possible to confirm whether the people detained in Belgian closed centres were able to inform or contact their families and closed ones before their deportation.To our knowledge, the previous collective deportations to the DRC took place on 13/11/20243 and 12/09/20234.
Collective expulsions by military flight, make the few means of resistance available to people threatened with expulsion completely inaccessible (as it is impossible to alert other passengers on the flight, for example). The militarisation of deportations is part of a sickening policy of reinforcing the borders. In the near future, Frontex agents will be deployed in Belgium’s main railway stations to intensify the hunt for people without residence permits.
Arrests, detentions, expulsions: these are extreme methods of applying a xenophobic ideology. Thousands of people are being “removed from the territory”, people that are simply seeking to exercise their right to freedom of movement and settlement.
A collection of stories from people held in administrative detention centres in Belgium.
📖 Meet us on Thursday 26 June at 7pm at the B.💣.U.M Bibliothèque for a discussion on the book Silenciées – L’enfermement des personnes sans-papiers en Belgique, with the Getting the Voice Out collective and publishing house petites singularités.
At this meeting we will be presenting Silenciées, a collection of narratives told by people held in administrative detention centres in Belgium.
Since 2010, the Getting the Voice Out collective has been collecting testimonies from people detained in closed centres, these prisons that do not reveal their name are where the Belgian state locks up those who do not have the ‘right papers’, in order to deport them.
During days, weeks and months of their detention, the detained people tell their stories : on the violence of confinement, the racism of staff and institutions, the total lack of absence to the most basic rights, the deportations, the solidarity that is organised, the resistance…
This book seeks to get out the voices that are stifled, repressed, invisibilised, instrumentalised, and silenced. After a brief return on the creation and re-publication of this book, we will share a moment on the practices of the struggle against detention centres and deportations.
The Royal Order setting out the places where frontex agents will be able to search in Belgium has been published in the Belgian Monitor. The law will come into force on 1 June 2025 #ABOLISHFRONTEX
A collective deportation by secure flight to Iraq is planned for early Tuesday morning (4:25 a.m.) on 29 April 2025, involving at least ten Iraqi citizens currently held in detention centres in Belgium.
The flight is a military aircraft financed by the European agency Frontex, which will depart from Frankfurt Airport in Germany and stop in several other European countries to pick up other Iraqi nationals. This deportation from Frankfurt has been confirmed by the German collective NoBorderAssembly (via their Deportation Alarm project)1. In Belgium, the people will be picked up from the Melsbroek military base (near Zaventem airport) and then taken to Baghdad.
Currently, around ten people of Iraqi origin detained in several closed centres in Belgium are involved. Some were already transferred on Sunday morning to the 127bis centre, located near the Melsbroek military base. At the Merksplas centre, we have been informed that several people have been placed in solitary confinement.
The other detainees who alerted us about the flight also inform us that returning these people to Iraq is dangerous for security reasons, given the ongoing conflicts and tensions in the country. The people in question are very worried: some have been living in Belgium for years and have their families and children here. We have also learned that one of the people threatened with deportation has just become a father and has only been able to see his newborn baby through a video call.
Deportation by military flight means that, throughout the flight, the deportees are escorted by Belgian police officers and there are no other passengers on board. Police violence is commonplace2, and everything is done to force people to board the plane and remain calm during the flight. Any resistance is made impossible.
Deportations and the fear of deportation are part of everyday life for people detained in closed centres. We strongly oppose all deportations, which are violent acts committed by European states with the complicity of the countries of origin.These deportations take place in complete silence, with no oversight or control of the violence committed during them.
Our full support goes to the people threatened with deportation to Iraq on Tuesday, as well as to all other people locked up in detention centres and themselves under constant threat of deportation.
The testimony of H. detained in the closed centre of Bruges (FR)
(april 2025)
Enlish translation
“I’d like to testify for what’s happening here in the centre because we live in really bad conditions. We shower once a day. The meals are not good. Security doesn’t treat us well. And above all, in the evening, when we go back inside at 10:30 pm, we can’t use our phone, we can’t make calls, they take our phone away. If you speak badly to security, they put you in solitary confinement, often for nothing at all. With no fighting, no swearing. They put you in solitary confinement for nothing. For the moment there are four people in solitary confinement. And during Ramadan, they stopped the food coming from the mosque. They refused to let it in. It came from the mosque, from the imam. They said it couldn’t go in, that we had to eat the meal they gave us.
Yesterday, someone tried to commit suicide. He’s not well, he has pain in his heart, he can’t breathe at all, he has collapsed two or three times. Even today, he collapsed outside while we were out for a walk. He asked to be moved to another centre. He’s usually the one who motivates everyone to revolt, so they put him in solitary confinement. Security really doesn’t treat us well. As soon as you talk badly, they put you solitary confinement. And even if you’re in pain and ask to see a doctor outside, they won’t let you. They take you here to see a nurse, give you medicine and tell you that everything’s fine. I’ve had a stomach ache for a month now. I’ve asked to see a doctor to take a blood test. They tell me it’s nothing serious. But since then, I haven’t been well.
Today they wanted to take me to the airport, but I refused to go. Then they told me they’d let me know if I would be taken to the airport or not. But they didn’t tell me yet, because I refused. I just told the assistant: I’m not going. I can’t go. She said she’d look at the decision later and let me know. She hasn’t told me anything yet. Really, it’s no good here, it’s no good in Bruges. Nineteen people in one room! You can’t sleep at night. Some people are sick, some people snore, some people go to the bathroom all night because they’ve got a stomach ache. And they don’t sleep all night. And during the day, they forbid people to sleep. This place is really horrible. It’s not a center for illegals, it’s a prison. It’s really not okay.
The only thing that suits them is them taking you home: they force you to go. I’ve been here for a month, but I’ve been locked up for a total of 5 months. In fact, I was transferred from Merksplas and they brought me back here. On [April] 14, it will be 5 months. They transfer people like that, as they like. Some people here have families, children. Some were born here, they’ve just had their papers taken away. We’re trying to do everything we can to stay, at least legally: they won’t accept us. We apply, we do everything: some of them have applied for asylum. We go through the procedures to stay here legally. And they’re the ones that don’t accept us. Every time you apply for asylum, you’re told you don’t have enough evidence. And at the same time, if you stay locked up, you can’t bring back any evidence. But here, inside, you can’t do anything: you’re locked up. There are people who want to help us. They can’t come and see us or contact our families or do everything they can to recover evidence here. I’ve got friends. I only have my girlfriend who comes to see me and a few friends. They don’t know my family. I’ve known them all here. Me, my family, they’re in Africa. I don’t know where they are. I’m no longer in contact with them, it’s been eight years. They don’t know how I live. They don’t know I’m locked up, no one does. Since then I haven’t been in contact with them. It’s really hard.
You go to prison, you do your time. You get a fine, you pay your fine. But I find it unacceptable that they put us in centres like that. They’re the ones who have to give us papers: we don’t come here with papers. We come here with the papers of our countries. Or the nationality of our country. If they want to accept us, that’s up to them. Because we don’t leave home just like that. We leave home because things aren’t going well. They give us zero tolerance here. It’s nonsense, wallah. Here, they don’t tell us anything. It’s only when you go to the airport that you see the reality of what’s going to happen. And also, we weren’t born with European papers. We didn’t choose to be born in a foreign country to then come here. I really looked into it. But we didn’t come here to be frowned upon. We really came here to integrate, to have a better life. Start a family. And to integrate legally. If we come and apply for asylum, it’s not to stay outside. It’s so that we can be protected. But if they kick us out, we feel really rejected, we have no support at all. They don’t even give us a chance to integrate. If we’re living illegally, it’s because they wanted us to be illegal. If you don’t get a response, they don’t accept you, you’re forced to live illegally. If, at the very least, they accept you, they put you in an open centre, where you can come and go, they know where you live. If there is the slightest mistake, they come and get you. We can live normally. But they put us in these centres, there is no possibility to leave. You have three hours to walk outside in a day.
To be honest with you, psychologically we’re not well. We’re not well at all. I feel like I’m going to go mad, no lie. I’ve got all kinds of ideas in my head that I don’t think about outside. But here, it’s like it’s normal, you have to think about it to pass the time.
And yet things aren’t going well here at the moment. I’ve been out of touch with my family, especially in Guinea, for eight years now. Even before I left Guinea, I was no longer in contact with them. Ever since the state broke down the house of my family, saying that it was reserved. There’s no president there, it’s a coup d’état. Nothing’s going well. In Africa, you know what the military are like.
Sometimes I look it up a bit but… you know here there’s no time to stay on the internet for long. You have one hour of internet a day. All you think about is how you’re going to get out of here. I don’t even feel like living here any more, no lie. You don’t even have a will to live anymore because they take it away. Because of them, you’re disgusted of life. You don’t feel like doing anything. You don’t even want to live any more. Here it’s different. I wouldn’t even wish it on my worst enemy to be in the centre like this. It’s like you’re in a henhouse. A hen in a cage. You can go outside, eat a bit of corn and then they bring you back in. They make you live like a chicken.
They come, they watch us, they go home. They have their families. They’re fine, they come to work because they get paid at the end of the month. They should at least do it for us. That we can work, get paid at the end of the month and go home. That will help us mentally. At least before, we had the orange card, I had a permanent contract. I was working and everything, no nonsense. It was when they took away my [residence] permit that I became depressed. I lost my job and went into a depression. I had an appartement, I paid the rent. When I got the card, I did everything I could to get a contract, I got a permanent contract in a catering business, in a kitchen. Then they gave me a negative, and after three months they took away my orange card. No boss is going to accept you without the card. At the commune, they told me they’d withdrawn the card before I’d finished at 8pm, so they couldn’t give me the [work] permit. It’s all gone down the drain. It all went wrong. I went into a depression, I nearly fell ill.
And my father, before he died, owed a lot of money to people. So I can’t go back into the neighbourhood now… I’ll be threatened. I don’t even know what to do any more. Ever since they told me they were going to send me back there… I’m lost, to be honest, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”
Since the beginning of 2025, we have been told bydetained people, family members and associations of the presence of minors in closed centres.
Following the campaign run in 2016 by organisations and citizens entitled ‘We don’t lock up children. Full stop’, the detention of children for reasons relating to migrationwas banned in 2024. The Belgian State can therefore no longer detain minors in closed centres. And yet, many minors find themselves separated from their families and locked behind these walls while awaiting deportation. We would like to share with you some of the situations that have come to our attention.
A young minor detained in Bruges
On 20 January, a teacher told us that one of her students had been arrested during an interview she had accompanied him to for an asylum application in Brussels. The 16-year-old had been living with his family in Belgium for several months, and was in possession of his passport (which showed his age). Last September, however, a bone test determined that he was not a minor anymore. This, yet again, proves the irrelevance of bone tests and other medical examinations claiming to be able to determine a person’s age.
He is now threatened with deportation to Poland, the country in which he left his fingerprints when he arrived in Europe.
Three minors detained at 127bis
On 12 January, detainees alerted us to the presence of two young minors in the 127bis centre in Steenokkerzeel. They were aged 16 and 17 respectively, and one had been detained since December 2024 and the other since January 2025. The Immigration Office did not recognise the documents in their possession attesting to their minority status and decided to make use of a bone test to confirm their age. This test determined their ages to be 18 and 21 respectively. The minors were threatened with deportation to Croatia and Austria, the countries in which they deposited their fingerprints.
The other detainees expressed their concerns about the presence of the two young people in an environment permeated by tension and violence. They tell us: “One of the young people cries all the time. He’s really suffering.“
On Tuesday 28 January, one of the two young boys, J., was deported in the morning on a flight to Croatia. Despite his determination to resist, he was taken away by force, handcuffed hand and foot, and accompanied by several police officers. One visitor said:
“J. regularly spoke about the harsh conditions of detention and the general repression of those locked up. However, he was still hopeful that he would be able to stay in Belgium, where all the people he knows live.“
The other young boy, S., is said to have finally agreed to return to Austria to end his detention.
A third minor reportedly arrived at 127bis on February 4th. A bone test was reportedly ordered to determine his age, but we have no further information to date. He was placed in isolation upon arrival.
Minor boys detained at Merksplas
During the week of February 17th, we received reports from various detainees about the presence of minor boys of Afghan origin in the center. We have had no news of them to date.
The violence of detention should not be imposed on anyone, regardless of age, origin, or personal history. But confinement in a center is even more violent and destructive for vulnerable people. We do not believe in our country’s immigration laws, yet the Belgian state does not even respect its own.
“My name is Ella, born in February 2002 in Ivory Coast. In October 2020, I left my native country with my head full of dreams to study optometry in Belgium. After two years of studying, I felt the need to change course, finding the training too commercially oriented and lacking that precious caregiver-patient relationship that was so dear to my heart. That’s when I discovered medical imaging training.
Despite my growing interest in this discipline, I had to wait until my third year of optometry to enrol in medical imaging, after having acquired 123 credits out of 180. In 2023-2024, I began my medical imaging studies at the same institution, having finally found my calling. However, the Immigration Office refused to renew my student visa.
Faced with this situation, I sought the help of a lawyer who took the necessary steps, including various appeals. During this period of litigation, I was enrolled for 60 credits, which I successfully completed. I then began my second year in medical imaging, validating all my January exams in preparation for internships in mid-March 2025.
My partner and I had planned to live together legally. We went to the municipality on January 23 to register together in his new apartment. On Saturday January 25, at around 4pm, while I was alone in the apartment, two policewomen intervened. They seized my passport and asked me to follow them to the police station. Despite my explanations about the appeals in progress, they said they had to check my situation with the Immigration Office before they could release me.
Handcuffed and taken to the station, I was questioned and then placed in a cell. At around 11pm, a police officer informed me that I was to be repatriated to Ivory Coast. On January 26, I was transferred to the Bruges detention center. Today, March 6, 2025, I’m still being held. I have lost more than a month of classes and exams.
My lawyer is doing everything he can to get me out of this situation, but it’s not simple. I’m trying to keep my spirits up for myself and my family, but it’s not easy. My school year is in jeopardy, and my future looks even more uncertain. I felt the need to share my story and my journey, in the hope of getting help, but also to inform other people in similar situations.
You are not alone, and I will continue to fight this battle until I am released, for myself and for other students who may find themselves in the same situation.
Ella’s case is representative of a situation that affects many people. Admission requirements for students from countries outside the European Union have been restricted considerably in recent years. In order to study in Belgium, a student must either have a substantial sum of money in a bank account, or declare a guarantor. In 2020, guarantors had to have an income of around 1,900 euros. Since January 1, 2023, the minimum amount has risen to 2,797 euros net per month, an income that a large proportion of the population does not have. This new measure works retroactively: students who arrived in Belgium under the old regulations are affected by the changes, and risk having to interrupt their studies during the course of the year.
These recent measures have forced hundreds of students in Belgium into extremely precarious situations.
A collective was formed to denounce these new measures and to weave solidarity networks between affected students, called the “PLADE” (Plateforme de Lutte pour l’Amélioration des Droits des Étudiants Étrangers*).
We stand in solidarity with Ella , with all foreign students, and with all migrants confronted to these increasingly restrictive and discriminatory policies.
A petition has been set up to support Ella’s fight for her release
Sign the petition for Ella’s release : https://www.mesopinions.com/petition/justice/liberez-ayekou-monnet-ella-marie/240279
At the beginning of February, we learned of the death of Baudouin Pandikuziku. Baudouin had been the victim of a violent police attack as a passenger on a Brussels Airlines flight last December*. Today, there is every reason to believe that there is a direct causal link between the violence suffered two months earlier and the sudden death of Baudouin, who was not suffering from any known medical condition. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have been done by the judicial authorities to determine with certainty the cause of death.
In a press release* published following the announcement of the death, Baudouin’s family recalled the facts: ‘On 4 December of last year, Baudouin Pandikuziku boarded a Brussels Airlines flight bound for Kinshasa. What should have been a simple journey turned into a nightmare when a flight attendant asked him to put his shoes on. Baudouin Pandikuziku had taken off his shoes to help him cope with the flight because of the water retention he was suffering from. His immediate inability to comply with this request led to a rapid escalation of the situation. The flight attendants contacted the police. […] The police intervention that followed was extremely brutal and something he hadn’t experienced before.”
The video taken during the operation contains some very violent images. In a testimonial, Baudouin described the serious after-effects he has endured since then: pain, a double fracture in his arm, bruising to his eye affecting his eyesight, as well as constant anxiety and night terrors linked to the psychological trauma.
The crushing police force at work
The facts are not limited to this single incident. Although he was determined to denounce the violence he had suffered, Baudouin discovered that he himself had been accused by the perpetrators of the violence. The police accused him of ‘unarmed rebellion, air law violations, racism and discrimination’. According to the police officers who carried out the operation, despite the filmed images and the multiple traumas suffered by Baudouin, he was the ‘suspect’.
Police cynicism knows no bounds, and Baudouin found himself face to face with one of his assailants at the hearing to which he was summoned as a ‘suspect’. This cast doubt on the supposed ‘impartiality’ of the judicial system.
The reversal of guilt is a well-known police practice. Take, for example, the judicial and media treatment of the case of Mawda, the 2-year-old Kurdish girl killed by a police bullet to the head during a chase in 2018. At the time, the authorities’ initial versions (which were shamefully misleading) put the blame on the parents for the tragedy, denying that a police bullet had clearly caused the death. The victims were portrayed as the culprits.
We also remember the young racialised people from working-class neighbourhoods who were killed during police interventions: Adil in 2020, Mehdi in 2019, Sabrina and Ouassim in 2017, etc. In each case, the police’s defence was based on the idea that the victims were guilty to justify the violence of their interventions. The media portray these young people as criminals.
What we are used to hearing described as a police ‘blunder’ seems in reality to be quite the opposite of a ‘regrettable error’ or ‘gross misconduct’, but rather examples illustrating the mechanisms of police impunity.
Brussels Airlines: a company with colonialism in its DNA and the federal police as its armed right hand
The events to which Baudouin Pandikuziku was subjected took place on board of a plane belonging to Brussels Airlines, a company well known for its involvement in racist migration policies. Although the company claims to be a ‘specialist in Africa’, it is just as much a specialist in deportations. The company regularly deports people held in closed centres, usually with force. Victims of these deportations report widespread physical and psychological abuse by the federal police and the active complicity of the airlines. Some testimonies reveal that airline employees sometimes go so far as to visit the detention centres in order to put pressure on the detainees so that they do not resist their deportation.
The airline’s involvement in Belgium’s detention-expulsion system comes as no surprise when you look at its history. Brussels Airlines was founded as a successor of Sabena, a company that had been part of the Belgian colonial enterprise since 1923. It was also on a Sabena plane that Semira Adamu lost her life in 1998, suffocated by the gendarmes escorting her on her sixth expulsion attempt.
Brussels Airlines already had blood on its hands. On 4 December 2024, the company was once again complicit in racist state violence.
Our thoughts and support go out to Baudouin’s family. Like all the other victims of police violence, he will not be forgotten. We do not forget, we do not forgive.
Together, let’s march in Brussels against the violence and repression committed by the police: see you on Saturday 15 March (2pm, Place du Luxembourg), for the international demonstration against police violence*.
04/03/2025 : The case of L., detained in the closed centre of Bruges
Previously, L. lived in Switzerland. He was born in Congo but for many years his whole family has lived in Belgium. He held a residence permit until 2021, he lived with his wife and daughter in the commune of Alost where he started family reunification proceedings in 2020.
The application was rejected due to lack of documents – the documents had remained in Switzerland and COVID prevented them from going there at that time. He was not recognised as the father of the child, though the child had been previously recognised in Switzerland. Agents from the municipality came by their house, met with the family and said that L. “did not have an affective relationship* with the child”.
Following a simple visit of the municipal officials, the Immigration Officewas able to judge the link between a parent and his child, and to decide on their separation. These are very violent administrative procedures, which go against the best interests of the child. It is hard to imagine that the authorities would inflict similar treatment on people to people that were not born in a different country.
A new application was then made, which was rejected with an order to leave the territory (OQT). The lawyer then advised L. to do a DNA test but before that was done, L. was arrested and taken to the closed centre of Vottem in February 2024, where he stayed for two months. Upon release, the DNA test was performed and proved the existence of a biological link between L. and the child. However, as the OQT was still valid, L. was again arrested and detained this time in the closed centre of Bruges.
There, a collective flight to Congo was organized.*
Many Congolese detainees in closed centres have been threatened with expulsion, by surprise. The public prosecutor said that it would not be a problem for L. to continue his procedure on Congolese territory as part of a “temporary return”. However, at that time the DNA test was already positive. L. therefore made a claim for asylum to avoid this expulsion at all costs. There were two “return coaches“* in Bruges, working for the Immigration Office, who advised him to accept this “temporary return”.
Only in December, the significant judgment attested that L. was the child’s father. However, today, no decision has been made regarding his detention.
Note that the laissez passer was valid until March 14. Since then, no LP has been used to deport L., However, detention in closed centres is a measure that is supposed to exist “for the purpose of forced return”, at least legally. In the absence of Pass, there is reason to question the objectives of prolonged detention.
Today L. ’s daughter is undergoing psychotherapy because of the effects her father’s prolonged detention has on her. She is in a lot of distress and not yet able to understand what is happening: her father is being treated criminally and it is her stability, too, that is in danger.
L. tells us: “The Immigration Office separates families. If one of the parents is a foreigner, they use this as a tool to separate children. That way, the children will grow up without both parents, with social assistance, the help of CPAS. So the child will be limited.”
* By emotional link, authorities mean acts that attest to the fact that the parent is actually taking care of the child – that he or she meets his or her needs, takes him or her to school… But it is also the more vague notion of affection. For this are requested photos, evidence of life in common,… The order to leave the territory was given by “lack of evidence of the emotional link”, which seems to prevail here on the biological link.
* So-called “collective flights” are flights chartered exclusively for collective evictions, unlike individual expulsions that take place on commercial flights. These collective flights are often organized in collaboration with Frontex and take place from the military airport of Melsbroek.https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/collective-deportation-to-the-congo-by-frontex-european-border-and-coast-guard-agency-and-the-belgian-state-on-13-november-2024/
* This is the name of the position of the staff supposedly in charge of accompanyingsocial and legal aspects of the detainees. In reality, as their title indicates, their role is to put pressure on the detainees so that they give in to their expulsion.
On Sunday the 23rd of February 2025 a group of people gathered in front of the closed centre of Merskplas (near Antwerpen) to voice their support to those detained there, and their dream of a world without borders and prisons.
After the action, many people contacted Getting The Voice Out’s phone number to speak of their situation and their lives inside of the centre.
We share with you a few echoes of behind the walls.
“We are not animals, we are humans. When they come to us, they are legal. As for us, when we ask for international protection, even with clear and authentic proof, they do not trust us. And that’s how they want to chase us away.”
“They treat us like dogs. One should at least respect humans beings… They take people suddenly and lock them up, giving them no time to sort out their affairs. That’s the way they put us on a plane. They want to return us with nothing, without money, without clothes. We are integrated here. We have things going on here, our lives here. They throw us away like trash, they bring us back with empty hands. There is no respect, there is no life: there is nothing. I didn’t choose to be black. They did not choose to be white. They put us in prison and tell us we “don’t have papers”, but the majority of us have identities. We cannot do harm in Belgium: why lock us up? We are not a danger to the country.”
“Even prison is better than here”
During every call, every detained person talked to us about the horrendous conditions of their detention. Recurring subjects are:
– strict and restrictive schedules
– tasteless and insufficient meals
– limited (if not impossible) access to medical care
– violence and repression
The constant fear of expulsion
All of the detainees share one same fear: that of being expulsed by plane, in violent conditions, to a country that some may not even know. The detainees speak to us about the constant fear of receiving a deportation notice, that is often given right before the flight. They share with us how exhausted they are with the vague and contradictory administrative procedures, that bring them from one hearing to the other. An asylum application, a negative decision, another application, and systematic appeals to the Immigration Office… These procedures are deliberately discouraging and dehumanising.
Two young minors in the centre
Detainees alert to us the presence of two young minor boys (between 16 and 17 y.o.) from Afghanistan. Medical examinations determined that they were 21 years old, and the Immigration decided to detain them. The co-detainees are outraged by the presence of children in the centre and demand their liberation. Detaining minors in centres is unfortunately not a rare occurrence: not even a month ago, we shared with you the detention of two young minors in the centre 127 bis.
A violent police raid that same day
“Today, at 7 in the morning, I was woken up violently by police officers. They wanted to search my room. I was very scared. They wanted to find drugs, but I hadn’t done anything. A dog searched my room but found nothing. The police officers left, but left my room in shambles. There was dog hair everywhere. They did this in all of the rooms. They didn’t find anything anywhere.”
The biggest closed centre in Belgium
With a total detention capacity of 180 places, the centre of Merksplas is the biggest centre in Belgium. More than 150 people are currently detained there. The detainees are kept in four different wings: block 3, block 4, block 5 (an area with isolation cells), and the recently renovated block 1, of which we do not know much yet.
The former “Merksplas Colony”
The centre of Merksplas is located near the prison of Merksplas and the local police station. Before the building became a closed centre ‘for illegal immigrants’ in 1994, it was occupied by a ‘vagrant colony’. It lost this function in 1993, when the law on vagrancy was repealed.
Then, and now, the state imprisons in this same building those it wishes to make invisible.
The importance of speaking of closed centres
The inmates share with us their despair with being locked up far from the public eye. The action organised in front of the centre on Sunday gives them strength and hope.
‘I’m happy to know that people are thinking of us. May God bless you.”
Let’s keep speaking of the closed centres. Let’s keep telling the story of what goes on behind the walls. So that one day our world will be a world of freedom. A world in which every human being can move and live freely.
The deportations continue unabatedly in December and January.
Several detainees with whom we were in contact, that had already suffered up to seven deportation attemps, were finally violently deported.
They were unable and/ or unwilling to return to their countries of origin for various reasons of their own (family, economy, politics, etc.). They had been held in closed centers, sometimes for more than a year, and had resisted several violents attemps at deportation.
They held out with determination and courage.
The Immigration Office did everything in its power to expel those that showed resistance, in order to continue its murderous migration policies.
A few among others:
Deported on 05/12/2024 to the DRC (3rd attempt): detained in Bruges for five months. She had lived in Germany since childhood and has her whole life and family there.
Collective deportation on 17/12/2024 to Morocco: the detainees informed us that the federal police came to pick up people of Maroccan descent from different closed centers to assemble them and detain them in solidary confinment in the closed centre 127bis, in the region of Zaventem. The detainees were handcuffed and put in a police bus bound for the Melsbroek military airbase, close to the centre. Each person was accompanied by three police officers. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/new-group-deportation-to-morocco-on-17-december-2024/
Deported on 04/01/2025 to Serbia (4th attempt): after being detained in the closed centre for seven months, he was unexpectedly taken to the airport. He had been living in Belgium for 15 years with his partner and three kinds, they are still fighting for him. He fears that his deportation will lead to him being sent to Russia, where he could be sent to the front in Ukraine.
Deported on 09/01/2025 to Morocco (7th attempt): detained in a closed centre for nine months. The Immigration Office did everything it could to make sure no one knew about it. He was put in solitary confinment and then dissapeared. it was only a few days later that his fellow detainees learned that he had arrived in Morocco.
Deported on 11/01/2025 to Senegal (7th attempt): detained in a closed centre for nine months. The attempt on the 11th of January had been prevented by passengers but he was kept at the airport and put on a flight to Istanbul the next day. He told us: “You really have to fight and unfortunately not all detained people are able to do that and they are sometimes deported illegally, it’s harsh!
Deported on 14/01/2025 to Poland: a Palestinian woman detained for four months before being deported under the Dublin procedure.
Deported on 17/01/2025 to Cameroon (4th attempt): detained in a closed centre for eight months, after being in Belgium since 2016. All of his applications for regularisation and asylum had been refused.
“I’ve crossed the desert and the Mediterranean twice, I’ve seen dead people: do you think I’m running away for my own pleasure? I was deported a first time in 2016 and came back the same way… for my pleasure of course… what is the pleasure in holding us down like this?”
Deported on 20/01/2025 to Ethiopia: detained in a closed center for fifteen months, his initial goal was to reach England. He is disabled (impaired hearing) and no longer had the courage to resist after being detained for more than a year and suffering multiple deportation attempts.
We were able to meet a Palestinian, hereinafter named A. , a father separated from his family since the intensification of colonial violence in Palestine.
A. He left the territory of Gaza in March 2024, but he could not include his family at the Egyptian border because the sums required for the crossing were exorbitant. An amount of $25,000, or $5,000 per person. His wife advised him to go alone and find some security and stability somewhere so she and the children could join him there later. Since that day they have been separated, and today still, they have not seen each other again. He then decided to join Belgium, also considering the future of his children, their studies, and his career. By trying to rebuild what the war has destroyed. He was imagining Belgium as a potential hope, a multi-cultural community that would have accept him and his family.
For several years A. worked as a Program Director at a University in Gaza. Travelling many times in Europe to develop Erasmus projects, his last visa, obtained at the Slovak embassy in Tel-Aviv, allowed him to move around the Shengen space. He arrives at the airport of Zaventem on 1 April 2024. However, in a desperate act, he destroys his visa, fearing that he will be sent back to Egypt. Like many people in transit, and without stability, uncertainty and fear of being sent back leads to the destruction of identity documents. He is then arrested and taken to the closed center Caricole.
After two months of detention he is deported to Slovakia under the Dublin procedure. This procedure allows people to be locked up and deported to a country where they are supposed to continue their asylum claim. This may be the first country of entry, where one gives his fingerprints for the first time in Europe or, in the case of A, the country mentioned on his visa. Once in Slovakia, A. spends three weeks in isolation in a closed camp in Humenné. He then spent two months in an open camp, the Accommodation center of Rohovce. A. was able to obtain his Slovak papers on 5 September 2024. Only, before the borders close, if his family wanted to join him, they had to go through the steps he went through in Slovakia (closed centre and open centre). If he does not find a job quickly, the help he obtained in Slovakia (480 € per month for 6 months) will be stopped. For A., finding a job in Slovakia is almost impossible, since he does not speak the Slovak language and it is very difficult to manage as an english speaker. In addition, both in Belgium and Slovakia, A. was able to observe that what the labour market offered him was often relayed to occupations far from the qualifications and skills he actually possessed. He believes that these systemic barriers not only impede personal growth but also spoil the potential contribution that individuals could make to society. The case of A. is symptomatic of an overall functioning, which deprives people of their right to exercise their own life choices and autonomy.
The idea is not to idealize or compare reception systems in different EU countries, but to understand that it is part of the same system. This makes the procedures very long, complex and criminalizing while here we are dealing with a man fleeing the Gaza strip, bombarded relentlessly for many months and where every day is counted for those who stayed. Especially since A. comes from an elevated social background, he has economies that allow him to survive but this is not the case for all Palestinian refugees who have left their land.
We find it important to relay this situation, which highlights the steps and long months of waiting that these procedures involve. What A. and his family are experiencing is not considered as an emergency. And this, in the continuity of a genocide in Palestine whose violence is still present, and of which European countries are noteworthy actors.
Words of A.
“My wish is simple yet profound: to provide my children with a sense of normalcy, to see them thrive in their education, and to give them a life free from fear. We dream of a place where opportunities abound, where I can contribute to a community that welcomes us, and where we can live without the shadow of war.This journey is not just mine; it is the story of countless others who are seeking safety, stability and a chance to start anew. It is a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring hope that drives us forward.
We bring here the testimony of a visitor who recently visited the Bruges closed centre and tells us about the deplorable conditions of detention, the lack of privacy, and the tense atmosphere. She also reports to us that a 15-year-old boy is detained at the centre.
” I was at the Bruges detention centre today. I hadn’t been there for a long time. The situation there is more disturbing than ever.
I had left a plastic bag for someone who was to be deported the next day, containing a smartphone and toothpaste. The toothpaste was refused…. I then signed a paper that had ‘palstic bag’ written on it, with no mention with what exactly it contained. I had this corrected by a very friendly young woman, who eventually accepted the toothpaste on my way out. Then, despite stepping through the metal detector without any problems, I was searched from head to toe (the inside of my socks, sleeves, etc). I was then taken to the visitors’ area by two guards. Each door was locked before I could enter the next one. It is worse than a prison.
The conditions of detention are intolerable. Detainees sleep in a large room in staple beds. There is no privacy. They are forced to get up at 8 a.m. and the lights are switched off at 10 p.m., with no opportunity to do anything. Everything is controlled and timed.
I heard that a very young boy (about 15 years old) was detained at the centre. However, he has papers clarifying that he is a minor and showing his date of birth. Moreover, he looks physically very young. He was taken away from the family where he was staying because certain medical tests (which are scientifically contested) showed that he is over 18. I spoke to the boy on the phone after my visit and contacted his foster family who will visit him this weekend. Fortunately, the boy has a lawyer, but he is overworked…. “
We have learned from fellow inmates that two minor boys of Afghan origin have been taken to the 127bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel, where one has been held since 23 December 2024 and the other since 3 January 2025.
They are respectively 16 and 17 years old (born in 2007 and 2008).
They both have documents proving their status as minors, but the Immigration Office does not recognise the validity of these documents. The Office requested a bone test, following which their ages were defined as 21 and 18 and a half. The Office therefore considers them to be adults, which justifies their detention in a closed centre while awaiting deportation.
They were locked up in the centre because they had left their fingerprints in Croatia and Austria respectively, the countries in which they had applied for asylum. Under the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that the country of entry into Europe is responsible for asylum applications, the Immigration Office wants to deport them both to these countries.
In terms of their reliability, bone tests are scientifically highly debated and show large margins of error.
The medical research* used in Belgium has been heavily criticised by the medical community. It dates back to outdated research carried out under very different circumstances and for very different purposes. For example, bone tests do not take into account differences in bone growth that are due to ethnicity, experiences of poverty and trauma, pregnancy, environment, etc. However, several studies indicate that each of these factors has an impact on the bone growth of adolescents. These tests can lead them to be estimated as older or younger than they actually are.
The atmosphere in centre 127bis is currently very tense.
Detainees are complaining of serious violence from the guards, and are being systematically put in solitary confinement as soon as a detainee shows any reaction. Showers have been cut off for several days, prompting prisoners to go on hunger strike for a day in protest. Attempts to deport prisoners are often made by surprise, without issuing a plane ticket beforehand. Detainees suffering from mental imbalances are held in solitary confinement. Detaining minors only adds to the stressful and violent atmosphere of confinement.
Co-detainees warn us:
“One of the young boys cries all the time.He’s really suffering.”
“We no longer believe in justice.”
The fellow inmates of the two young boys all express their deep concern about their presence in the centre.Imprisonment and deportation should never happen to anyone, but such pressure and violence are all the more worrying for minors.
The Délégué général aux droits de l’enfant, SOS Jeunes and the Mineurs en Exil platform have been warned.
Let’s put pressure on those responsible for the release of these two young people by sending them emails!
[SUBJECT]: Protest against the presence of two under-age boys in a detention centre
Dear Sir/Madam […],
Since 23 December 2024 and 3 January 2025, two minors of Afghan origin have been detained in the 127 bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel.They are respectively 16 and 17 years old (born in 2007 and 2008).We ask you to question their presence in the detention centre as a matter of urgency.
Although both are in possession of documents proving their status as minors, they have been assessed as adults by the Immigration Office following a medical test.The reliability of these medical tests, which involve examining a person’s bones to determine their age, is highly controversial within the medical community.For example, bone analyses do not take into account differences in bone growth due to ethnic origin, poverty, trauma, pregnancy, etc.Yet each of these factors is known to have an impact on bone growth in adolescents.As a result, the analyses can lead to an erroneous determination of age, i.e. these people are estimated to be older or younger than they actually are*.
It is unacceptable that two young boys aged 16 and 17 are detained here and threatened with deportation.Their fellow detainees testify to their fragile mental state and express their concern about the inhumane conditions of detention in closed centres.I ask you to guarantee their safety and protection immediately.
Thank you in advance for your reply and for your consideration,
The Foreign Nationals Office continues to detain hundreds of people of all nationalities for deportation under agreements signed with the countries concerned.
Many of these people, supposedly of Guinean nationality, have been held in closed centres for several months – in some cases for more than a year – while awaiting deportation.
After several gatherings held by the Guinean community in front of the Guinean embassy over the past year, to protest against the issuing of laissez-passer to Guinean nationals, we have learned that the Foreign Office is in direct contact with the Guinean junta so that a delegation from Conakry can come and identify the Guinean nationals in the detention centre. Once they have been identified, the embassy issues their passes. The risk of endangering the lives and integrity of Guineans threatened by the military junta in Guinea Conakry by expelling them from Belgium is evident.
STOP THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE FOREIGNERS OFFICE AND THE PUTSCHIST MILITARY JUNTEE IN CONAKRY
LET’S DENOUNCE THE COLLABORATING DIPLOMATS & ACCOMPLICES
STOP THE HAGGLING BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH: REFUGEES ARE NOT MERCHANDISE
This Tuesday 17 December, around ten people of Moroccan origin were deported on a ‘special flight’, chartered specifically for the deportation. This is the third flight of this type that has been arranged to Morocco since October 2024¹, at least as far as we know.
The detainees tell us that the federal police came to collect people of Moroccan origin from several different detention centres, rounded them up and held them in solitary confinement at detention centre 127bis, in the Zaventem area. The detainees were handcuffed, tied up in shackles and put on a bus bound for the Melsbroek military airbase, close to the centre. Each person was accompanied by three police officers.
According to the testimonies gathered, the police intervention was extremely violent, especially towards three detainees who did not accept this deportation and showed greater resistance. One of them managed to escape deportation by swallowing razor blades. He was taken to hospital, before being violently taken back to the detention centre. One of the police officers reportedly told him: ‘Do you want to die? You’re going to die!
Deportations and the fear of deportation are a daily occurrence for people held in detention centres.Despite the presence of witnesses on these ‘regular’ flights, individual deportations on commercial flights already involve a great deal of police violence (for an example, see our December 20232).Collective deportations on special flights take place in complete silence from the Melsbroek military base, with a heavy police presence.As the testimonies we have heard attest, these ‘special’ deportations allow for extreme police violence with very little possibility of resistance.
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.
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!
Today, Sunday 24 November 2024, on this day of action against violence against women* and gender minorities, a group of activists gathered outside the Holsbeek women’s detention centre (in the Leuven region). The aim of the action was to express solidarity with the women locked up in the centre, and to denounce the violence they suffer on a daily basis in their administrative procedures, in their situation of imprisonment and in their migration journey.
Opened in 2019, the Holsbeek’s centre for women is the first detention centre for single women living in a so-called ‘illegal’ situation, pending deportation by the Immigration Office to their ‘country of origin’. With around fifty places, the centre currently holds more than twenty women. It is also important to remember that other women are also imprisoned in special wings of the Bruges and Caricole detention centres.
Those who visited Holsbeek today were able to come into direct contact with the inmates, who were together in the refectory for lunch. The group sent out messages of support and courage, and the women locked up were able to share a few things, such as their names, their stories and their situations. They have been locked up for varying lengths of time, sometimes for as long as ten months. Some of them are pregnant, others in a critical state of health.
We share the press release issued by the group organising the demonstration:
On Sunday 24 November, several dozen activists gathered outside the Holsbeek detention centre for women, near Leuven. As thousands of people marched through the streets of Brussels to denounce sexist and sexual violence, the activists present wished to express their solidarity with the women detained and denounce the racist policies of detention and deportation.
Through this action, the activists are also trying to highlight the links between the violence perpetrated against women and LGBTQIA+ people, and the violence engendered by migration policies and confinement. The realities of women prisoners are all too often absent from the feminist agenda. Yet these women suffer from a wide range of oppressions.
There is a great deal of gender-based violence before, during and after the migration process: forced marriage, mutilation, rape, forced prostitution, persecution on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, administrative violence, police violence, and so on. And this violence does not stop at the gates of Europe. Through its policies of refusing to receive undocumented migrants, detaining them and deporting them, the Belgian state is keeping the people concerned in a vulnerable and precarious position.
Detention, whether in a closed centre or in prison, affects both the detainees and their families psychologically and physically. Deportations are intrinsically violent, but their brutality is amplified by the institutional system that accompanies them. Testimonies of police violence and gender-based or even sexual violence are almost systematic. As a former woman detained at the Holsbeek detention centre put it: “There is police violence at the airport, women are suffocated, women have their veils ripped off because they are Muslims, women have their support ripped off because they are women, and they are suffocated, their heads and necks are sat on, it’s not normal!”
The Holsbeek detention centre was inaugurated in 2019, as part of a master plan to significantly increase the Belgian government’s detention capacity. There are currently six detention centres in Belgium. Two other construction projects are still on the agenda: one in Jumet (near Charleroi), and the other in Zandvliet (near Antwerp).
While the detainees are resisting in their own way from inside, groups of undocumented migrants are also mobilising outside. The Comité des femmes sans-papiers (Undocumented Women’s Committee) is fighting for the regularisation and visibility of their situation:
“Violence against women is sometimes the reason why women migrate.The migration process is also littered with violence.Believing they are protected in Belgium, women find themselves undocumented, vulnerable and therefore exposed to all kinds of violence and abuse.In Belgium, violence against undocumented women is not well known to the public.In most cases, the violence is institutional, familial, marital, psychological, physical, etc. While every year on 25 November, the whole of humanity condemns violence against women, the violence experienced by undocumented women remains unknown, so nobody talks about it.”
According to the protesters present in Holsbeek on Sunday, who are demanding freedom of movement and settlement for all, the detention of people without papers must end: “The detention system reproduces colonial and racist logics of hierarchisation between human beings, of sorting out those who have the ‘right’ papers”.
In recent days we have learned that a number of people from the Democratic Republic of Congo held in detention centres have been informed that they will be put on a flight this Wednesday 13 November to be deported to their country of origin. They were told that there would be no passengers and no means of resistance.
On Wednesday 13 November, they will be put on a special charter flight to carry out the deportation of a number of DRC nationals living in Belgium and other Schengen countries.
We may learn at the last minute that the plane will also stop over in other countries neighbouring the DRC, to deport other people as in previous years (Ghana, Guinea, Senegal).
The plane is due to take off from Melsbroek military airport (Chaussée de Haecht 138 in Melsbroek) on Wednesday 13 November at 12.25pm, according to the information gathered.
We have received numerous reports of (attempted) deportations over the past month. The pace of deportations is not unusual, except that among these attempts we have been made aware of some particularly violent situations.
Failed deportation to Senegal
On Saturday 5 October, an attempt was made to deport two men of Senegalese origin. Both had applied for asylum and regularisation several times in the past, and had been detained for very long periods in detention centres. The deportation on 5 October followed a ‘reserve’ tactic, i.e. only one seat was available on the plane but one person was designated ‘in reserve’ in case the first deportation failed. In both cases, passes were issued by the Senegalese embassy on 2 October, and this was done in a complete lie, because up until 4 October, the embassy told us that nothing had been issued.
Neither of the two expulsions was successful. One of the people we spoke to told us about his experience. This is already his third time in a detention centre, so he has already been subjected to a large number of deportation attempts at the airport. This time, he was ‘ready’, as he put it, and tried to infiltrate the cell with a lighter hidden in his shoe, with the intention of swallowing it on the flight. Desperate acts of this kind, which sometimes even take the form of self-mutilation, are common to prevent deportations. When he arrived at the airport police station, he was searched and the lighter was confiscated. However, he had kept a metal pen spring in his mouth. A few minutes before being taken away, he showed the metal end and pretended to swallow it. Four guards then pounced on him and held his throat. He hid the object in his gums and claimed to have swallowed it. The police officers then threatened him (were they disappointed that they couldn’t enjoy their weekend in Dakar?), and told him that in one or two weeks’ time the deportation would be more violent, and the search more thorough. Taken to hospital, he was X-rayed and tested, but the object in question was not found. He was kept at centre 127bis, and taken back to the Merksplas closed centre on Sunday morning. Since then, he has been traumatised, and can no longer eat or sleep.
We recently learned that this same person was threatened with deportation again on 29 October.
Deportation of a young woman to Ghana
Another planned deportation to Ghana is due to take place on the same day, Saturday 5 October. The young woman whom the Immigration Office had decided to deport had been locked up for 8 months in the Caricole detention centre, then in Bruges. She is 25 years old and was fleeing Ghana to avoid a marriage that did not suit her.
She was placed in solitary confinement the day before, and her belongings were seized. On the day of her deportation on 5 October, she was seen and heard in the airport police station. She was screaming and struggling. With no further news from her, her fellow detainees went on hunger strike to obtain information. We described the situation in a previous press release*.
On Monday 7 October, she was finally able to contact her psychologist to inform her of her expulsion and arrival in Ghana. She was repatriated without her psychologist having been informed.
At the end of September, 30 Nigerian nationals from various detention centres were deported on a collective flight.
Collective flights are flights specifically chartered for deportations, departing from Melsbroek military airport.
We are also aware of group deportations to Morocco. On 5 October, 8 detainees of Moroccan origin, who were being held at Merksplas or 127bis, were deported together on a ‘special flight’, probably a collective flight.
Attempted deportation of a young Palestinian man
On 13 October, an attempt to deport a young Palestinian was aborted. The day before the deportation, he injured his head and had to be examined in hospital. However, as soon as he returned to the centre, security came to collect him from his cell at 4am so that he could be escorted to the plane.
Once at the airport, he resisted being deported and was taken back to detention centre 127bis. Around fifteen people from all over Belgium turned out at the airport on the day of the deportation to protest against this forced expulsion.
The young man is still under threat of being deported again. He is in a very vulnerable psychological state. A new application for international protection is underway.
Two deportations with police escort on Tuesday 29 October to Dakar and Conakry
A man detained in a detention centre for 6 months, first in Bruges and then in Merksplas, was deported to Guinea on 29 October. He has been living in Belgium for 5 years. A laissez-passer was issued by the Guinean embassy in an unusual format, which led to numerous contacts with the embassy and a demonstration in front of the embassy on Thursday 24 October to ask them questions. The embassy refused to receive those taking part in the demonstration.
An attempt was also made to deport a man from Senegal to Dakar on the same day. This is the third time he has been incarcerated in a detention centre since 2021, and he can no longer count the number of times he has been taken to the airport for attempted deportations.
Other deportations that will not be forgotten
Several people of Eritrean origin have been arrested in recent weeks under the Dublin procedure. Some of them were quickly deported to Poland.
After two rejected asylum applications, a woman detained in Holsbeek was deported on 8 October to Cameroon, her country of origin. The plane’s pilot finally let her off the flight, and she was not deported that day. But she received a new ticket, and is very scared.
On 18 October, an attempt was made to deport a man who had been held at Caricole for almost 6 months to the Ivory Coast. This is already his third attempt at deportation, with a police escort. He is not originally from the Ivory Coast, nor does he know anyone there. He has been deported. We have not heard from him since.
This Saturday, a man was deported for the third time to Nigeria, with a transit stop in Istanbul. He had been living in Belgium for several years and no longer had any contacts in Nigeria. He was eventually deported.
On Sunday 3 November, a man was deported to Cameroon. He had already been in a detention centre for 14 months, and had a court appointment scheduled for the following day (Monday 4 November) with a view to his possible release. However, he was eventually deported.
The constant threats of deportation, the exponential violence and pressure on detainees, are clearly pushing people to the limit.Detainees end up using means of resistance that are dangerous for them, such as swallowing objects or self-mutilation.This just goes to show the extent to which deportation can be a danger to their lives, both from police escorts and from the violence they risk being subjected to in the country of destination.
Attuned, a Brussels-based collective of solidarity events, is organising an evening in support of Getting the Voice Out on Friday 15 November.
All proceeds from the evening will be used to send top-up phone cards to people held in detention centres.
A great opportunity to invite your friends to get together!
Practical info:
⬪ 15/11/2024 from 10pm to 4am
⬪ at La Vallée (39 rue Adolphe Lavallée, Molenbeek)
⬪ 8€/10€/12€
Why top-ups?
We provide each person in detention with a €10 monthly top-up.
When they arrive in a closed centre, people who are placed in administrative detention (with the aim of being sent back to their country of origin or supposed country of origin, on the pretext that they don’t have the ‘right papers’ to stay in Belgium) have to top up their phones at their own expense.
Their phone is very often their only contact with the outside world, whether it’s their family, their lawyer, or to make their situation known publicly. Whether their arrest takes place on their migration route or in their place of residence, whether their family and friends are here or abroad, being able to warn and communicate with those close to them is crucial. Many people find it extremely difficult to buy phone credit.
Our resources are dwindling fast and we constantly need income to continue sending top-ups. If you would like to support the purchase of top-ups for people in prison, you can also make a financial contribution by bank transfer or standing order to the following bank details:
For about 22 days, we lost contact with M., a detainee that had just started a hunger strike in protest to his detention. His phone seems to have been confiscated and neither his family nor his lawyer have had any contact with him since. M. has children in Belgium and his wife is currently pregnant.
At the time of his arrest, M. was initially taken to the 127bis detention centre. He was subjected to two deportation attempts that he was able to resist. Then, on 15 October 2024, he was transferred to the Vottem detention centre, where he began a hunger strike. Since then, he has been unreachable through the phone and has been denied visits.
On Saturday, the 2nd of November, he was transerred a second time to the closed centre in Merksplas, where he was put in isolation. According to the other detained people in Vottem, his health was very poor before being transferred. His silence is worrying, and those close to him tell us: “What if he is dead? Aren’t they going to tell us anything?”
How is it possible that neither his family nor his lawyer had any news for so long?
How is it possible that a person is denied contact with their lawyer and with their family?
Yesterday, Tuesday 5 November, his lawyer finally reveived the news that his client had been released and transferred to the hospital “at the request of the centre’s doctor for further medical examinations”.
It seems to us that M. is seriously ill, and that the centre has done everything it can to hide his conditioin, thus preventing him from communicating with his family and lawyer.
We hope that M. will recover and that he will not suffer any psychological or physical reprecussions due to his prolonged isolation and the lack of adequate care.
The isolation of a man in distress is part of a series of strategies that are put in place by the Immigration Office to reduce any possibility of resistance on the part of detainees. It is part of a repressive system that seeks to expel anyone who does not have the ‘right papers’, at any cost.
We stand in solidarity with M. and all other detained people
We provide each detainee with a €10 monthly top-up phone card. Our resources are diminishing, which is why your help is crucial!
Make a donation (or better still, a permanent order) to support us. The money will be sent directly to a detainee in the form of a top-up code:
Collectif Contre les Expulsions BE58 5230 8016 1279 Communication: Lyca top-up
Triodos Bank (BIC: TRIOBEBB)
Why top-up?
When they arrive in a detention centre, people who are placed in administrative detention (with the aim of being sent back to their country of origin, on the pretext that they do not have the right documents to remain in Belgium) have to top up their phones at their own expense.
Their phone is very often their only contact with the outside world, whether it’s their family, their lawyer, or to make their situation known publicly. Whether their arrest takes place on their migration route or in their place of residence, whether their family and friends are here or abroad, being able to warn and communicate with their loved ones is crucial. Many of them would not have the means to do so without your help.
Pass this message on to your friends and people you know!
This Sunday on the 13th of October, a young palestinian man was subjected to an attempted deportation at Zaventem airport. It was the second attempt to deport him to Albania. On the first attempt, Albania refused the deportation and he was taken back to Belgium.
After a long journey he arrived in Belgium, crossing many countries (from Gaza he came through Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Albania). He was arrested at the airport in April 2024 on a flight from Albania. The Office wants to send him back to Albania, applying the 1944 Chicago Convention, which allows people arriving in the country and whose asylum application has been refused. Under guise of the Chicago convention, violence, encarceration and forced expulsions are being perpetrated, as the person is alledgedy “illegally” entring on a territory.
The attempted expulsions of a man from Gaza symbolises the hypocrisy and involvement of Belgium (and more broadly that of European migration policies) in the genocide that is, to this day, taking place there. In Belgium and elsewhere, the procedure denies people fleeing from violence and genocide the recognition of international protection and adequate reception.
The day before the expulsion, the man injured his head and was taken to the hospital. As soon as he returned to the centre that same night, security came to get him from his cell, at 4 a.m., to escort him to the airport. Once at the airport, he resisted the deportation and was taken back to closed centre 127bis. The young man is still being threatened with deportation and is going through degrading treatment by the OE. He should have the right to be regularised – just like all people detained in closed centres, regardless of their origin and their personal/ familial situation.
Around 15 people from all over Belgium came to the airport this Sunday in his support, and explained the situation to the passengers on the flight, as well as their right to oppose the forced expulsion. We would like to thank them for their efforts.
Our thoughts are with the young Palestinian man that is still being detained in the centre, and with all his fellow detainees.
E. has been in a closed centre for several months. He tells us about his experience of detention, particularly with regard to hygiene conditions, food and the lack of psychological support. He also talks about the action taken in protest at the poor management of the bedbug infestation.
My name is E. I’m in 127 bis detention centre, I’ve been there since the second of May, it’s been 5 months and there are bedbugs, the showers are dirty, the toilets are blocked and we managed to go on strike for two days so they proposed that we move to another wing but even in the wing where they put us there are still bedbugs. The bugs are on the cutlery, and at night we can’t sleep because they make us itch.
I’ve already had to change wings 4 times, you understand, we’ve put our clothes on the heating during ***** but it’s just that it always creates the same effect. They convinced us that we should go to the yellow wing, which is further down, because it was disinfected there and everything, but to our great surprise when we arrived it was still the same thing. At the moment, some cells have been closed and frankly they don’t want to change anything, because an inspector came to check the centre and now they’re not letting any more people in. Some of the older residents have told us that this has been going on for a year, because there are people who have been here for 9 months who have always been in the same situation.
It’s simply that we’re not being treated properly, you understand. They don’t give us good food and they only give us reheated food, we eat the same things all the time and to be honest it’s disgusting. We can’t take it any more, it’s terrible. Some people have been here for a long time just because they don’t have papers and they end up doing five, nine, ten months here and it’s awful, it’s really terrible for us.
Also, as I’m a psychologist, you can see ***** a psychologist is like a specialist who listens to us; they send us people from the centre to talk to us, who make us repeat the same things and there are things we can’t talk about all the time because it hurts us so much. Depending on what we’ve been through, it’s really difficult, and I need a competent doctor. I’ve been through a lot and I wanted to talk to a specialist to find a solution to this because I’ll never be able to forget it. And if they make me repeat myself all the time, as I repeat myself you see, I’m in pain.
A woman who has been detained at the Bruges detention centre for several months was due to be deported for the sixth time on Saturday 5 October. Her fellow inmates were very worried about the deportation and called for support. As they had no news of F. after the scheduled flight, they went on hunger strike on Sunday 6 October in protest at the lack of information about F.’s situation, demanding to know what had happened to her. Since then, dozens of guards have been assigned to watch the women at the centre and listen in on their conversations. At the same time, the guards claim that F. has been deported back to Ghana, and that she is safe and well.
However, according to a passenger on the flight, F. was not on the plane she was supposed to take on Saturday 5 October to Lomé (Togo) and Accra (Ghana). However, she was definitely at Zaventem airport, because a witness at the police station saw her and heard her screaming and crying in a cell, calling for help. There was so much concern that her lawyer was about to issue a missing person’s report.
On Monday 7 October, F. phoned us from Accra. She had indeed been deported, having suffered the usual violence (strapping, restraining belts and handcuffs) and death threats. We still do not know on which flight she was taken by force.
In solidarity with the inmates of the Bruges detention centre and with Mrs F.!
On 11 August last, several inmates at the 127bis detention centre reported a suicide attempt*. The man in question allegedly cut his wrists in the toilets.
“There was blood all over the corridor, it was awful.
All the inmates said they were extremely traumatised by the suicide attempt, and some are still struggling to get over it.
We were unable to contact this man, who had apparently been locked up for 2 days. However, we have learned from an association that the man was then transferred to the Merksplas detention centre after a stay in hospital, but that he has since been ‘dropped off’ at the Dutch border, under conditions that we do not know.
This suicide attempt at 127bis took place against a backdrop of heightened tension and pervasive violence, which is still with us today.
The physical conditions of detention are becoming increasingly harsh. For several months now, various wings of the centre have been infested with bedbugs*. Members of staff have gone on strike because of the presence of bedbugs on their premises. It is obviously the inmates who will suffer the consequences of this strike: showers are limited and they are no longer allowed visits. However, they are also the first to suffer from the bedbug infestation and its poor treatment by the centre’s management.
Last month, several people also complained about the hygiene conditions: foul smells, dirt, etc. The inmates tell us:
‘Our living conditions are unbearable’
‘As well as being deprived of our freedom, we don’t want to leave here sick’,
We frequently hear reports of assaults by guards, who describe a climate of terror: the slightest event becomes a pretext for beatings, which have become an almost daily occurrence.
Prisoners feel that they have no rights whatsoever.
At the Bruges detention centre, a prisoner was beaten by a guard for no reason. Inmates tell us:
“In general, several guards are violent and they hit.Many guards take advantage of their power.We risk our lives here.It’s not safe.
The inmates asked to speak to management but it was absent. A head of security told them to report back. To date, we do not know what the outcome will be.
———————————————
Further protests against the invasion of bedbugs (127bis)
A couple of weeks ago, inmates at 127bis took part in protests against the invasion of bedbugs. They ended up spending the night outside, denouncing the critical sanitary conditions*. One of them, considered to be a ‘leader’ of the resistance movements, was beaten up and taken to hospital. He was then placed in isolation on his return to the centre.
Several people are detained for long periods (up to 18 months). So-called administrative detentions are characterised by their unknown duration, extended from month to month, in particular because the Immigration Office appeals against release decisions granted by the Court. The detainees are therefore subject to decisions by the Immigration Office, either to release them (usually under an order to leave the territory), or to attempt forced deportation.
Recently, some of the detainees at 127bis told us about their distress. One man told us, after learning that his detention had been extended:
“It’s unbearable.I can’t accept this.It all hurts.Things are going to get very tense here.The Office is going too far.It’s racism.They’re going to say I’m crazy, that’s what they say about anyone who complains.“
A fellow inmate in a similar situation also tells us:
“It’s a total lack of respect because we’re ‘illegals’.It has to change.I don’t accept this system.The 2-person rooms are closed, and we all sleep in the 4-person rooms. They make us suffer on purpose.Then we get angry and go to the cells.That’s their strategy.”
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Abuse during a deportation attempt
At the end of August, a woman was subjected to an attempted eviction. Although she had suffered torture and other forms of violence in her country of origin, Belgium refused to recognise her fundamental right to asylum. An appeal has been lodged against the negative decision.
We have learned that, during the deportation attempt, this woman was stripped naked, before a superior put an end to the deportation attempt. She was then taken back to a detention centre.
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Still no information on death in Bruges
Ten days ago, inmates alerted us to a death at the Bruges detention centre. The man, a Georgian citizen, had arrived at the centre a week before his death. He suffered from diabetes and was not receiving adequate treatment. Officially, he died of a heart attack.
The Georgian embassy informs us that the deceased’s entire family is in Georgia. We still do not know whether the family has been contacted and informed of the death. Our thoughts are with them.
We learn that an investigation by the public prosecutor’s office is underway and that an examining magistrate has been appointed.
GVO is a Belgian collective (mainly based in Brussels) that fights against borders, against all forms of imprisonment, and for freedom of movement and settlement for all.
We are fighting against detention centres. Under Belgian law, the purpose of detention centres is to lock up illegal residents. People ‘placed at the disposal of the government’ are detained there, either because they are in an irregular situation (do not have the required documents or are not in a condition to enter or reside legally in Belgium), or because they are awaiting a decision from the Immigration Office following their asylum application. Like prisons, the centres lock up and isolate hundreds of people out of sight.
In practical terms, GVO’s field of action is vast, but it can be summed up in 3 main areas:
Maintaining telephone contact with people detained in closed detention centres in Belgium to show them our solidarity and support the actions they are carrying out from the inside.
Collecting and sharing testimonies from detainees and information about what is happening in these prisons, and documenting Belgian and European racist migration policies more widely.
Develop various means of protest and awareness-raising on the issue of borders.
There’s a lot more to say, but the best thing would be for us to discuss it together.
Interested? It would be a pleasure to meet you on Wednesday 25 September 06.30 pm!
→ Saturday 21/09/2024 (from 6pm) at the Nova cinema (rue d’Arenberg 3, 1000 Brussels)
On 22 September 1998, Semira Adamu was murdered by gendarmes escorting her sixth deportation attempt after being held for several months at the 127bis detention centre. Twenty-six years on, deportations, closed centres and the failure to regularise undocumented migrants continue to shatter lives and embody racist migration policies. This evening is organised by Cinema Nova and Getting the Voice Out, a collective supporting the struggles of people detained in closed centres. → All the actions in commemoration of Semira Adamu at: https://stuut.info/Semaines-de-mobilisation_Semira-Adamu-Stop-a-l-enfermement-des-personnes-sans-4430
🎙️ 6pm – Lance-Pierre #5: Detain, expel
→ Free
Public recording of the 5th episode of the “Lance-Pierre” podcast by Getting the Voice Out, a collective supporting the struggles of people detained in closed centres. Border deportations and resistance will be deciphered live with several guests.
🍽️ 7pm – Table d’hôte by the 100DAL collective
→ Free price
The 100DAL canteen (cantine100dal.net) is a self-managed cooking collective in Brussels. It brings together around fifteen members to carry out a range of culinary and activist activities. It was set up because there were few, if any, militant, self-managed cooking groups left in Brussels. The 100dal canteen’s activities are always free or at no cost, based on food recovery and voluntary work. The way the collective is organised is as self-managed and horizontal as possible.
🎬 8pm – Screening of short films
→ Screenings followed by meetings with the directors! → Prices (in cash): €10 (support rate) / €7 (full rate) / €4 (reduced rate for students, pensioners, unemployed, non-status)
Caught in the Rain (Elie Maissin & Mierien Coppens, 2021, BE, DCP, vo ff st ang, 21′) Three men are working on a building site. The work has been interrupted by five months’ imprisonment. The rain suddenly falls like the silence that precedes an expulsion.
From Afar (Martijn de Meuleneire & Gilles Vandaele, 2024, BE, DCP, vo fr & ang st fr, 33′) In “From Afar”, observations of the landscapes and architecture in and around Belgium’s six deportation centres are combined with testimonies from imprisoned people.
For the use of the living (Pauline Fonsny, 2019, BE, DCP, vo fr & ang st fr, 27′) Twenty years after the death of Semira Adamu, in a war cry conjugated in the feminine, three women tell the st
For the use of the living (Pauline Fonsny, 2019, BE, DCP, vo fr & ang st fr, 27′) Twenty years after the death of Semira Adamu, in a war cry conjugated in the feminine, three women recount and shed light on the reality of closed centres for the detention of migrants. 9 min
A man of Georgian nationality, who arrived at the Bruges detention centre a week ago, had stopped eating for 5 days. The man suffered from diabetes and was not receiving adequate treatment. On 2 September, he collapsed and was taken to the centre’s ‘medical wing’. The inmates alerted us to the situation two days later, when several resuscitation ambulances arrived. The next day, 5 September, guards told them that the man had died ‘of a heart attack’. Some of the centre’s inmates were transferred to another detention centre the following day.
The man was probably ill and did not receive appropriate medical care. He died as a result. Officially, he died of a heart attack.
It is extremely difficult to obtain more precise information, as prisoners are threatened with repression if they speak out.
In the Vottem closed centre, the management told inmates who learned of the death:
“Whoever talks about it goes straight to the solitary confinement cell’’
The announcement of this death comes just one month after a suicide attempt at centre 127bis.
It also sadly echoes those who have died in closed centres in just the last year:
-Tamazi Rasoian at Merksplas in February 2023, in circumstances still unknown¹;
-A case of suicide, also at Merksplas, in December 2023²;
-Another suicide at 127bis, in March 2024³.
For all these people killed by racist and murderous migration policies: no forgetting, no forgiving.
Since July, inmates at 127bis detention centre (Steenokkerzeel) have been alerting us to a critical situation: an infestation of bedbugs in the bedrooms and living areas. Similar alerts have been issued for other detention centres, including Merksplas and Bruges. Prisoners have long complained that no comprehensive strategy has been adopted to deal effectively with the problem. Apart from transfers from one wing to another, nothing is being put in place. And relocation is pointless, since the entire building is infested and occupied to maximum capacity. The situation continues to deteriorate: some of the staff at 127bis have even gone on strike in protest at the critical sanitary conditions.
Last night, the inmates informed us that around fifteen of them were refusing to go back up to their rooms because of the bedbugs, and wanted to spend the night outside in protest. Several police vans with dogs were called in. The management offered the inmates a transfer to another wing, but they refused. The police eventually left, fortunately without violence.
The inmates spent the night outside, protected as best they could from the rain by a covered area. They camp outside, with mattresses and blankets.
“They have to close this centre. Or destroy it, but we can only dream about that. At the very least, it needs to be renovated and disinfected.
“It’s getting really urgent. This is no way to live, it’s affecting us mentally as well as physically.”
They are still outside at the moment.They are asking for support, and for the events to be shared and publicised in order to spread the word about the critical state of their situation.
Charleroi because the government in Jumet (Charleroi municipality) plans to build a detention center1 with a total of 200 places by 2028, which would make it the largest detention centre in Belgium.
22 September in memory of Semira Adamu, an undocumented resistance fighter killed by police in 1998 during her sixth deportation attempt. This date reminds us of her death, as well as that of Mawda (killed by police in 2023) and Tamazi (who died in a detention centre in 2023), caused by racism and migration policies. We gather in memory of them and all others, anonymously, at the borders, in the sea, on the roads, every day.
In the weeks leading up to the demonstration, various groups from across Belgium have joined forces to organise a number of events related to the fight against the detention of undocumented migrants. These events aim both to mobilise people for 22 September and to organise and raise our voices against racist and murderous migration policies.
Join us in Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels for film screenings, discussions, podcasts and solidarity meals to remind us that there is only one solution : an end to detention centres, an end to borders and freedom of movement and settlement for all !
!MOREINFOTOFOLLOW, DON’T FORGETTOCHECKBACKAGAIN !
BRUGES : Info to come
BRUSSELS :
20 September at DK (Rue de Danemark 70B), screening of the film ‘Bamako’ and discussion organised by Zone Neutre.
GHENT : 15 September at Lina (Edward Anseeleplein 2), filmscreening and solidarity meal.
LALOUVIÈRE : 16 september at the JOC (Rue sylvain Guyaux 32/B), at 18pm.
LOUVAIN : 11 September at the JH Sojo (Eenmeilaan 35).
LIÈGE :
7 September at Casa Nicaragua (Rue Pierreuse 23), No Border afternoon with round table, projection, music and food (1pm-9pm). (MOREPRECISETIMETABLE ?)
14 September from 12 noon at the CPCR ( Rue Jonruelle 11) for theFesti’fal, with exhibition, music, stands…
16 September at La Zone (Rue Méan 27), filmscreenings and solidarity meal.
19 September at CCKALI (Rue St Thomas 32), special Come To Be event.
NAMUR : Info to come
Let us fight against the invisibility and oblivion of the many deaths caused by the state at its borders and in closed centres. In memory of Semira Adamu and all those targeted by migration policies, violated, oppressed and killed. Let us oppose the expansion of the detention and deportation machine.
1 The detention centres hold people based on their ‘irregular administrative situation’ and their official aim is to forcibly deport them by plane from Belgium. In other words, these centres deprive people of their freedom, the only offence being that they do not have the ‘right’ papers.
While things are slowing down over the summer, the detention and deportation machine continues to traumatise detainees. A number of them have described incidents of violence that are part of everyday life in detention, accounts that echo many others and reveal the deep-rooted and systemic nature of the mechanisms of intimidation and domination that operate with complete impunity.
Beatings and solitary confinement at 127bis
Several eyewitness accounts mention a particularly violent reaction by staff on 31 July following the lunchtime meal. One inmate asked the permission to work on cleaning the meal trays in order to earn some money¹. This was refused. As a result, 7 members of the security team arrived, beat him and tied him up. On 2 August, we once again received numerous testimonies from detainees who witnessed this attack, which is said to have been extremely violent. They are asking us to take action and report the incident. The man was then sent to solitary confinement.
Some fellow inmates told us:
“They bludgeoned and demolished a guy because he wanted to work.It was just a provocation.He didn’t do anything.”
“This guy was ill; is that seriously how you treat ill people where you come from?“
“He looked like a parcel.”
Another elderly inmate was also attacked by staff at 127bis at the end of July. This happened after he complained about the conditions of his detention and the fact that they wanted to force him to take medication. He was told: “You’re just another pain in the arse, get out”. Members of the security team then came to get him in his room and told him “you’re going to to solitary confinement because you’ve spoken out of turn”. They put him down and tied him up before sending him to the isolation cell. A week later, he was still suffering from scars, pain and dizziness.
“I don’t trust doctors or social workers.You say one word, they put you on the floor, they throw you in the dungeon like a dog.”
Announcement of an escape from 127bis
Every now and then we get some good news. On 31 July, a young man managed to climb over the railings and escape. We wish him well!
A week earlier, it seems that there had been an escape attempt.
One inmate suggested that the beating that took place after lunch might have been intended to divert attention from the successful escape. Reigning terror rather than cultivating hope…
“Instead of regularising people, you torture them”.
A few weeks ago, a former inmate of the Merksplas detention centre, now released, denounced the overall treatment of all detainees, the dehumanisation and criminalisation of undocumented migrants by the state. According to him, the prevailing political and media discourse, increasingly influenced by far-right ideas, is reflected in the way the staff in detention centres behave towards detainees.
“The way the social worker talks is bizarre.She forces people to go home.You forget that I’m a human being just like you.But the authorities have allowed you to use people like that.
If you complain about bad food, they put you in solitary confinement.It’s just not right.
How can you keep someone here for 12 months?There are 3 people here who have been here for 12 months.Others, 8 months, 10 months.
Why force them to leave like animals?
Instead of regularising people, you torture them.Stop lying to your population.How many undocumented migrants are there in Brussels?If someone doesn’t have papers, how do they live?They’re going to become criminals on the streets.The government is the source of this crime.Why are foreigners here?To contribute to the country.
Television channels show the insecurity in the country.But who’s at the root of it?It’s the government.Have you no shame?”
Since I came to the closed centre here, I came five days ago, I’ve remained calm.I wanted them to send me to a good group where I could stay calm, but they didn’t want to because of the discrimination here.So I came here and had a quiet five days.
When they told me I was now in prison, I started shouting and insulting everyone.After a while they caught me and sent me to solitary confinement.Then they gave me an injection.They came to inject me with 7 or 8 people.They injected me.They forcibly injected me.They slapped me around.They didn’t hit me much but they didn’t miss me either, because they hit me a bit and then they stung me.They ran off and left me there on my own.I stayed there for a long time and they didn’t take me any food or anything.Then when they realised I was a bit intelligent, I started to tell everyone, to explain, until they knew what they’d done.Then they took me to a normal centre where I could rest easy.But things still didn’t work out, because they forced me to take medication that I didn’t want to take.They give them to me so that I forget what they did to me.
But I still can’t forget.Because every day, they try to listen a bit and then they tell me ‘yes, yes, it’s OK, I’ve understood’ when they haven’t understood.They haven’t changed my room.When I call someone to explain, they don’t listen to me.They say ‘OK, I’ve understood’, then they leave, they don’t come back, they don’t even look at me, they don’t calculate.
So all this I wanted to explain, and what’s more, because they’d nicked me, I wanted to lodge a complaint.Until… because this is Dutch, I don’t understand Dutch.
They made me sign papers that I didn’t know anything about so that I could go home. I said ‘OK, no problem’, I’m going home, it’s not someone else’s house.When I go back there, I’ll have a full future instead of staying here and going crazy or doing anything here that I don’t want to do, that I don’t want to do.It’s better if they take me home so they don’t keep me here for very long.
But still, they keep me here, they keep me here.When I want to talk about something, nobody listens to me.They just leave me in my cell.I’m the one who’s forcing everything to go home.Because all they want is to keep me here for months or years so that I go mad.
I’m freaking out, I don’t want to freak out, I’ve got plenty of future, plenty of dreams ahead of me.I want to explore that.I don’t want to stay here where there are problems, worries and stress that I can’t cope with sometimes.I talk, I go out a bit, I insult.But nobody answers me because I’m talking to myself.I don’t talk to anyone, no one pays any attention to me.So all that doesn’t work.Every day it’s discrimination.Every day I wake up… I’ve got too many problems and too many worries here.I don’t want them to keep me here too long.If they want to keep me here for very long, that’s if I’m in the process of getting out of here.They can keep me here as long as they want, they’ll let me go.But then I don’t want to stay here for very long, which is why they made me sign the documents.I signed to return voluntarily.But so far it’s not working.I don’t want them to keep me here for four or five months, like they’ve done to other people, and then say, ‘Yeah, you’ve got to go home now’.But I have a little hope.
But that’s not what I want.What I want is…Even on my documents it says: if you want to go home, you have to do it immediately, you don’t even have to stay here 24 hours.It’s written on my documents, I’ve got them here.And also…Why did I come here?
I’ve got a lot of things to do with my life.All they’ve done is write whatever they want on the document to keep me here for a long time.They think it’s true when it’s not.They can keep me here as long as they want.When I ask ‘yes, have you signed with the embassy?They tell me no, they tell me what they want.They don’t tell you clearly what’s going on.It’s not pleasant, it’s not easy […].
That’s why I decided to talk about what they did to me, and what they’re still doing.
In the last few weeks, we have received many calls from several detention centres reporting bedbug infestations in bedrooms and living areas.
According to the inmates, there is no overall strategy adopted by staff to eradicate this infestation: rooms are closed progressively, seemingly disinfected by whatever means, while other areas are also found to be infested in the meantime. With no effective resources in place, there is no chance of the infestation being fully eradicated.
Merksplas detention centre:
An inmate complained that some of his fellow inmates were beaten by the guards, asthey refused to be transferred to other rooms that were too small. He says that the measures taken to eradicate the problem are ridiculous: “They don’t give a damn”, he complains.
Bruges detention centre:
Inmates sleep in 20-person dormitories. The overcrowding makes the situation even more unbearable.
They tell us:
“You can see them [bedbugs] on the blankets.”
“We scratch ourselves all the time, especially at night.”
“Many people can’t sleep any more.”
“It’s becoming unbearable.“
“Some people are going crazy.“
“In situations like this, the cells are emptied of their occupants and disinfected for several days. Should we close the detention centres?”
Detention centre 127bis :
An inmate told us that he had to alert medical staff three times to the presence of bedbugs in his room before it was taken seriously. He first went to see staff members to report suspicious bites. The doctor and nurse came to look at the room, but found no infestation, so didn’t take his warnings on board. The next day, he went to see them with a dead bedbug. They still ignored him. On a third day, he found a living bedbug walking around, so he called the staff. Only then, after seeing it with their own eyes, did they agree to believe him. He was still being bitten.
As we all know, the more time goes by, the more bedbugs reproduce, and the more difficult the problem will be to deal with. The attitude of the staff and management is truly inconsistent, irresponsible and disrespectful of the people in the cells.
It would appear that the infestation is gradually spreading throughout the centre. Two wings have apparently remained open, while two others have been closed for several days. The infestation is raging in the two wings that are still occupied.
We have alerted a number of associations to this situation, which we feel is urgent.
There’s only one solution: Empty the detention centres! (and never fill them again)
Five people, three men and two women, were deported on a commercial flight on 18 June 2024, escorted by 28 police officers.
We had been warned that a Moroccan woman would be forcibly deported on this date on flight AT-833 (Royal Air Maroc) to Casablanca.
We learned that on this flight, there were a total of five detainees tied up (two women and three men), “accompanied” by 28 plainclothes police officers – commonly known as “escorts” when they perform this function. The police officers escorted them until their arrival in Casablanca.
We learn that these five people were violently taken on board before the passengers arrived, at the back of the plane.
We learn that one of the men who resisted deportation had bruises all over his body on arrival in Casablanca.
This testimony from a man who met them on their arrival in Casablanca attests to this:
“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. Tied up by his hands and feet, 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 they tried to strangle him.”
Finally, we learn that another detainee, who was tied to his seat, had a glassy, almost sleepy, totally absent look in his eyes, suggesting that a substance had been administered without his knowledge to put him in this state.
One woman was handcuffed and had pressure applied to her chest. To this day, she still has marks of blows all over her body and is psychologically very traumatised. In addition, this woman suffers from a serious chronic illness and has not been given the medication she needs.
As for the second woman on the plane, her family still has no news of her, which is very worrying.
They tell us:
“My heart is full of hatred.”
“How much is all this costing you? 28 return tickets for the escort, all to do harm.”
“Do the human rights authorities know about this?”
These stories of unspeakable violence have been pieced together thanks to the support of relatives of the people concerned and the courage of the victims who testified. This raises the question of all the expulsions and attempted expulsions of which we may never be informed.
Belgium is deploying astronomical material, human and financial resources to implement a so-called “return” policy that is only human in name, with the complicity of the airlines.
Our solidarity goes out to the victims of these acts of torture, committed by state officials with complete impunity.
Since the massive intensification of the attacks perpetrated by the State of Israel in Gaza, many Palestinian refugees have found themselves incarcerated in the Caricole detention centre. Arrested at Zaventem airport, these people have been incarcerated for several months while being subjected to lengthy and criminalising procedures. The closed centres are prison institutions whose aim is to remove the people concerned from the country, in other words to force them to return.
Today, while there is talk of genocide, and although the recognition rate is currently 90% for Gazans, the procedures remain abnormally long, and the instructions disproportionate, even when the applicants’ documents attest and prove that they come from Gaza.
To leave Rafah, on the border with Egypt, exorbitant sums are demanded to cross (up to 10,000 euros). Families end up getting separated. They then have to find asylum elsewhere, at the cost of a rough and dangerous journey, before reaching a European country. A Europe that claims, unconvincingly, to defend human rights, but in reality imprisons victims of war.
It is unthinkable that this policy should continue to stigmatise and imprison asylum seekers whose situation is known and should not be questioned. The Dublin procedure is an example of this hypocrisy, of this refusal to take charge under the guise of the responsibilities of the first country of entry.
It is imperative that procedures are simplified, and cases analysed more quickly, as happened in the case of Ukrainians during the Russian invasion. In this case, Directive 2001/55/EC (“on the granting of temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons”) was even activated. Today, Palestinians still have to prove and justify their refugee status. This situation is unacceptable for anyone fleeing their country and facing such a wall of incomprehension. But the situation in Gaza is even more disturbing. The Palestinians imprisoned are demanding adequate means of contacting their families, and immediate release.
In addition to the absolute urgency of putting in place an effective and unconditional protection system for all people arriving from Gaza, we reiterate that every human being should have the right to an international welcome, whatever the reasons for leaving their country of origin.
For freedom of movement and settlement for all, from Gaza and elsewhere!
Based on testimonies collected by the Getting the Voice Out collective from several Palestinian detainees at the Caricole detention centre.
In recent weeks, Palestinians from Jordan, Egypt and Turkey have been arrested on arrival at Zaventem and have since been held in the closed centres around the airport, awaiting deportation. Faced with these arrivals of people fleeing war and genocide, the Belgian authorities can think of nothing better than to cynically apply their usual policy: hunt down, lock them up and deport them.
“A man ran and ran, crossed several internal fences, ran and ran, got to the big door, then was caught and knocked down. It was like something out of a film.”
(31/05/2024) “In 127bis, a man took advantage of a visit to the hospital to escape. He was due to be deported for the third time three days later. Good luck to him!”
-Self-mutilation and attempted suicide (24/05/2024) In 127bis, a detainee tells us:
“Last week, a man in shock because his father had died back home asked for a voluntary return: after 3 days without any response, he cut himself all over his body with a razor blade and was taken to hospital. No news ever since.”
“Systematic dunking. A fit Algerian man dared to open his mouth 3 days ago. Today he can barely walk and talk following an injection…”
“Racist policy, discrimination.”
“Fear reigns. No one dares leave their room yet.”
-Medical care (05/06/2024)
“The doctor is not human. Hippocrates? No respect. The doctor’s profession is noble?”
“A man has been writhing in his stomach for five days: the doctor gives him a syrup.”
“Everyone needs care, and there isn’t any!”
“You should call the Ligue des Droits Humains (Human Rights League)!”
-Isolation
Block 5 contains the dungeons and medical isolation cells.We spoke to two people who have been in medical isolation, one for 18 months, the other for 2 months. They tell us:
“We live in fear.”
“We’re treated like terrorists.”
“Surveillance all the time, in the courtyard, to smoke a cigarette, to eat.”
“When I ask why, they tell me “for my safety”. For me, it’s psychological torture.”
“It’s gratuitous meanness.”
Following a very violent placement in solitary confinement, during which a man was beaten by six guards, inmates who witnessed the scene in the opposite solitary share with us:
“This is the mafia, we’re in another country. I’m really shocked and scared. I’ve been in Belgium for years and I love the Belgians. These are not Belgians. They’re a mafia.”
Bruges detention centre (01/06/2024)
A detainee alerted us to an attempt to forcibly deport to Turkey a man who had been locked up in the Bruges detention centre since December 2023 and had been on hunger strike for over 2 months. Two outside doctors had attested to his very worrying medical and psychological state, and had stated that a flight could endanger his life (“not fit to fly”). Despite this, he was forcibly deported to Istanbul on 1 June. He did not have the strength to resist.
“The three officers were physically brutal towards him. One of them grabbed his left arm, the other his right arm and the third was behind him. All three seized him firmly and immobilised him. They closed his mouth and one officer grabbed his throat to stop him screaming. This happened several times during the flight. The three officers were experts at maintaining calm. He was completely under control. The other passengers didn’t notice and didn’t intervene.”
‘Do you know how much we’re costing you? For nothing!’
The inmates of detention centre 127bis (Steenokkerzeel) have informed us that a general hunger strike has been called for Tuesday 14 May 2024 in the L1 wing of the prison building. The strike was launched in protest at the poor conditions of detention, particularly in relation to the meals distributed in the centre, which the inmates describe as very poor in quality and quantity.
Such complaints about food are extremely frequent. The detention conditions maintained by the authorities, led by the Aliens Office, clearly demonstrate the contempt they have for the detainees. The deplorable state of these conditions concerns the food, but also extends to the entire detention system: access to healthcare is extremely limited, daily autonomy is increasingly restricted, and there are many accounts of latent racism on the part of staff¹, etc.
“We have no rights.”
“No respect from the guards. They provoke us. No humanity.”
“We are afraid of them.”
But this is not the only reason for the strike. A number of inmates are also complaining about being left in the dark about their administrative situation. Detainees have no way of knowing whether they have been sentenced (without any kind of judgement and for purely administrative reasons, let’s not forget) to stay in detention for days, weeks or months. Detainees do not know whether they will eventually be released, in most cases with an Order to Leave the Territory, or whether they will be forcibly deported. This uncertainty is particularly difficult to live with and a source of anxiety.
“Some people ask for voluntary return. And they have no news.”
“Many have children here [in Belgium]. They don’t give a damn.”
Through this hunger strike, the detainees are expressing their more than legitimate anger at the entire system that locks them up. They are calling for their messages to be echoed outside: let’s relay them, let’s talk about them around us, let’s exert pressure in every possible way to support their struggle.
The movement has now ended after several days of protest.
We express our solidarity with all those locked up.
The Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Nicole de Moor, recently declared in the press that ‘Moroccans residing illegally in Belgium may be sent back’¹.
Last April, Nicole de Moor, accompanied by a delegation of Belgian ministers, visited Rabat, Morocco. The visit led to the signing of an agreement between Belgium and Morocco on migration issues. It was not the first, as another agreement had previously been concluded by the Belgian Minister of Justice, Paul Van Tigchelt, concerning people of Moroccan origin subject to the double penalty². Since then, a number of people of Moroccan origin have been arrested in recent weeks and taken to closed centres with a view to their deportation from Belgium.
The Moroccan government is said to have made a very clear commitment to admit all those identified as Moroccan nationals who are currently without a residence permit in Belgium. This commitment would mean simplifying and speeding up expulsion procedures. In addition, with this in mind, a law now authorises officers from the Aliens Office, with judicial powers for this purpose, to access the telephones of people who have committed ‘criminal acts’ in order to obtain identification details such as passport photos. It should be pointed out that the definition of ‘criminal acts’ is very broad and vague. Quite often, it is enough for the people concerned to be suspected of ‘disturbing the peace’ for officers from the Aliens Office to assume judicial powers over them.
Nicole de Moor seems determined to test the Moroccan authorities on these promised returns by rounding up undocumented Moroccans. These people have often lived in Belgium for years, even decades, and some of them were left out of the 2009 regularisation process³. Some arrived in Belgium as minors, and have since started a family here, sometimes with no contact in their country of origin.
Please let everyone concerned know!
Stop deportations: freedom of movement and regularisation for all!
3 In 2009, thanks to strong mobilisation by movements fighting for regularisation, undocumented migrants were able to apply to the Belgian government for regularisation. Around 25,000 people had their papers regularised as a result.
“One staff member in particular creates a climate of terror on a daily basis, followed by other guards. Some inmates are very afraid of this guard and try to avoid him as much as possible by hiding.”
For more than a month, inmates at the 127 bis detention centre have been alerting us about particularly harassing and violent members of staff. We had already alerted the associations working in the centres to this situation.
The following information was reported to us on the 5th of April 2024:
During Ramadan, detainees were allocated to one or other wing of the centre depending on whether or not they were fasting. The R wing was normally the “non-Ramadan wing”, although it did contain some detainees who fasted during the day. These people therefore kept their day’s food in their rooms to eat in the evening. We were told that the guard in question had on several occasions forbidden prisoners to eat at iftar time, and had thrown the food of a detained person the bin right in front of her.
“He chooses his targets and certain inmates are particularly targeted: insults, blackmail, threats, complaints”.
Some inmates no longer dare leave their rooms for fear of running into him. According to his fellow inmates, one prisoner is particularly targeted. We are told that the Ethiopian detainee, who died on the 9th of March1, had also been targeted.
Again, on the 28 of April 2024, various inmates told us that during discussions between inmates, a particular guard, followed by other guards, intervened in a muscular manner, assaulting the detainees involved. They called for reinforcements and 15 security men worked hard to force several inmates into solitary confinement, some of them solely because they were trying to prevent the violent intervention of the guards.
“They tackled a detainee to the ground, other detainees were around shouting not to hit, then security arrived to put some of them in isolation cells.”
“In the isolation cells this notorious guard laughs and plays hard rock music while banging on the table.”
“When we tell him something he laughs in our faces.”
Complaints saga
A letter of complaint addressed to the centre’s management was filed by several detainees against these guards. Some time later, one of the guards approached the signatories and asked them, again violently, why they had signed the complaint. We find it highly problematic that the guard in question had access to the names of the people who had filed the complaint against him.In response, the guards in turn lodged complaints against certain prisoners. This process is common, and can also be observed when complaints are lodged against the police: those in positions of public authority take advantage of the legal arsenal, which inevitably works in their favour, in order to burden their victims and make them feel guilty.
Parliamentary questions 31 January 2024
Parliamentary questions on the situation in the 127bis and Merksplas closed centres were put to Nicole de Moor in the Home Affairs Committee on 31/01/2024. In response, the Secretary of State made the following comments: “With regard to the situation at 127bis, several recent incidents involving members of the centre’s staff have been brought to my attention. These incidents are being investigated. Disciplinary proceedings have been initiated by the Aliens Office and I will ensure that these incidents are not ignored if they are confirmed by the investigation”. We have no way of knowing whether the disciplinary procedure concerns the guard referred to in the detainees’ accounts.
The prisoners tell us:
“How is it possible that such a racist, perverted man works here?”
“Other guards don’t agree with this way of doing things. You can sense that there are underlying conflicts between them.”
“We have to do something. Not for me, but for the others who will follow”.
The laxity shown by the management and the Migration’s Office towards this atrociously violent guard (and his followers) is disturbing but not surprising. Despite recurring reports from detainees denouncing abuses of all kinds over a long period of time, a climate of almost total impunity reigns behind the gates of closed centres.
Mr B. is from Ethiopia and was arrested at Zaventem airport in December 2023. Following his arrest, he lodged an initial asylum application in Belgium, then a second one after he had obtained more information to support his claim. On 9 April 2024, his second application was refused. As a result, an appeal was lodged with the The Aliens Litigation Council (Conseil du Contentieux des Etrangers) (CCE), challenging the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGVS) ‘s decision.
The hearing to deal with the appeal was scheduled to take place (and did take place) on Friday 19 April, at 11am. However, the Immigration Office scheduled a third deportation attempt for the same day at 9.25pm, without waiting for the CCE’s final decision on the appeal.
An e-mail campaign had been launched to the authorities responsible:
“Dear Sir/Madam,
Today we were informed that you intend to forcibly expel Mr Sintayehu Getachew Bekele from Ethiopia to his country of origin today, Friday 19 April.
Yet on that same date, a hearing is scheduled before the Aliens Litigation Council following the appeal he lodged against the decision of the Office of the CGVS. By planning his expulsion on this same date, before a decision by the CCE can be made, you are deliberately taking the decision to send Mr Sintayehu Getachew Bekele back to a country he is fleeing, and in which there is a civil war! In so doing, you are deliberately preventing him from availing himself of the legal remedies to which he is entitled and from possibly benefiting from international protection. You are also challenging the legitimacy of the CCE, which could rule against the CGVS‘s decision to refuse him international protection.
We urge you to respect the time limits of the procedures underway, to allow a competent administrative court to do its work and thus not to trample on Mr Sintayehu Getachew Bekele’s fundamental rights.”
On 22 April, we learned that the The Aliens Litigation Council (CCE) had ruled in favour of Mr B. and overturned the CGRA’s decision. This means that, following this decision, the CGVS is obliged to reopen the application for international protection. However, Mr B. has certainly already been deported. We’ve had no news of him since Friday, and we don’t know how he got back to Ethiopia.
The Immigration Office was informed of the CCE’s decision before the planned expulsion, but nevertheless maintained its decision to forcibly expel Mr B. to Addis Ababa on Friday 19 April. We denounce this deportation, which was carried out without any respect for court rulings and justice.
Let’s get together this Wednesday 10 April (17:30), to oppose the construction of a new closed centre in Jumet, in the Charleroi region.
Neither here nor there: no closed centre in Jumet!
Every year, between 6,000 and 8,500 people are detained in Belgium’s 6 closed centres, simply because they have not received a valid residence permit. The reason for this deprivation of liberty is purely administrative. These are people who have come to Belgium in search of better opportunities, or to escape precarious or violent situations in their countries of origin. They may also be people who have lived in Belgium for years (sometimes decades) and have built their lives here. These people are often exploited, underpaid and forced to live in difficult conditions. They are simply asking for their administrative situation to be regularised, so that they can live and work in Belgium like any other citizen.
Instead of supporting and protecting them, the Belgian state subjects them to inhumane prison conditions: high fences, body searches, restricted visits, disciplinary measures, locked doors, isolation, constant surveillance, etc. Closed centres are prisons in disguise. To be detained there is to have your most fundamental rights taken away from you. Detention takes place without any transparency, in remote areas out of sight. This repressive and organised migration policy is supported by the Belgian government. Building new centres, increasing deportations, extending administrative detention, reducing the number of reception places in open centres… For decades, the government has been fuelling a climate of fear and discrimination against people without papers.
In 2022, the federal government approved the Closed Centres Masterplan, which means that a total of three new closed centres and one departure centre could be built in Belgium. One of the new centres for illegal residents would be in Jumet. Previously rejected by the local authorities of Charleroi (PS), this project finally received their support and will be defended by Paul Magnette. Planning permission for the project in Jumet was submitted this year, and the necessary steps have already been taken. The estimated completion date is 2028.
Together, let’s show our disagreement: no closed centre should be built in Jumet, either here or anywhere else!
For a world without borders and without prisons!
When will it happen? Wednesday 10 April, at 17:30
Where: Rue Dr. Pircard (Jumet)
Rally co-organised by CIEP-MOC, FGTB-Cenforsoc, CSC, Vie Féminine, JOC, Charleroi Solidarité-Migrants
Testimony of a violent expulsion by military flight (cargo)
[TW police violence]
Over the last few months, we have been in regular contact with a person of Djiboutian nationality who was detained at the Caricole detention centre for almost four and a half months. She had applied for asylum in Belgium. As is often the case, her fears about returning to her country of origin were deemed unfounded by the General Commissariat for Refugees and Stateless Persons. She had already been the victim of police violence during a first deportation attempt, which led to a strong movement of support from the other detainees. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/a-rare-collective-protest-at-the-caricole-detention-centre-after-police-violence/
She was recently deported by surprise and tells us:
“The Belgian police aren’t human, not at all. It was 9 o’clock in the morning, I was in Caricole and asleep. Security came and told me that the social worker wanted to see me. I went and he told me that I had a direct flight. I was scared, so I told him I was going to court on Monday. He said, “No, it’s now.”
I wanted to pack my bags, but I was told I couldn’t, that security was going to bring me all my stuff. I don’t know if I got all my clothes back. I asked them to call my lawyer. They told me they’d tried but he hadn’t picked up. I asked for my phone and was told: “Not now, I’ll give it to you later”.
At 10:45 I was on my way to the airport. At the airport, the police said that the flight was finally at 6pm and they took me back to the centre. I asked to go to my room and have my phone. I was told: “No, you have to go to the solitary cell”. I refused and the director was called. She confirmed that I had to stay in isolation. I’m doing Ramadan and I hadn’t been able to eat in the morning. I wasn’t given anything until 3.45pm, not even water.
I went back to the airport and was put in a police cell. The police said to me: “Now you’re going to leave for your country”. I said, “No, I can’t, I’m going to court on Monday”. They said, “No, it’s over”. They called the doctor and the nurse who checked my blood pressure and they said it was stable. I stayed there until 5.45pm.
Then eight or ten policemen arrived, one woman and the rest men. They grabbed me, handcuffed my hands and feet behind my back. My back exploded. I was screaming and they were hitting me. They put a belt on me. They took me to a lorry and threw me in, grabbing me by the belt. The handcuffs were very tight. One policeman put his foot on my head to stop me moving. The other three kicked me in the back. They took me to a cargo plane. There were no passengers. There were two policemen, Ethiopians I think, who hit me and slapped me. It was like that all the way to Addis Ababa. There they took the handcuffs off me. I asked not to be taken to Djibouti airport because of the immigration police. They let me go to Addis Ababa.
I’m still in a lot of pain because of all this. I’m taking medication but I haven’t been able to go to hospital because the police mustn’t know where I am. I’m in danger. I don’t make direct calls to my family for fear of being tapped. I can’t go out, I can’t go into town. If the police see me, I’ll go to prison. I don’t know what will happen to my life. I have to live in hiding. I have to stay hidden forever. My life is turned upside down.”
Inmates in a wing of Bruges detention centre warn us
22/03/2024
Detainees at the Bruges closed centre have informed us that one of their detainees was recently placed in medical isolation because he tested positive for tuberculosis.
The person had been ill for a long time and was transferred to hospital for examination a few weeks ago. The detainees told us that a tumour had been found in his lung on an X-ray. So the management should have suspected the presence of this infectious disease.
No precautions were taken after the X-ray. The person returned to the group, ate, slept and lived close to his fellow inmates and no appropriate care was provided.
Finally, the detainee was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the guards came to get him with masks to put him in medical isolation.
The detainees are very worried. They are very afraid that they were infected and all want an X-ray.
They complain of the total lack of medical care. When they ask to see a doctor, they are systematically told “he is not here”. When they asked the nurses for help, some of them replied “I don’t understand French”.
Detainees tell us:
“They leave people sick until they die? “
“They lock us up. They don’t kill us, but they let us die slowly. “
The inmates of the 127bis detention centre (in Steenokkerzeel, close to Zaventem airport) have informed us that a man in his thirties, Mr A., took his own life on Saturday 9 March 2024.
The man was of Ethiopian origin and had been in Belgium for 12 years. He had been locked up in the centre for around ten days. According to his fellow inmates, he wanted to return to his country of origin, and went to the police to request a voluntary return to Ethiopia. He was arrested at the police station following his request, and locked up in the 127bis centre.
A. was discovered by a fellow inmate at 5am in the toilets. The centre management went round the various wings of the building to confirm that the man had died by hanging, and to ask the inmates to “remain calm out of respect for the deceased”. The inmate who discovered the body has now apparently been transferred to another centre against his will. His fellow inmates describe A. as a man who was “happy and sad at the same time”. They added that, although A. did not seem to have expressed any suicidal thoughts, his mental state was worrying: his fellow inmates confirmed that he was receiving a lot of medication in the centre, and that he did not seem to be in his normal state, and was trembling all the time.
The detainees alerted us, expressing their distrust of the centre’s staff and the climate of repression and daily violence that reigns there. They are calling for the case to be publicised and for an investigation to be opened.
This death sadly echoes the two deaths that occurred last year at the Merksplas closed centre, with the suicide of a man on 25 December last year1 and the death of Tamazi2 a year ago, in February 2023. These suicide attempts and other self-aggressive behaviour are direct consequences of the confinement and detention conditions suffered by undocumented migrants held in the centres. Detention centres plunge detainees into a hostile climate, producing daily violence that must be taken into account in understanding these tragedies.
Our thoughts are with A.’s family and fellow detainees.
Testimony given on 29/02/2024 by a man who has been in the Merksplas detention centre for almost 5 months. His first attempt to be deported was on Friday 01/03/2024 to Dakar, which he refused. Today, 04/03/2024, the office has extended his detention by 2 months.
A. My problem was a family problem. Before, you see, I was a Muslim,but eventually I changed religions. And that was that. The day it happened I got lots of death threats.
E. From your own family?
A. Yes. I was 22 at the time. Now I’m 34.
E. What happened after you wanted to leave?
A. After receiving the threats I ran away from home. And my whole family started looking for me everywhere to kill me. Because, you see, my dad used to be an imam. He was an important imam in the village where we lived. When he heard I’d changed my religion, he had a heart attack and died. Since then my family has been looking for me looking for me until I came here to Belgium.
E. So when did you come to Belgium?
A. I came here in 2015. As soon as I got here I applied for asylum. In the end it didn’t succeed. I got a negative opinion. But since I’ve been here I’ve never done anything stupid. I’ve never had any problems with anyone here. That is, until now. Until the police caught me and took me to the centre. That was in October. The 12th of October. At Merksplas here I did four months, soon five months. On 11 March it will be five months.
Normally, if you don’t have a laissez passer or a ticket, you’re released in five months. That’s what the law says. But yesterday I finally received a ticket. Because they want to make me back to my country. But I can’t. There are things waiting for me there. I left my country because of the problems, because of the death threats, I can’t go back there. It’s better for me to die here. I know that there are waiting for me there, until now. Because I know my family well, they’re they’re not going to let go of anything.
E. So you want to resist deportation?
A. Yes.
E. And what do you mean with regard to the centre and how you’re treated there?
A. There’s a lot of suffering here at the centre. Imagine someone who hasn’t done anything at all and they get locked up here. Personally, I don’t think it’s normal. It’s so complicated. And at the same time I really need help.
E. And how do you feel now?
A. I feel a lot of things. Because of the ticket I received yesterday. Because I know that there are things waiting for me there. As I told you earlier, the threats… I’m in deep shit.
According to reports from the Immigration Office, there were 2,918 forced returns in 2022. By November 2023, the number of forced returns had already risen to 3,097.
For the moment we witness many attempted forced deportations that take place “unexpectedly”. As a result of that surprise, detainees are not always able to inform their lawyer or contact their families before being placed in solitary confinement and subjected to the brutality of forced deportation in a context of physical and psychological violence.
Recently :
– On 21 February, S., a young man aged about 30 with Iraqi nationality, who had been residing in Belgium for more than six years, was forcibly deported to Baghdad. S. had a partner in Belgium and worked there regularly. In September 2023, Belgian police picked him up from his home in the middle of the night. Since then, S. had been locked up in a detention centre and resisted two attempts to deport him. In the days leading up to this latest deportation, S. went on hunger strike to protest against the violence and racism of the guards and police. Two days before the deportation, he consulted a doctor who advised him to eat because he was very weak and sick. On the morning of 21 February, without any prior warning, the police informed S. that he would be deported a few hours later on a flight to Austria. S. tried to resist again. But the escort of four policemen forcibly forced him to board. Today he finds himself in Iraq in a totally insecure situation, in a politically unstable country where he is risking his life.
– On 22 February 2024, Francis underwent his 5th violent deportation attempt to Abidjan via Istanbul. He resisted and passengers intervened in this violence.Finally, he was brought back to the Merksplas centre and again assaulted by federal police.Francis has been held in several detention centres for 14 months.
– Three people from Sri Lanka were forcibly returned to Sierra Leone, the country they had travelled through.When they stepped off the plane, they were left to their own devices and were not welcomed or cared for.They found themselves without resources or support in a country they knew nothing about, and had to overcome many difficulties.One of them contracted malaria and all three struggled daily.
– We heard from a fellow prisoner in Caricole that “they came to get Marwa tonight (02/02) at 9pm”. Marwa was thus forcibly and unexpectedly deported on 3 February via Rome to Tunisia after a year’s detention at the Holsbeek detention centre.The Belgian authorities forcibly repatriated her to a country she had fled to escape a forced marriage!
– Testimony from the son of a Cuban woman detained in Holsbeek and deported on Sunday 25 February:
“My mother went through a lot, she had been staying in Belgium for 4 and a half months, where she experienced several situations, the first was that the lawyer did what he wanted, and he only asked her for money because he knew she would eventually be forcibly deported and he would earn his money.
She was deported without investigating whether her life was in danger.They are very racist and do not want immigrants there, and all they tell her in court is that she has no evidence.
The immigration officials took a long time to get her off the plane, then they interrogated her in a closed room and she was terrified. She was put under a lot of pressure.”
In a wing of the 127 bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel, in reaction to their detention and the inhumane conditions in which they are being held, some people are trying to form a union. To counter this mobilisation and protest movement, they were subjected to repression and censorship. It is therefore particularly difficult to get in touch with them.
However, they did manage to let us know that, as a result, 35 people started a hunger strike on 10 February. They asked to meet the Immigration Office in person and demanded freedom for all! On 13/02/2024, in a second wing of the 127bis detention centre, 28 men also started a hunger strike, in protest against their detention and in solidarity with the others.
At first, the employees didn’t seem to care about their demands or their state of health: “Security doesn’t give a damn and looks at us like animals”.
On 19/02/24, numbers of detainees were still on hunger strike. Faced with the absence of any reaction or consideration for what they were going through, they tried other means of making demands. In response to these revolts, and out of fear of the extent of the protests, 127 bis called in the police. Some people were deported and many others were put in solitary confinement and then transferred to other closed centres. These people are still in isolation. What freedom of expression and demonstration is left for these people whose rights are constantly being trampled underfoot?
They testify:
“We have the right to nothing
“Help us, we’re going to die. This is torture, madam”.
“There are people who have papers, who pay taxes, who have nothing to do here”.
“They bring back 10 [new] people to let go of 5, sometimes they bring back 5 [new] people to let go of 2 or 3”.
“It’s the system at the centre that pushes people to do stupid things outside when they get out, to become criminals”.
– A detained minor at 127 bis
A 16-year-old boy was violently arrested at the Immigration Office and has been held at 127 bis since 7 February. An appeal against his detention has been lodged but does not yet appear to have been successful. As of Saturday 24 February, he is still in detention, thankfully supported by his fellow inmates.
Closed Centre Caricole
– Collective protest action
A detainee at Caricole told us about the physical and verbal violence he suffered during an attempted deportation: The police put him in a dark room and told him “you’re going to go back, we’re going to force you, you’ll see”. They gave him some clothes and about twenty minutes later, 5 police officers came in, handcuffed him, tied his feet and tried to put him in the van. He fell twice on his back. A policeman grabbed his hands and lifted him up. They hit him on the foot, behind the buttock. When he arrived at the airport, the pilot and an airline employee prevented him from boarding. He was hit again, twice on the arms. He couldn’t move.
When contacted by journalists, the Foreign Nationals Office, as is all too often the case, denies the reality of what is being experienced and denounced by detainees!
Testimony of a lady at Caricole
“Having to flee your country for serious reasons and finding yourself in a prison in a country where you have no one, that’s really hard.”
Closed Centre Bruges
At the Bruges detention centre, too, the inmates tell us about their great isolation and the lack of basic care. Recently, they told us that many have contracted scabies and that there is a cruel lack of medical care and follow-up.
A prisoner’s account of life in Bruges : “M. is now called alpha12. Inmates’ first and last names are no longer used. He sleeps in a 20-person dormitory with clothing checks several times a day. The schedule is very strict. Rise at 8am, breakfast, passing the time (“activities” at last), eating, passing the time, eating and curfew at 10.30pm (after a final clothes check). All of this is complemented by 2×30 minutes outside (the inner courtyard of an old building – in itself very pretty – in which several small areas (3?) are surrounded by huge secure fences). Visits: check ++. First remove all unnecessary clothing. Remove shoes. Pass through the security gate. Body search, foot massage (you never know if drugs or other substances are stuck to your feet). For visitors, clothes check after the visit. Possibility of “special room”. Afterwards, a thorough clothing check. The “visitor” has to get naked and flex its knees. “
Closed Centre Merksplas
Received messages:
“I’m giving you my name in case I disappear”.
“I’m counting on you to repatriate my body to my mum in Morocco”.
“A perturbed man undresses completely in the yard. The inmate says to the guard “this gentleman is ill”, and the guard replies “no, he’s just being clever”. Result: solitary confinement.
“If you react to a guard’s derogatory remark, you get a warning. At the third warning, it’s solitary confinement”.
On 19 February 2024, a question was asked to Mayor Paul Magnette (PS) at a local council meeting(1) about plans for a future closed centre in Jumet. This project, which now seems to be supported by Magnette, appeared in 2017 in the “masterplan for closed centres”, launched at the time by former Secretary of State Théo Francken (NVA).
In response to a question from a local councillor, Paul Magnette began by announcing that Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor (CD&V) had informed him that the Régie des bâtiments would shortly be applying for planning permission for a plot of land next to the federal police in Jumet. In his view, there is no contradiction between hosting an open centre and a closed centre. In so doing, he drew a distinction between ‘good and bad migrants’, a strategy borrowed from the right and extreme right. He justifies his remarks by saying that they had obtained in the government agreement that no children would be locked up, which would be ‘great progress’. At the same time, he ignored the campaigns of reformist associations and the many militant and autonomous actions against the confinement of children in closed centres.
In a firm tone, he concludes by saying that the orders to leave the territory must be enforced for illegal residents who have committed criminal acts (he mentions drug trafficking and human trafficking). He added: “These people who are residing illegally on our territory and who are undermining the security of our fellow citizens must be deported to their countries of origin. I have no qualms about this. We must send the criminals back to their countries on the one hand, and welcome here on the other the families fleeing war and dictatorship […]”.
An opportunistic change of position
According to the press(2) in 2019, Charleroi’s municipal college was “firmly opposed to the project” and said it wanted to do “everything in its power to block this project, wanted and imposed by the federal government”. In the meantime, the PS has joined the federal government and the Vivaldi is worth more than the lives of undocumented migrants. Magnette has cowardly reneged on his commitments and, what is worse, he has taken up the language and lies of the far right in a completely unabashed manner.
Populism and racist lies
The belief that people detained in closed centres are criminals is a lie. A very large proportion of them have committed no crime, and yet find themselves detained for the sole reason that they have been refused a residence permit by a State that is increasingly reducing the possibilities of living with dignity and legally in Belgium.
For those who have actually been convicted, Magnette’s words are no better than those of the self-assumed right. Such comments, and more broadly these convictions, prevent us from understanding these criminal acts as consequences of precariousness, which is itself induced by forced illegal residence. These statements and the resulting decisions not only make invisible all the discrimination faced by undocumented migrants throughout the criminal justice system (from police racial profiling to racism in court), but also reinforce it. Lastly, Magnette’s words and actions are helping to harden the phenomenon of double (3), which has been logically denounced by many organisations.
No to the planning permission that will be requested by the Régie des bâtiments.
No to the criminalisation of undocumented migrants.
No to the racist logic of sorting between asylum seekers who would be “acceptable”, and undocumented migrants designated as “undesirable”.
Detainees at the Caricole detention centre contacted Getting the Voice Out to report the situation of one of their fellow inmates.
“In the course of last week, a detainee was assaulted during an attempted deportation. She had applied for international protection in Belgium. After an initial negative response, she wanted to appeal. Her lawyer told her that he “didn’t have time”, even though the deadline for lodging an appeal had already passed. The Immigration Office then organised an attempt to deport her to her country of origin. She returned to the centre after this attempt with her shoes full of holes and a broken hand… We called the centre staff to account. We were told that it was the beaten person who had threatened the police. How can a person handcuffed at the hands and feet threaten the police officers?
These events led the detainees to launch a protest movement. They are denouncing and demanding change on the following points:
– Multiple acts of violence perpetrated by the police escorts during evictions
“We don’t agree with the way people are beaten up. There are many accounts of violence. A Cuban woman recently told us that she had been hit, threatened and knocked unconscious. She woke up mid-flight. We don’t agree with the way deportations are carried out, human rights are not respected”.
– Problems with legal support in closed centres
“When people arrive at the centre, they are given a lawyer. The lawyers say they don’t have time to lodge appeals and thus refuse to do so. The lawyers are simply there to complete a formality. One person who recently arrived at the centre was told that she didn’t have the right to a lawyer. I had to call lawyers myself.
– The right to health denied
“A lot of people are ill here, and the detention is only making the situation worse. Other people were in good health when they arrived and are now ill. We’re given pills and they refuse to tell us the name. When I ask, I’m told that it’s not important, that it’s not a medicine and that it will help me sleep. There are only nursing staff in the centre. We ask for doctors but we never see any. Many people are traumatised and that has consequences for their health. We eat bread from morning to night, how do you expect us to be in good health?
“After all of that, it’s just too much”.
Outraged by police violence and the treatment they receive, the detainees have decided not to go to the refectory this Tuesday 13 February 2024.
“We won’t be eating all day, we won’t have access to the internet, we won’t be using the games room or the gym. There will be no activities all day. We’re all going to gather in a room so that we can stand together and applaud our fellow inmate”.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Getting the Voice Out is a reminder of the systemic and systematic nature of the physical and psychological violence used during arrests, detention and deportation. Many people are killed or injured.
People gathered in front of the Immigration Office on 19 January 2024 to denounce the recent deaths of people who were detained in closed centres, to denounce the conditions of detention and the physical and psychological violence to which these people are subjected on a daily basis and which lead to these deaths, and lastly, to call for regularisation!
In response to the claims and testimonies, the Immigration Office denies the allegations, stating in particular that “each place provides all the medical and psychological support necessary to ensure that the return is as comfortable as possible”.
However, the detainees testify to the lack of care provided, the threats and torture they have suffered and the trauma this has caused:
“We’re being taken for idiots; yet we know how to talk, we know how to make sense of things, we can have a dialogue, we can negotiate, but all we get are threats of forced return if we dare to talk to the media, if we phone you, or if we ask for a shrink or a doctor. We can’t defend ourselves, we don’t have any rights; and many are very afraid of reprisals if they say anything or if they phone you.”
“There’s no one to talk to, no one explains anything to us”.
“People don’t know what’s going on here, it’s worse than racism, it’s hidden slavery, we can’t defend ourselves, all our rights have been taken away”.
“We are all traumatised by these threats and genuine torture”.
it’s terrible to lock people up and mistreat them because they’re “undocumented””.
“It’s enough to drive you mad in the face of this injustice”.
The detainees at 127 bis also told us that a suicide had taken place at the center on 07/01/2024. To this day, management denies this death. Some detainees at this centre told us the following:
“they are trying to hide it from us
“enough is enough, this is the second time in 15 days”.
“we won’t let it be”.
“I am not surprised, we are treated like animals, I understand how it could have come to this”.
The Immigration Office attributes the psychological state of people detained in closed centres to the fact that “they are often at the end of the procedure and in the process of being repatriated to their country of origin”, and therefore acknowledges neither the violence of the detention nor their responsibility for the trauma that detention as such, but it also causes and perpetuates the behaviour of the employees of these closed centres!
However, there has recently been further evidence of the violence to which these people are subjected:
– At 127 bis, a detainee was severely beaten up by security on 06/01/2024: he had arrived late for his breakfast. He expressed his disagreement. Security isolated him in a room without cameras, beat him up and put him in solitary confinement. After a few days, he was transferred to another centre and placed in isolation. As of 24/01/2024 he is still there.
– At 127 bis, Sunday 14/01/2024 at 10pm: A prisoner asks about the hair clippers. A guard tells him to go and look in another room. He doesn’t find it and asks again. The guards laugh at him. He insisted. “An hour or two later, 10 security told me to go to the office. I refuse and go back to my room (because I know very well that means isolation cell). Suddenly, 20 security guards arrived. About ten prisoners prevented security from taking me.” There was a general fight and 5 prisoners were put in solitary confinement. One of them said that he had received very few beatings, but that others had been badly beaten. He lodged a complaint. The 5 were transferred to various centres.
On January 7, inmates at the 127bis detention center in Steenokkerzeel reported the death by hanging of one of their fellow inmates. The inmates were quickly transferred from one wing of the closed center to another, and the management is refusing to release any further information on the circumstances of the possible tragedy. While this information could not be confirmed, the fact remains that the violence and resulting tension are only increasing.
“They’re trying to hide the truth from us“, say the inmates.
On December 25, a man was found dead in the Merksplas detention center (near Antwerp). At the time, the management and the Aliens Office declared that the man had committed suicide. The man was unwell and had not been listened to by the health services at the closed center. A fellow inmate denounced: “It’s not just a suicide. People are being killed here. This is not normal.
Earlier in 2023, almost 11 months ago, Tamazi Rasoian died in the Merksplas detention centre in unclear circumstances, having been placed in an isolation cell. His family is still fighting for truth and justice.
These deaths and violences are the result of the authorities’ deadly and racist migration policies.
Confinement destroys both the mind and the body. Ever since these prisons came into being, the detainees have constantly denounced the scandalous conditions (lack of hygiene, rotten food, being put in solitary confinement on the slightest pretext, etc.) and the violence perpetrated during arrests, detention and deportation procedures, all with the complicity of our leaders. Some of the treatment (total isolation for months on end, psychological pressure, etc.) is tantamount to torture.
This inhumane state of affairs is the result of choices made by a capitalist and reactionary political class which, on the one hand, bases its finances on the exploitation of undocumented migrants and, on the other hand, hunts them down, locks them up and deports them in order to perpetuate their precarious situation.
When a man dies in a detention centre, the Belgian state and its representatives have blood on their hands.
This intolerable violence will not stop until a genuine policy of mass regularisation has been put in place and all the people locked up have been released.
On Friday 19 January, we are calling for a demonstration starting at Arts-Loi and stopping in front of the immigration office. Let’s get together to shout our indignation and anger at this institution, which cynically orchestrates detention and deportation policies in parallel with an increasingly harsh and arbitrary regularisation policy. We demand that the truth be brought to light about the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these detainees and of all those who have died in closed centres in the past.
For several weeks now, detainees in Bruges have rarely received a SIM card, and received no telephone. Around twenty inmates in several wings of the centre with which we are in contact are said to be in this situation. After insisting with management, many have finally received a SIM card but still no phone. Some inmates are forced to share a single phone and a single SIM card. Those who have obtained a SIM card have to put it in their cellmates’ phones from time to time in order to be able to make calls. The staff tells them that their stock of phones has run out.
“We’re fighting to get access to the phone. It’s really difficult. I’ve been to several centres, but I’ve never seen anything like that! It’s a shame.”
Telephones and SIM cards are essential for people in detention, as the phone is the only means of contact with the outside world. The centre is legally obliged to provide them with a SIM card. However, prisoners have to buy their own phones. Getting the Voice Out sent five phones to one of the wings to help them out; they have received them and will be sharing them.
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Crackdown at Merksplas detention centre
A prisoner locked up in Merksplas told us about the completely disproportionate reaction of the centre’s staff when he simply asked for an extra portion of rice during his meal. As a result, he ended up in solitary confinement.
“They put people in solitary confinement for rice. They put people in solitary confinement for asking for medical assistance. It’s the middle of winter, there’s no heating in the rooms. What’s that? It has to be made public, people have to know. We’re here, speechless. We’re being mistreated like cattle in the middle of Europe. You [Europeans] travel everywhere saying “human rights, human rights”. Where are the human rights? Brussels decides to kill people. Everyone needs to know what’s going on here.”
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Collective deportation to Guinea cancelled thanks to mobilisation
A collective flight to Guinea was scheduled for Tuesday 19 December. To oppose the expulsion, members of the Guinean diaspora and their supporters mobilised and demonstrated in front of the Guinean Embassy to put pressure on the Embassy not to issue the entry passes, so that the expulsion could not take place. At the rally, after discussions with members of the Embassy, we learned that the passes had initially been requested directly in Guinea. Eventually, the Embassy announced that it was going to proceed with an analysis of each specific situation, and that the collective expulsion could therefore not take place on the planned date.
Following the media coverage of this situation, the Guinean Minister of Foreign Affairs, Morissanda Kouyaté, who had previously stated that he would no longer accept “the uncontrolled repatriation of its nationals”, reacted by stating that “faced with the specific case of a charter flight preparing to send Guineans from Belgium back to Guinea, I have activated the crisis unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”.
We are firmly opposed to the idea of a case-by-case analysis, and therefore to the idea that anyone could be forcibly repatriated. The collective expulsion planned for 19 December was successfully avoided, but the mobilisation continues!
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Recap of the demonstration against detention centres
Following a call from several groups, 150 people travelled to Steenokkerzeel on Saturday 9 December 2023 to demonstrate in front of the two detention centres in the Brussels area, 127bis and Caricole. The demonstration was an opportunity to condemn the confinement, deportation and criminalisation of undocumented people, and to show solidarity with those in detention by reaffirming their right to freedom of movement and settlement. Arriving in front of centre 127bis, the demonstrators saw that the detainees had been moved to other wings, out of sight and out of touch. A few hundred metres away, in front of the Caricole centre, the demonstrators managed to make contact with the detainees from the windows of the building.
“In any case, to see that all these people had come together to support us, to see that we’re not all alone and that people are thinking about us, that warms our hearts.”
This mobilisation was an opportunity to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the law on the detention of undocumented migrants (law of 9 May 1993), as well as the 25th anniversary of the death of Semira Adamu by police officers during a deportation, and the 5th anniversary of the murder of two-year-old Mawda, who was killed by police during a chase at the border. 2023 is also the year of Tamazi Rasoian’s death, which took place in unclear circumstances at the Merksplas detention centre in February. A fund is still being set up to provide financial support to the family in their fight for truth and justice.
A man that has been detained in a detention centre for over a year has been hold in total isolation for 10 months. He never sees anyone except NGOs, which have visiting rights. His physical and mental state is deteriorating by the day. This amounts to real torture. “It’s like Guantánamo”, he tells us.
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Second death in 2023 at Merksplas detention centre
On 25 December 2023, a man in his forties was found dead in an isolation cell at the Merksplas detention centre. A first inmate informed us that the person concerned was in block 3 and that he was then placed in isolation because he was seeking medical treatment. According to another inmate, his request for medical attention followed a beating by the police. Another source told us that he was subject to the Dublin regulation and was therefore due to be deported to Germany this week. Clearly, according to his fellow detainees, this tragedy is “the result of the poor conditions” and inhumane treatment they receive. The following day, on December the 26th, at around 10am, the management announced to the inmates that this man had died, having committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt.
On 26 December, some of his closest fellow inmates went on hunger strike for a day, marked by grief. But, as is always the case when detainees put up resistance, regardless of the tragic circumstances that led them to do so, they were threatened with repression by the staff.
Our thoughts are with the victim, and our solidarity with his fellow inmates and his family.
Full article: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/second-death-of-2023-at-the-detention-centre-of-merksplas/
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Reports of police brutality at Zaventem and Charleroi airports
We regularly receive reports of police violence during attempted forced evictions.
“I was stripped naked and strip-searched, handcuffed and heavily belted. I was carried onto the plane. […] Then they pushed me with my head down between my knees and took me by the hair by two cops… I kept shouting. That went on for 15 minutes. I was suffocating. Then they straightened me up for 1 minute, then upside down again. I thought I was going to die […]”.
“As I sat there, I shouted for help in French and then in English. They pressed my head down as hard as they could, then released me just as I was starting to lose consciousness”.
We denounce these shameful and unspeakable acts perpetrated by public officials, who are paid for their racist and sickly behaviour towards people in extremely vulnerable situations. And they do so out of sight, without any monitoring.
Full article: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/testimonies-of-police-violence-at-zaventem-and-charleroi-airports/
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Again and again, people in prison express their anger and indignation at the violence of the prison environment and the injustice of their situation:
“We’re not treated well. It’s really difficult. We have to do something. Where are human rights? Everyone waits their turn.”
– An inmate at the Bruges detention centre
“Because we don’t fit into the system, we’re kidnapped, locked up and thrown out like rubbish. It’s simply racism. I left my country when I was 15, brought there by some friends after my father died. I was dragged all over Europe. I have to go to my country’s embassy to identify myself, but there’s no trace of me in my country. What are they going to do? Why are they keeping us? Because we’re black? We’re trash to them. Let me live my life. I can live without being part of the system. That’s my right.”
– An inmate in a detention centre
We reiterate our unconditional solidarity with all those locked up and their loved ones.
On 25 December 2023, around 6 p.m., inmates told us that ambulances, fire brigade and police had arrived at the Merksplas detention centre, in block 5, where the solitary confinment and isolation cells for “people with special medical needs” are located. Very quickly in the evening, rumours spread of a death in block 5. This was later confirmed by the directorate. The person found dead was due to be deported to Germany this week.
Threatened with deportation to Germany, a man allegedly commits suicide in his isolation cell
A first inmate informed us that the person concerned was in block 3 and that he was then placed in isolation because he was seeking treatment. “As soon as you ask for treatment, you are isolated in the medical wing of block 5, or sometimes put in a real solitary confinment cell”, prisoners told us.
This North African man had been detained for around three weeks in the detention centre and was in his forties. According to another detainee, his request for medical treatment followed a beating by the police. Another source told us that he was subject to Dublin regulations and was therefore due to be deported to Germany this week. Clearly, according to his fellow inmates, this tragedy is “the result of the poor conditions” and inhumane treatment they receive daily.
Another source tells us that the man who died was in a common room with other inmates and that he asked to be taken back to his cell at around 5:15 p.m. Shortly before 6 p.m., he was found dead by a guard who had come to collect him to take part in the Christmas meal.
The following day, on the 26th of December around 10 a.m., the directorate announced to the inmates that the man had died, having committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt.
Throughout the day of 26 December, several inmates told us of their doubts about the suicide. They told us they knew the cell and that, according to them, it was impossible to hang oneself there: “there is a small window in the cell with bars, but they are very high and out of reach“.
The prisoners asked for an investigation. They know that several months ago, another inmate died in medical isolation. And while the Immigration Office had described this death as a “natural death”, investigations by journalists cast doubt on this version. An investigation is still underway1.
On 26 December, some of his closest fellow inmates went on hunger strike for a day, marked by grief. But, as it is always the case when prisoners put up resistance, regardless of the tragic circumstances that led them to do so, they were threatened with repression by the staff.
Deaths and suicides as a result of detention in detention centres and the threat of deportation
Prisoners in distress are regularly subjected to self-harming behaviour, such as self-mutilation or even suicide attempts, as a result of their confinement and the conditions of detention to which they are subjected. These people find themselves locked up, in “administrative detention” with no trial or end date, because their papers are “no longer in order” and they risk deportation to their so-called “country of origin” or supposed country of origin. Often, however, they have built their lives here and are unable or unwilling to return to these countries, where they may no longer have any ties or, in some cases, where their lives are in danger. One of them asks: “Because we are without papers, does that mean we have to die here?“.
It is indeed these detentions in detention centres, in extremely precarious conditions, violent by nature and governed by repressive dynamics, that lead to despair and acts of violence, including this one, which is unfortunately not the first2.
Detention centres are nothing more than prisons, the aim of which is to break down the resistance of individuals to deportation by inflicting inhuman treatment, both psychological and physical, throughout their detention, with violence that can be taken to extremes at the very moment of deportation.
Our thoughts are with the victim, and our solidarity goes out to his fellow detainees and their families.
Getting the Voice Out
CRACPE – Collectif de Résistance Aux Centres Pour Étrangers
We regularly receive testimonies of police violence during forced deportation attempts. Here are some testimonies we received in recent months:
“6 officers: I was stripped naked and completely searched, I was handcuffed and given a large belt. I was carried into the plane. The agents told the passengers that I was a prisoner. I shouted that I was not a prisoner, that I had never done anything wrong. Then they pushed me with my head between my knees and 2 officers grabbed me by my hair…. I kept screaming. This went on for 15 minutes. I was choking. Then they sat me upright for 1 minute and then upside down again. I thought I was dying. The flight attendants intervened and asked the officers to get me out of the plane. Back to the police station. They suggested I see a doctor. I refused. I was taken back to the van and transferred to another detention centre. “
Testimony from a fellow prisoner about the deportation of a young man: “There were nine of them at the airport to deport him to his country Dublin. He refused. Nine policemen beat him up and then he was taken back to the centre. His whole face is swollen and he is in pain everywhere.”
Testimony of a detainee who has been in a detention centre for 11 months and has already had 3 forced deportation attempts: “After 11 months in a detention centre, they are going to try to deport me again. It’s very tough: solitary confinement in the centre, solitary confinement at the airport, tied up. Then boarding by force, fighting to warn passengers, being taken off the plane, again in solitary confinement and being insulted. Then back to a centre, again in solitary confinement: it’s too tough. Sometimes I think about quitting. I don’t want and can’t go back to my country. My life is here.
Other recently published testimonies: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/sidelined-by-the-centres-guards-in-order-to-deport-him-by-surprise-he-resisted-the-violence-of-the-police-and-his-deportation/ At the back of the plane, he was surrounded by six plainclothes officers who abused him and prevented him from breathing. One of them stood in front of him to hide from the passengers the violence his colleagues were inflicting on his body. “When I sat down, I shouted for help in French and then in English. They pressed as hard as they could on my head and then released me just as I started to lose consciousness,” testified S. A shocked passenger witnessed the scene and stood up to question the policemen: “Are you policemen or criminals? A policeman replied, “It’s none of your business, it’s the law! “What law? Can’t you see this man is dying!” replied the passenger. The pilot intervened and the stewardess asked the police to stop and take S off the plane, expressing her anger: “The man is turning white, he is changing colour. The pilot wants him off the plane! When he got off, he could no longer walk. Once back at the airport, he was put in a cell in his boxer shorts for two hours and then transferred to another detention centre. He was transferred to Merksplas town centre after facing a final threat from one of the attacking policemen: “you can wait for me next time”. After the deportation attempt, S contacted the Algerian consulate in Brussels, which told him that it had never given him a laisser-passer.
We strongly condemn these shameful and unspeakable acts by public officials, who are paid to exercise their racist and pathological behaviour against people in extremely vulnerable situations. Out of sight, out of mind. If this uninhibited behaviour takes place, it is because it suits the hierarchy and the authorities on whom these torturers depend and who like to turn a blind eye.We denounce this institutional racism and demand an end to these torture practices, with immediate and irreversible sanctions.
The collective Getting the Voice Out condemns the arrestation and the
previous attempt of deportation of a underage Afghan asylum seeker(who according to the Belgian Migration Office is of age. However the Office made this conclusion based on a research on the bones of the boy. This specific type of research has been criticized before by professionals in the health sector). This boy asked for international protection in Belgium. But since his fingerprints were taken in Bulgaria, the Belgian Migration Office decided to appeal to the Dublin-regulation. As a consequence he got arrested during an appointment with the Belgian Migration Office and was brought to the closed asvlum center at Merksplas.
Previously there was already an attempt to deport him. During the first attempt severe physical violence was used. The second attempt to deport him to Bulgaria is planned for tomorrow: Tuesday the 12th of December. We wholeheartedly condemn this. Bulgaria is a country that was already several times convicted for their inhumane asylum policy by international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch.
Currently A. is locked away in the closed asylum center of Merksplas and he was a victim of severe physical violence during a first attempt to deport him on the 22th of November of this year (2023). At 6 am he was brought to the airport. Both his hand and feet were tied up. He has made it clear that he, by no means, wants to be deported to Bulgaria, since this country treats migrants very poorly. He got beaten by the cop who accompanied him to the airport. More specifically he got beaten on the left side of his body and in his private parts. The boy shared the following on this: “A cop stood on my feet with his heavy boots. Due to a technical issue the plane could not take off in the end and I was transported back to Merksplas. I am still really in shock because of what happened.”
In line with Article 3 of the Dublin-agreement, Belgium did not deport people anymore to Bulgaria. This because of Bulgaria’s inhumane asylum policy.
Although the asylum policy of Bulgaria did not change since then, Belgium started to deport people to Bulgaria again. This since a couple of months. The Belgian Migration Office appeals to the Dublin-agreement to justify this. Meanwhile the inhumane asylum policy, which includes lack of places in official asylum centers and access to a lawyer, police violence and push backs, continues to exist to this
day.
In September 2023 the OSAR(Swiss organizations for refugees) declared that deporting people to Bulgaria results in extreme poverty for these people. OSAR qualifies deportations to Bulgaria as illegitimate and condemns because of this reason every deportation/return/ transportation to Bulgaria.
There is no discussion about the fact that Belgium should treat the demand for international protection of this boy and that he in no way can be send back to Bulgaria, a country where his life would be in danger, similar to Afghanistan.
This year, 2023, marks the 30th anniversary of the law on detention centres, prisons that deprive migrants of their freedom, where they are reduced to mere numbers and their basic humanity is ignored.
Semira, killed 25 years ago during a deportation attempt Mawda, killed 5 years ago during a border chase Tamazi, who died in a detention centre in February 2023.
Each disappearance is a painful reminder of the injustice and inhumanity that continue to prevail due to the brutal and racist policies of the Belgian federal state.
On 9 December, let us come together against the fact that people are criminalised and treated unworthily. Let us reject the idea of incarceration and detention based on origin or migration status; the outcome of a deadly migration policy perpetuated by neo-colonial institutions. Let us categorically reject the existence of detention centres that condemn us to live in a world where lives are sacrificed on the altar of racism and xenophobia.
On 9 December, our presence will be a cry of outrage, demanding : – closure of detention centres for foreigners, – freedom of movement and settlement for all, – an end to inhumane deportations, – an end to all forms of detention.On 9 December, let us make our voices heard and our solidarity with people in detention.
Seven young men from Burundi national youth handball team are detained in a detention centre
In August 2023, the Burundi national youth handball team travelled to Croatia to participate in the Men’s Youth World Handball Championship 2023.
During this event, some of the players fled to Belgium and applied for international protection, fearing for their return to Burundi because of a “general human rights crisis” there (2 and 3). They are now in detention centre.
Upon arrival in Belgium, many of them were subjected to a medical test because the Immigration Department had doubts about their minority status. This medical examination included 3 bone scans (teeth, collarbone and wrist) to estimate their age (4). Many of them were considered to be above 18, consequently falling under the Dublin Regulation. Belgium argues that they should be returned to Croatia, as they should be responsible for processing the players’ request for international protection under the Dublin Regulation.
On Tuesday 7 November 2023, the players were all summoned to the Immigration Department as part of their Dublin procedure. This turned out to be a trap: the police were waiting for them. They arrestedseven of the players, and took them to detention centres before their deportation to Croatia, where the bad treatments of migrants are numerous and regularly criticised.
This is not the first time the Belgian Immigration Department has organised deportations to Croatia. On 16 March 2023, a collective flight was already organised to Croatia with dozens of people, including 20 Burundians who were never heard from again (6).
By sending these people back to Croatia, the Belgian state has no guarantee that their asylum applications will be adequately processed given the numerous systemic problems in the Croatian asylum system. These young people have been identified and their case has caused a stir in Burundi.
It cannot be ruled out that the authorities in Croatia will do everything in their power to send them back to Burundi.
It is essential that Belgium declares itself competent to deal with their application and that the Burundese players are not sent back to Croatia where their lives are in danger, as in Burundi (7).
(7)Until September 2023, the CGRS made 924 decisions regarding persons of Burundian nationality and granted status to 758 persons, which is more than 80%.
The notion of “double punishment”, also known as “banishment”, refers to the process undergone by foreign nationals sentenced to a prison term who, at the end of their sentence, are then transferred directly to a closed centre in order to be repatriated to their country of origin. These are not just a few isolated cases, since the double sentence affects a very large proportion of people held in closed centres. The over-representation of foreign nationals and undocumented migrants in prisons is mainly due to the treatment they receive from a racist police force that acts on the basis of race, and to the precarious living conditions in which the authorities keep them, forcing them to expose themselves to repression.
We report here on the case of a prisoner who found himself locked up in a closed centre seven times following prison sentences. As his fingerprints were registered in the Netherlands, he was sent back to that country each time under the Dublin Regulation¹. He is the father of 4 children in Belgium.
Talking about his experience, he tells us:
“You get used to the system. I go from prison to a closed centre, then from time to time a bit of freedom”.
¹The Dublin Regulation determines the country responsible for a person’s asylum application at European level by applying a whole series of criteria. The criterion most regularly applied is the country where the person first entered the European Union. The authorities determine this country on the basis of the fingerprints that people have been forced to lodge.https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/double-peine-ou-bannissement-methode-particuliere-de-racisme/
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POLICE EXTORTION & REPRESSION
Police intimidation on undocumented migrants is commonplace. Just recently, a man recounted the abuse he suffered during his arrest in Anderlecht: he had 3,000 euros in his pocket. The police took 2,000 euros from him and gave him a receipt. He doesn’t know how to get his money back.
Another testimony highlights the lack of protection for undocumented migrants, both on the street and in closed centres, which are veritable lawless zones.
Once again, in the case reported below, it is the victims who suffer the brunt of the repression:
“I was beaten up at the detention centre by members of the security staff. I called the police. They came and I filed a complaint. The result for me: 4 days in solitary confinement and a transfer².
To date, he has had no news of the outcome of his complaint.
Such behaviour is perpetrated with impunity and there are very few opportunities for undocumented migrants to assert their rights. The possibility for undocumented migrants to lodge a complaint is complicated by the system and the chances of prosecution are very slim.
² We are talking here about a transfer from one detention centre to another. The Foreign Office very regularly uses this practice as a punishment when detainees object to the treatment they are receiving, which further isolates them and breaks the links with their fellow detainees, reducing the possibility of solidarity and collective resistance.
VOLUNTARY’ RETURN
At the Bruges detention centre, the inmates tell us that the social services put a lot of pressure on them to accept voluntary returns. These are repatriation procedures organised in collaboration with the IOM (International Organisation for Migration), which promises repatriated persons assistance with a reintegration or professional project on the spot. This would involve several destination countries (Morocco, Ivory Coast, Senegal).
The Belgian government frequently collaborates with the IOM on so-called “voluntary” returns. The voluntary nature of the decision to leave Belgium is obviously quite relative when you consider the conditions under which people are forced to take these decisions: harassment by the Foreign Office and its staff, pressure, blackmail, confinement in closed centres for indefinite periods, etc.
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QUESTIONABLE PRACTICES by the FO
Detainees frequently report dubious practices by the Foreign Office (FO), which does not hesitate to use illegal means to implement its unbridled policy of mass detention and deportation of illegal residents. For example, people are sometimes forcibly deported by surprise when they are due to appear in court on the same day or in the following days, in total violation of their right to a fair trial. All this without the FO being bothered.
One man recently received a favourable response to his asylum application, yet he was only released a week later. “The Office doesn’t even respect the courts”, he reports.
TESTIMONIES
Every day, detainees bear witness to the conditions of detention they face, the isolation into which they are plunged, and the flaws and realities of this machine of confinement and deportation:
“Is Dublin an option or an obsession for the FO?
“Is there no association monitoring the FO’s abuses?
“Merksplas is much worse than 127 bis, it’s a prison, at 127 we had a certain freedom of movement. At Merksplas we’re locked in our room from 10pm to 9am. And the guards are disrespectful and super racist”.
“If you weren’t here, I don’t know how we’d cope. When we arrive here, we have no contact with the outside world. No association helps us. Nobody knows where we are. We disappear from the planet. Thanks to your top-ups we can finally phone our families, find a lawyer etc.”.
“Those who receive an OQT: what do they do with it? Where do they go? And nobody helps them.
“We have come to denounce the fact that, at the Bruges centre, (there are) currently a lot of people with serious psychiatric problems, and that this place is not for them. In their department there is only one psychologist who does absolutely nothing, and no control of medical examinations on arrival of detainees, their one and only motivation is to expel them.””
[Relay: call for support – Truth and justice for Tamazi]
A fund has just been launched for the family of Tamazi R., who died in a detention centre in February 2023. The aim of this fundraising campaign is to provide financial support to the family in their fight for truth and justice, but also to combat the invisibility and oblivion of the many deaths caused by the state at its borders and in detention centres. Please spread the word and get involved as much as you can!
“On Sunday 24 September, 200 people gathered at Place Sainte Gudule to remember Semira Adamu, who was murdered by the police 25 years ago as she tried to leave Belgium. The rally also served as a reminder that borders and European migration policies are still killing people today.”
Testimonies received from women locked up in Holsbeek during the meeting
Mr M. underwent his third deportation attempt to Dakar on Saturday 7 October 2023. He has been in Belgium for 8 years and has now been locked up for over 9 months. M. is desperate: he has already started several procedures to obtain regularisation, but each time without success.
During his second deportation attempt in June 2023, he resisted and managed to get off the plane thanks to the support of the passengers. He was then transferred to the 127bis detention centre, where he was still hoping to be released.
During recent weeks, detainees have informed us that some deportations were no longer announced in advance. Some detainees were forcibly taken by surprise to solitary confinement, only to be deported a few hours later. This new deportation procedure was described by fellow detainees as “kidnapping”.
Given this context, M. became very cautious and felt “deep down” that this would happen at any moment.
Indeed, on the evening of Friday 6 October, he was summoned by the centre’s staff and told that they were planning to forcibly evict him the next morning. He refused to go to the place where he had been summoned. In desperation, he swallowed a nail-cutter. The ambulance was called and M. left the centre to the hospital.
On Saturday morning, the doctors gave a positive opinion and deemed M. fit to fly. He was therefore taken directly to Zaventem airport and forcibly put on the plane. Seven police officers accompanied him, tying his hands and feet.
Activists notified by the co-detainees were present at the airport to warn passengers of the flight of this violent expulsion. The passengers stood up before take-off to protest against the deportation. M. took a stand and was finally removed from the plane. He is now back in the centre, this time in Vottem, where he is told he will be placed in isolation without access to a telephone for 48 hours.
We also denounce the actions of the Immigration Office, which made sure that a person was deported to Senegal on Saturday. When M. was taken to hospital, his state of health cast doubt on whether he could be deported. The Office decided to give the seat on the flight to Mr H., who was being held in the Vottem detention centre. H. was therefore placed in solitary confinement and informed of his deportation at the last minute and by surprise. On the advice of the doctors, M. was finally given his seat on the flight. H. was taken back to Vottem.
This new approach to deportations is ever more unacceptable: it takes detainees by surprise and puts a brake on the organisation of activists’ mobilisation at the airport. We denounce all the violence that continues to be committed, and continue to take a stand against all evictions.
No more detention centres! Let’s put an end to borders and their world!
Last Thursday 28 september 2023 at midday, S, aged 52, was tired because of several illnesses (cholesterol, syphilis, high blood pressure, etc.) and the fact that he had been locked up in a detention centre since January. It was then that the guards at 127bis offered him the chance to retire to a room alone to rest, they said. In fact, it was a trap laid in order to deport him imminently. S tells us: “It’s a serious lack of respect, they’ve betrayed me”.
The next day, plain-clothes federal police officers took him by force, handcuffed him and told him they were leaving for Zaventem airport, before telling him on the way that they were taking him to Charleroi airport. S asked to see the flight ticket and the pass from the embassy of Algeria, his country of origin. His only reply was: “It’s none of your business, it’s the law, that’s the way it is!”
At the back of the plane, a total of six plainclothes policemen surrounded him, mistreating him and preventing him from breathing. One of them stood in front of him to hide from the passengers the violence his colleagues were inflicting on his body. “As I sat down, I shouted for help in French and then in English. They pressed my head down as hard as they could, then released me just as I was starting to lose consciousness”, testifies S. Witnessing the scene, a shocked passenger stood up and questioned the police officers: “Are you police officers or criminals? A policeman replied: “It’s none of your business, it’s the law!””What law? Can’t you see that this man is dying!” replied the passenger.
The pilot then intervened and the flight attendant asked the police to stop and get S out of the plane, while expressing her anger: “The man is turning white, he’s changing colour. He’s going to die. The pilot wants him out of the plane!” When he got out, he couldn’t walk. Once back in the airport, he was put in a cell for two hours in his boxer shorts, then transferred to another detention centre. He was moved to the Merksplas centre after having to face a final threat from one of the attacking police officers: “you can wait for me next time”.
After
this attempted deportation, S contacted the Algerian consulate in
Brussels, which told him that it had never given him a laissez-passer.
S’s testimony shows us once again the succession of racist acts of violence suffered by undocumented migrants facing deportation: the violence of the Foreign Office, which decides to detain a man for more than eight months for the sole reason that the State is refusing him a residence permit; the violence of the staff at the detention centre, who are prepared to lie in order to collaborate effectively in a deportation; and the enraged police officers of the Federal Escort Police. Jozef Chovanec was also murdered at Charleroi airport in 2018 by federal police officers.
This testimony also tells us about the repressive and underhand strategies put in place to undermine all forms of legitimate resistance by people fighting for their freedom: lies and traps in the centre, invisibilisation of physical violence on the plane, threats, transfer to another centre, etc.
In support of S, and without forgetting all those detained, we call for his immediate release so that he can join his family (brother, sisters, cousin, etc.) who live in Belgium.
Down with detention centres, borders and their world!
“They came for me. They put handcuffs on my hands and feets, put me in solitary confinement and said I would leave tomorrow.”
“I have been in Belgium for 40 years, I feel Belgian. And Belgium doesn’t want me.”
We receive these messages every day from angry, distressed and desperate co-detainees.Despite the harsh conditions in which they are held every day, their solidarity remains undiminished.
Without any grace, they are sent back to their “country of origin”, a country that some of them had to flee, a country they sometimes left so long ago or never even lived in, a country where they sometimes no longer have any family or friends.
Let us prevent these deportations, let us fight against this murderous migration policy.
“I’ve served my sentence to the end. Why am I being punished a second time? Because I’m a foreigner? That’s discrimination.”
The double penalty is part of the arsenal put in place by the Foreigners’ Office to punish those who have once “disturbed the peace” or committed an offence. This practice enables the Foreigners’ Office to send people who have been living in Belgium for years back to a so-called country of origin. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/double-penalty-or-banishment-a-peculiar-method-of-racism/
During our contacts we hear that the Office practices this double punishment without any limits: men aged 50, 60, residing in Belgium for decades, with Belgian children and sometimes grandchildren are locked up with a view to their expulsion; They are , following offences, considered “a danger to public order” and have been stripped of their residence permit.
Testimonials: “I was in prison for 3 months for a small mistake I made 2 years ago. And they came to get me 2 years later to send me back to my country. I’ve been living in Belgium for 40 years. I’ve got children here who have come of age and have Belgian nationality. What is this bullshit?” UPDATE: Two of these men were forcibly deported on the Frontex collective flight on 12/09/2023. One of them had applied for voluntary return https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/deportation-avec-vol-frontex-vers-la-rdc-ce-11-09-2023/
———————————————————————- URGENT CALL for phone top-ups We receive a huge number of requests for telephone top-ups from people detained in detention centers. Their phones are very often their only contact with the outside world, whether it be family, friends, their lawyer, or to make their situation publicly known.
Whether their arrest takes place on their migratory route, or where they live, whether their family and friends are here or back home, being able to warn and communicate with loved ones is crucial. Many of them would not have the means to do so without your help.You can support these prisoners by buying a 10-euro top-up from Lycamobile at your local grocer, nightshop or bookshop. Then send us the pin code printed on the top-up to our e-mail address gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by SMS to our telephone number 0032(0)484026781. We’ll send the code to any inmates who request it.
Alternatively, if it’s easier for you, you can make a payment or even better, a standing order of 10, 20 euros or more to our dedicated account:
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Triodos Bank BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
Pass this message on to your friends and acquaintances.
12/09/23 Collective deportation by Frontex (European border and coast guard agency) and the Belgian state: This morning we are receiving many calls from detainees from the 127bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel confirming what was announced yesterday: a collective flight coordinated by Frontex and the Belgian government to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Belgian state has set the deportation machine in motion.
Many Congolese are currently being handcuffed, mistreated and put on buses bound for the Melsbroek military airport. There is a large police presence.
Four detainees tell us: “Last night, several of them were ‘summoned’ one by one by the coach . Once in the office, eight security officers grabbed them and forcibly took them in isolation “(…) it was a trap.””I was playing basketball yesterday and men from the security grabbed me just like that, without saying anything.”
At 10 this morning: “There are 40 policemen in fluorescent jackets.”2 big buses and 2 vans and dozens of police cars.”They are all handcuffed 2 by 2 in the courtyard, surrounded by three policemen forcibly pushing them towards the buses.” “Women handcuffed too. Are we doing this to women?” “We need to let the world know how they treat black people.” “There are many others taken from other countries.” “There must be as many as 50 who have been deported.” “It’s frightening. We are treated like slaves from the last century. It’s not human anymore. ” “One man who rebelled was forcibly restrained. He was injured; he was handcuffed, strapped into a straitjacket and thrown into the baggage car where he was in danger of suffocation.”
Let us denounce this deportation by tagging writing, faxing and calling those responsible for these criminal acts.
11/09/2023 We have learnt that several people, including at least one woman, were put in solitary confinement on 11/09 in the closed centre 127 bis for collective deportation to the DRC on 12/09/2023. Departure likely at 10 am from Melsbroek airport. Two other people, also from the DRC, are on their way to Zaventem from Vilnius (Lithuania) to join them.
04/09/2023 : On top of the roundups announced by the state, arrests take place daily throughout Belgium, in stations, on public transport, criminalizing people who are trying to find their way in this migratory chaos.
The social model of regularization through work is not an answer. This simplistic analysis of the events at the Brussels-Midi station does not take into consideration the large number of undocumented people who would be excluded from this model, as well as all the other groups concerned.
We must point the finger at the political representatives who choose to apply racist, prolophobic and violent policies and give total freedom to act to the police forces and related authorities.Meanwhile, the Belgian authorities keep filling up the detention centres and deporting people.By doing so, room is made available to lock up other people.
We remind and insist on the importance of supporting the struggle for regularization for all and the abolition of all forms of confinement.Freedom of movement and establishment for all.
22/08/2023 If you know anyone, collective or non-profit that can help Angel get out of detention center in Sweden and get the international protection, please contact us immediately.
Context : Angel was forced to leave Kenya following a lesbophobic attack that led to the death of her partner. After two refusals of international protection in Sweden, she decides to come to Belgium to seek asylum. But because of the Dublin Regulation, the request is rejected and Angel is transferred from the Dublin Center in Zaventem to the detention center for women in Holsbeek. After a month of detention, Angel can no longer bear the detention conditions and accepts the flight back to Sweden. Unfortunately, she was immediately placed in a detention center on her arrival. It’s been now three months of detention and she is at risk to be deported to Kenya, where her life is in danger.
“My name is Angel. I’m from Kenya. I’m lesbian. Right now, I’m in Sweden.”
“I first seek my first asylum in Sweden and the Swedish Migration [Agency] gave me negative. I tried to explain to them what happened when I was in Kenya. How I was caught with my partner. And then my partner, they injured my partner. They [the Swedish authorities] believe me but they want the evidence to prove that and by that time I could not prove any, because it was COVID time when I came here. And later when the COVID was down, I tried but still I could not find anyone to help me find the evidence because (?) until I found one lawyer who investigates all evidence. He went to that bar where we were beaten with my partner. He asked and he got the [truth]. So when the evidence comes… I tried to appeal with the evidence but they [the Swedish authorities] did not want to continue with my case. After that, I got very disappointed and I was very worried, I could not stay in the country without permit, without working. I have children, before, in my country. I could not help my children. And then I decide to go to Belgium to see if Belgium could help me, to show them my evidence, then they could have also proof in my country. Belgium Migration [Immigration Office] said that they could not help me because I first have fingerprints in Sweden so I just have to come back in Sweden. And then I said “ok” and then they brought me back. Swedish Migration [Agency], they hold me until today. Now it’s three months I’m in the detention center. And here, inside, there is no medicine, there is no doctor and I have complications with health. So it’s like they want to deport me back to my country. And I don’t have anywhere to go. So I don’t know what to do. I’m really, really desperate. I don’t know how I will get help but I’m really desperate and I’m just asking for help. Thank you. “
The Holsbeek detention centre, on the outskirts of Leuven, is the only one of Belgium’s 6 detention centres that only holds women. On 16 August, a 58-year-old woman was found unconscious in her room. It appeared that she had not eaten for several days and that no-one had noticed her. Everyone was shocked to see her in such a state. She was taken to hospital. “We didn’t know whether she was dead or alive”, said the inmates.
This event sparked off strong protests. Around twenty women demonstrated today against their confinement. One of the women who rebelled was put in solitary confinement. The center director, who was in her office, did not even bother to come and listen to their demands. The reasons for their protests:
Appalling living conditions: they were particularly critical of the hygiene conditions and the state of the toilets, which were very dirty…
Inadequate meals: “We get a small portion. If we ask for more, they say no and throw the rest in the bin in front of us”. “It’s a form of torture they inflict on us“. Some inmates also report that the food served is sometimes rotten and that they are regularly sick after meals.
The lack of supervision and care for some very vulnerable women. Some of the inmates are in a catastrophic state of health. One of them has only one kidney and has been locked up for 5 months. One prisoner said that she had lost 15 kilos in 3 months of detention.
Administering inappropriate medication at the wrong times: “I’m very ill and take a lot of medication. But they don’t give it to me at the right times and it sometimes seems that it’s not always the right medicine. Sometimes I feel like I’m on drugs afterwards”.
Administrative detentions. “We are treated like criminals”.
The length of the detentions: some women have been locked up for 5, 8, 10 months, sometimes almost 1 year, waiting to be deported or released. “It’s unbearable to have to wait and wait for decisions to be taken.”
The lack of understanding of release/expulsion decisions and their random nature. “
“HELP US. WE NEED YOUR HELP”
“We are here like animals. But in Belgium, even animals have rights.” The detainees also deplore the fact that it is impossible for them to get out pictorial evidence of all the injustices and ill-treatment they suffer. Their smartphones are confiscated when they arrive at the detention centre. “We talk, we talk, we cry, we shout… But in the end, we’re still in prison.”
Getting the voice out calls the end of all confinement and the freedom of movement for all. However, we feel it is important to make the prisoners’ demands heard as they have told us.
Richard Ngaballa is a gay man from Cameroon who has been held in detention centre 127bis since March 2023. He is threatened with deportation and risks imprisonment and death in Cameroon.
Richard arrived in Belgium in 2016 and has since filed four applications for international protection, all of which have been rejected by the CGRS, and thus by the Belgian government.
Although everyone around Richard knows he is gay, lives with his partner and attends LGBTQIA+ meetings, he has been denied international protection. The CGRS initially declared, without any evidence, that Richard was “doing this” for money. On a subsequent application, the CGRS ruled that there was no danger to Richard in Cameroon. However, a complaint was filed against him in Yaoundé. And numerous reports show that LGBTQIA+ people are at risk in Cameroon today.
It is impossible to prove you are gay, especially if the CGRA assumes you are lying.
Despite an attempt at a legal cohabitation procedure, which failed because it was impossible to get the required celibate certificate in Cameroon; despite a certificate from Richard’s partner and all the information he provided; despite the documented homophobic violence Richard was subjected to in the reception centre; the CGRS stubbornly refuses international protection.
Let us demand the immediate release of Richard Ngaballa!
To support Richard :
– Come to the gathering scheduled on Wednesday 9 August 2023 at 10am in front of the CGRS, rue Ernest Blerot 39, 1070 Anderlecht.Appeal from various collectives
24/07/2023 : A short while ago, we reported on the alarming situation of Richard Ngaballa. Forced to flee Cameroon because of his homosexuality, he was refused for asylum by the Belgian government, which argued a lack of evidence of his sexual orientation. He now faces imminent risk of forced deportation to Cameroon, where he has already suffered torture and abuse. Richard has already faced a first attempt of expulsion on Friday 14 July 2023. The next attempt will certainly be organised with a police escort, and therefore more difficult to resist. Here persrelease 17/07
Although everyone around Richard knows that he is gay, the CGRS (hence, the Belgian government) says it is not convinced. This decision was taken despite the risk of imprisonment and violence in Yaoundé. And yet, a complaint has been lodged against Richard in Yaoundé concerning his homosexuality.
Getting the Voice Out stands against all forms of confinement and against borders. Everyone should have the right to live and move where they choose. Therefore, we do not recognise the legitimacy of the migration and asylum authorities. However, we feel it is important to denounce the absurdity of the decisions taken and the impact they have on the lives of the people concerned.
If you wish to support Richard, you can write to the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) and to the Immigration Office to express your indignation regarding the way he is being treated by the Belgian state.
Action – Call for support:
Sample letter to send:
Dear Director of the Immigration Office, To Whom it may concern.
I am sending you this email to draw your attention to the situation of Richard Ngaballa, who is currently being held at the 127bis detention centre. Mr Ngaballa was forced to flee Cameroon because of persecution linked to his sexual orientation, and has applied for international protection on several occasions. If Mr Ngaballa is deported to Cameroon, he risks death or imprisonment. We believe that Richard Ngaballa must be released as a matter of urgency and granted refugee status in Belgium in order to benefit from the protection to which he is entitled.
We ask you to release Richard Ngaballa as a matter of urgency.
UPDATE : Meneer met gefoceerd uitgezet op 19/07/2023 naar Istamboul.
Siraj Al-Nanal is from Gaza, Palestine. He recently fled the war and violence he suffered in Palestine, and applied for asylum in Belgium. During his interview with the General Commissariat for Refugees and Stateless Persons, Siraj stated that his mother was born in Azerbaijan. Following this simple statement, the CGRA refused to grant him asylum, on the pretext that both he and his mother had Azerbaijani nationality. Siraj provided proof of his Palestinian nationality, as well as documents proving that he was born, lived and grew up in Gaza. In vain: the CGRA maintains its absurd position of refusal. Siraj has already been the subject of a first attempt to expel him from Belgium. He wants to tell his story and receive all the support he can. He has sent us the video below. If you would like to support him, Siraj asks that you write or phone the CGRA, asking them to provide proof of his Azerbaijani nationality, or else acknowledge that he is indeed Palestinian and in need of protection.
While the Belgian press dwelt on the “trouble” caused by the legitimate anger of his shocked fellow inmates, the Foreigners’ Office announced the very next day that it was certainly a “death by natural causes”. The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office confirmed this the following day.
Mediapart’s investigation looks back at the life of this father, who was tortured in Georgian jails before taking refuge in France. The article also raises important questions about the circumstances of his death, even though only an external “analysis” of the body was carried out.
Some fellow inmates speak of forced injections of what may have been antipsychotics, drugs that can cause serious heart problems. Tamazi’s daughter has asked in vain for a list of the drugs he was given.
Photos of the body taken at the morgue also show wounds on one ear, his forehead, his torso and one elbow. His wife testified that he had no wounds the day before when she visited him. She added that at the morgue, “he was swollen. He had blood in his mouth and on his ears, which his hair was hiding”.
The family has lodged a civil action and we hope that their fight will enable the truth to be uncovered and that both individual and political responsibility will be clearly established. Tamazi should never have ended up in this detention centre, like all the other detainees. The efforts of the Foreigners’ Office and the public prosecutor’s office not to find out the cause of Tamazi’s death reflect the racism that underpins migration policy.
A gay man faces deportation to Cameroon , where he is threatened with imprisonment and death
Several
years ago, Richard left Cameroon to escape violence because of his
homosexuality. He has been denied international protection in Belgium,
despite ample evidence of a serious risk of being forcibly deported to his country of origin. He
is currently being held in the 127 bis detention centre. The threat of
imminent deportation is a worrying illustration of the difficulties
faced by gay people seeking asylum, as well as a stiking example of the institutional violence which is perpetrated by the Belgian state.
In 2015, Richard Ngaballa was forced to flee Cameroon following an extremely violent homophobic attack carried out by
his family. At the time, Richard was in a hidden relationship with a
man. One morning, on his way home with his partner, he realised that he
had been ambushed: members of his family were present and confronted him
about his homosexuality, which they had just discovered following
rumours in the neighbourhood. During the attack, Richard and his partner
were both tortured, before managing to flee to a hospital in Yaoundé. They then decided to leave Cameroon, despite both being in critial condition.
Along the way, Richard’s partner’s health deteriorated. In Morocco,
just as the two men were hoping to access free healthcare in Spain,
Richard’s partner died of an infection resulting from the torture they
had endured.
Forced to prove his homosexuality by every means possible, but without success
Richard arrived in Belgium in 2016 to join his aunt who lives there. He made an initial application for international protection (AIP) on the basis of persecution in Cameroon linked to his sexual orientation. Unfortunately, his application was rejected, as the CGRA (Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons) considered that there was insufficient evidence to prove Richard’s homosexuality. In total, Richard made 4 applications for international protection in Belgium, all of which were rejected or declared inadmissible on the grounds of lack of new evidence. The fourth and final AIP was in 2022. Richard then had a new partner, with whom he lived and with whom he had started legal cohabitation proceedings. Unfortunately, it was impossible for Richard to gather all the required documents, such as a certificate of celibacy from Cameroon. Richard compiled all possible documents and also sent intimate videos of a sexual nature, not knowing what to provide as proof after so many years and so many procedures. All responses were negative. The CGRA even told him that “it is forbidden to send pornographic images”.
Testifying as a last resort against imminent deportation Given the unquestionable danger he faces, Richard wants to talk to journalists and publicise his story. In Belgium, the authorities claim to respect and protect the rights of LGBTQIA+ people: what Richard has been experiencing for several years undeniably proves the opposite.
11/07/2023 She wanted to leave her country, Eritrea, to join her children and grandchildren living in Norway. On her way, she gave her fingerprints in Romania. When she arrived in Norway, the government decided to apply the Dublin regulation and detain her in a detention centre before sending her back to Romania.
From Romania, she decided to join some friends in Belgium. Once in Belgium, she applied for international protection and was placed in an open centre.
The ‘Office des Étrangers’ discovered that she was ‘dublined’ and locked her up in the Holsbeek detention centre for women. She was again deported to Romania with a Romanian AND Belgian escort on 27/06/2023!
As a reminder, the Dublin Regulation rules the country responsible for a person’s asylum application at European level, based on a whole series of criteria. The criterion most regularly applied is that of the person’s first country of entry into the European Union. The authorities determine this country on the basis of the fingerprints that people have been forced to leave. Both Norway and Belgium deported this woman to Romania under the Dublin Regulation, a country in which she was merely passing through.
03/07/2023 While on June 18th we reported on the violence suffered by detainees at the Bruges detention centre https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/closed-centre-brugge-appeal/, we have since learned of other unacceptable incidents of mistreatment and violence. Mr M., who has been on hunger and thirst strike for over fourty days, has been subjected to violent and degrading treatment from the moment he arrived at the Bruges detention centre. He told us that he was forced to eat or risk being locked up in solitary confinement: “It was either the solitary confinement or the meal. They locked me up six times, each time I refused to eat”.
He was also allegedly forced to undergo medical treatment, locked up for three consecutive days in isolation until he agreed to have his blood drawn. This is contrary to the medical code of ethics (art. 20).
On his return from a release hearing, he explained that he had been brought back by six police officers, locked up and stripped naked in solitary confinement, and then forced to sign documents under blackmail, threatened with isolation. He was refused appropriate medical treatment because the centre’s doctor deemed him to be “non-collaborative”; facing the incessant blackmail of isolation, Mr M. told us that he no longer trusted any of the centre’s staff, whether nursing or non-therapeutic.
This feeling of mistrust towards healthcare staff has already been reported to us by others, aggravating the lack of adequate and appropriate care in a prison context where access to care and patients’ rights are already compromised.
18/06/2023: Inmates share their concerns for one of their fellow inmates. M. has been on hunger and thirst strike for over fourty days. He currently weighs only around forty kilos and complains of severe kidney pain. M. has been held for ten months in three different detention centers, and has already suffered from three violent deportation attempts. He was released on June 14, 2023 by the Chamber of Council of Charleroi following a request for release submitted by his lawyer. The Belgian state has decided to lodge an appeal against this decision. M. will remain in a closed center and will appear before the Court in two weeks.
Detainees report:
“There are several 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 we’re here doing nothing. It’s torture to watch.”
These facts are part of a general context of violence at the Bruges detention center that the detainees denounce:
“It’s awful here Madam. We don’t get our medication, but we get as many painkillers as we want. The food is in very small quantities. We’re put in solitary confinement for any reason. Some of the men locked up here have even children outside (one of them has six), others have valid papers from another European country. This is not normal, Madam.”
[Press] “Questions remain after a mother separated from her children stays in a detention centre.” “Camilla has spent as many as 40 days in administrative detention, separated from her partner and her two young children. According to organisations following this case, her detention has only one purpose: to force her entire family to leave our country.” Detention, in any form (criminal or administrative), and under any circumstances, destroys lives. Yet Belgium plans to build four new detention centres by 2030.
Le texte complet de l’article : On n’enferme pas un enfant. Point. »
La formule, érigée en rempart contre la détention de familles avec
enfants en vue de faciliter leur expulsion, avait marqué de son emprunte
l’ère de la Suédoise et du secrétaire d’Etat à la Migration, Théo
Francken (N-VA), en finissant par tracer une ligne rouge, d’ailleurs
reprise dans l’accord de gouvernement de la Vivaldi : « Des mineurs ne
peuvent pas être détenus en centre fermé. »Mais qu’en est-il lorsqu’un
parent est détenu en centre fermé sans ses enfants dans la perspective
d’une expulsion collective de l’ensemble de la famille ? Le cas de
Camilla* une femme de 25 ans, mère de deux enfants de 1 et 6 ans, eux
aussi sans titre de séjour, tout comme leur père, provoque aujourd’hui
l’indignation de 14 associations** cosignataires d’une carte blanche
transmise au Soir, parmi lesquelles la Ligue des Droits Humains, Défense
des Enfants International ou encore le Ciré (Coordination et
Initiatives pour Réfugiés et Étrangers).Née en Italie en 1998 d’une mère
d’origine yougoslave, Camilla assure séjourner en Belgique depuis 2012,
où elle vit de débrouille avec le père de ses enfants, lui aussi en
situation irrégulière. Le 28 avril dernier, elle a été interpellée par
la police à Bruxelles, sur base d’un contrôle d’identité. Le lendemain,
constatant qu’elle ne s’était pas pliée à une précédente décision
d’expulsion datée de 2022, l’Office des Etrangers (OE) lui notifiait un
ordre de quitter le territoire « avec maintien », soit privation de
liberté. Elle était envoyée dans la foulée au centre fermé pour femmes
d’Holsbeek après avoir pourtant, dit-elle, notifié aux services
l’existence de ses enfants, demeurant seuls avec leur père depuis lors.
C’est derrière ces murs qu’elle a par ailleurs appris qu’elle était
enceinte (à l’heure actuelle, de 8 semaines), rapporte-t-elle au Soir,
qui a pu s’entretenir avec elle par téléphone.Dans sa décision
d’éloignement, citée dans un arrêt rendu le 5 juin dernier par la
Chambre des mises en accusation (devant laquelle Camilla a contesté sans
succès sa détention, après avoir déjà échoué à obtenir gain de cause
devant la Chambre du conseil) et que Le Soir a pu consulter, l’OE expose
sa volonté de ne pas uniquement expulser la mère, seule à être privée
de liberté pour l’instant, mais bien « toute sa famille. » « La famille
complète peut se construire un avenir dans son pays d’origine. Toute la
famille devra quitter la Belgique », juge l’Office.Reste à savoir de
quel pays d’origine on parle. Le même arrêt de la Chambre des mises en
accusation rappelant que la mère demeure de « nationalité inconnue ».Ce
qui n’a pas empêché l’OE d’estimer, du moins dans un premier temps, que
la destination tout indiquée pour la famille devait être la Serbie. Le
11 mai dernier, une « demande de réadmission » a ainsi été envoyée à
cette fin aux autorités consulaires de ce pays. « Mais ils ne peuvent
pas m’expulser là-bas », conteste l’intéressée, qui se déclare apatride.
« Je n’ai aucun papier dans aucun pays. » En attendant, Camilla reste
donc en « stand-by », écartée de ses enfants. « Ils me réclament
beaucoup, mais je ne veux pas qu’ils me voient ici car cela va les
angoisser. »Une « prise d’otage » ?Pour Me Selma Benkhelifa, qui défend
les intérêts de Camilla et qui tire ici la sonnette d’alarme, le cas
représente un précédent dangereux et choquant. « C’est la première fois
que j’entends que l’on détient de la sorte un parent sans ses enfants »,
assure même cette avocate spécialisée en droit des étrangers.Sotieta
Ngo, directrice générale du Ciré, évoque avec la même indignation « une
pratique qui n’est pas inconnue, mais qui était devenue complètement
inhabituelle » depuis longtemps, et plus spécifiquement depuis la
création en 2008, sous Annemie Turtleboom (Open VLD, alors ministre en
charge de la Migration), des « maisons de retours ». A savoir ces
logements en régimes semi-ouverts destinés à maintenir un contrôle sur
les familles en attendant leur expulsion, sans les priver totalement de
leurs mouvements.Lui aussi informé de la situation depuis la mi-mai,
Solayman Laqdim, Délégué Général aux Droits de l’Enfant, abonde lui
aussi dans le même sens en dénonçant une situation qu’il décrit comme «
ni normale, ni juste ». « Aujourd’hui, la règle de manière générale est
d’aller vers des maisons de retour afin de respecter le principe de la
Convention internationale des droits de l’enfant selon lequel parents et
enfants ne doivent pas être séparés contre leur gré, sauf si cela est
dans l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant. »Appuyée par le collectif de
signataire, l’avocate de la famille soutien que la décision de priver
des enfants d’un ou plusieurs de leurs parents entre non seulement en
contradiction avec l’article 8 de la Convention européenne des droits de
l’Homme (qui consacre le droit au respect de sa vie privée et
familiale) mais aussi avec la jurisprudence belge du Conseil d’Etat.
Lequel avait, en 2016, rendu un arrêt annulant l’article d’un projet
d’arrêté royal de 2014 consacrant la possibilité alternative d’enfermer
un parent en centre fermé pour éviter de devoir détenir une famille
entière avant une expulsion. Pour la haute juridiction administrative «
une telle mesure » apparaissait alors comme « disproportionnée par
rapport au but poursuivi ». Sauf, précisait-elle en usant de mots forts,
« à imaginer, ce qui est à l’évidence inconcevable, que la partie
adverse (l’Etat belge dans le cas présent, NDLR) entendrait de la sorte
retenir un membre de la famille en “otage” pour s’assurer que le reste
de la famille se soumettra à la mesure d’éloignement afin de récupérer
le membre de la famille retenu ».Pour le collectif de signataires, c’est
ainsi très clair : « Cette maman détenue à Holsbeek est un “otage”
selon les mots du Conseil d’Etat. Cette pratique paraissait inconcevable
en 2016 mais s’est réalisée aujourd’hui. L’Etat belge a le devoir et
l’obligation de protéger les enfants, tous les enfants. Il a aussi
l’obligation de tenir compte de leur intérêt dans toutes les mesures
qu’il prend. Même si la famille est en séjour illégal. La politique
migratoire ne peut pas primer sur l’intérêt supérieur de l’enfant. »Les
contradictions de l’OfficeA l’Office des étrangers, on réplique en
assurant ne pas prendre le sujet des liens familiaux à la légère. Tout
en remettant en cause la condition de mère de Camilla. « Lors de toute
interception, la personne est soumise à un formulaire qui contient
notamment des questions sur la situation familiale de l’intéressé. Ici
dans le cas présent, l’intéressée n’a jamais déclaré lors de son
arrestation qu’elle avait deux enfants », évoque Dominique Ernould,
porte-parole de l’Office, dans une réponse écrite envoyée au Soir. «
Nous ne pouvons donc pas, à l’heure actuelle, dire s’il s’agit bien de
la mère des deux enfants. » Un propos qui semble toutefois entrer en
contradiction avec la décision de l’OE évoquée dans l’arrêt de la
Chambre des mises en accusation et citée plus haut dans cet article. Une
décision mentionnant bien une volonté d’expulser « toute la famille »
de l’intéressée.L’Office des Etrangers assure pour le reste ne pas avoir
pris de décision définitive quant à cette expulsion, faute de
certitudes sur la destination. « Les recherches concernant
l’identification de la personne sont en cours auprès des services
compétents de l’Office des étrangers. Il est donc prématuré de répondre à
la question d’un rapatriement et vers un pays en particulier. »Une
position actuelle qui, là encore, n’a pas empêché l’Office des étrangers
d’introduire une demande à la Serbie il y a plus de trois semaines en
vue d’une expulsion. Ni de maintenir Camilla, en attendant, derrière les
murs d’Holsbeek, à son grand désarroi. « On me retient ici enfermée
ici, sans que je ne sache pourquoi, » déplore-t-elle. « Ici, je ne mange
pas bien, et pour ma grossesse, j’ai beaucoup de stress, car je sais
qu’il y a des maladies qui circulent. Ma tension était à neuf, hier. Les
docteurs m’ont dit que ce n’était pas normal. »* Prénom d’emprunt
UPDATE 07/07/2023: The man has been released after 9 months in prison and a 30-day hunger strike. Good luck to him.
____________________________________________________________________________ 30 may 2023: Mohamed S. has been held in Merksplas detention center since September 21, 2022, to await deportation to his “country of origin”, Algeria. He has lived in Europe for 30 years, and resides in Belgium since 2002.
No food and no water as a last resort On May 24, 2023, Mohamed began a hunger and thirst strike. He tells us: “Freedom is priceless, I’m putting my life on hold, I die or I live, it’s up to them. I haven’t found any other solution”. The various appeals lodged by his lawyer before the Council Chamber failed to obtain his liberation. He is now risking his life in the hope of being released. Eight days after his action began, he feels feverish and suffers from dizziness. Completely exhausted, he is forced to stay in bed 24 hours a day, and cannot get out for the only two hours prisoners are normally allowed outside.
The risk of dying reinforced by the unconsciousness of staff and the Immigration Office A thirst strike can very quickly lead to serious and irreversible brain and kidney damage, as well as death in the short term. Mohamed has been placed in medical isolation in block 5 of the Merksplas detention center, but is not receiving the medical care he needs. On his fifth day on strike, he requested a blood test, which was refused for the reason that “it’s not necessary”. However it is recommended that you have a blood test at the start of the hungerstrike, followed by another test every week, particularly if you lose more than 10% of your body weight. Mohamed is as aware of the risks he is taking as he is of the racist negligence of the center’s staff and the Immigration Office towards him. “We’re hostages here”, he says, “and I haven’t found any other alternative”. Three months after the suspicious and still unexplained death (unless you believe the “natural death” theory put forward by the authorities the day after the tragedy) of a Georgian man in this same detention center, Mohamed’s fellow inmates are very worried. Prisoners in closed centers regularly go on hunger and/or thirst strikes to demand their release from these endless and extremely violent incarcerations. We are currently in contact with a prisoner at the Bruges detention center, who has now been on hunger strike for 22 days.
Call for support We invite you to send emails and make phone calls to those responsible for this mistreatment, so that Mr. Mohamed S. receives the appropriate medical care he needs and, ultimately, his release:
Proposition :
Dear,
I am sending you this email to raise the situation of a person currently detained at the Merksplas detention centre. The prisoner is Mohamed S., an Algerian national who left his country more than 30 years ago. He has been on hunger and thirst strike for over eigth days. His medical situation is catastrophic and his life is in danger. His health is deteriorating by the day. What’s more, he is being denied appropriate medical care (hospitals and doctors). Mr Mohamed S. has lived in Belgium for over 20 years and has spent a large part of his life here. As the years go by, he has fewer and fewer ties with his country of origin. We believe that his detention must end as soon as possible so that he can receive adequate treatment and continue his life in Belgium. Could you, as a matter of urgency, demand the release of Mr Mohamed S, to prevent the situation from degenerating?
Nicole de Moor, Office and secretariat of the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration- Email : info.demoor@demoor.fed.be
Mr Roosemont, Director of the Immigration Office – Email : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be– Tel : +32 2 793 80 31 / +32 2 79380 30 (FR)- Fax : 02 274 66 40
If you know any trustworthy journalists who could give echo to this information and shed light on the criminal responsibilities of the detention center and the Immigration Office, please pass on this initial information to them.
A collective deportation by military flight to Guinea Conakry is scheduled for this Tuesday 23/05/2023 at 10 am from Melsbroek airport (military airbase).
A first collective deportation to Guinea and Congo (DRC) had already been scheduled by the Immigration Office on 26/04/2023, but then cancelled at the last minute.
About fifteen Guinean prisoners have already been put in solitary confinement in the detention centres of Merksplas and Vottem this Saturday with the intention of transferring them on Sunday and Monday to the detention centre 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel, and then to put them by force on Tuesday 23/05/2023 at 10 am on a military plane at Melsbroek airport.
AUDIO of Touria’s request for media coverage: “I want media” (FR)
Transcription in Engl below
Contextualisation of Ms. Touria’s situation
Ms. Touria has been living in Belgium for 17 years.
Following the submission of her marriage application to the municipality, she was arrested and taken to a detention centre in January 2023, because the municipality considered this application as a “paper wedding”, i.e. she was only seeking an opportunity to benefit from the residency through her marriage.
Touria suffers from mental health problems and had a very hard time with her imprisonment in the closed centres of Holsbeek and Bruges for five months. External doctors have visited her and attested to this state of health.
Her lawyer had lodged an appeal before the indictment section of the Court of appeal and a request for the cancellation of her expulsion on 11 May 2023 to Casablanca, scheduled by the Immigration Office.
On May 11, 2023, the indictment section of the Court of appeal decided that Ms. Touria should be released. Nevertheless, she was illegally deported the same day.
Transcript of testimony 1
Good evening, this is Ms. Touria X. I am currently on my way to Tangier. I received a positive response for freedom from the centre. Now I am in Morocco. I did not understand anything. I asked the policemen: “Show me the order. I don’t have the order yet that they want to transfer me to Morocco. He said: “No, we have the order, it’s negative”. He told me like that. I say: “Show me”. He says: “No”. There are almost 7 policemen with me. Just imagine! 7 policemen.
He said: “You go back nicely”. I said, “No!” I started shouting. I said, “I haven’t taken my medicine, I’m not well.” He called the doctor at the airport. He just came and gave me a little pill, he said, “Put it on the bottom of your tongue, like this. And you calm down.” That’s all. I showed him the certificate from the centre. He took a picture, like this. And that’s it. When I get on the plane, there are three policemen at the door, and two sitting, one on the right, and one… I don’t know, I’m like a criminal. They are going to travel with a criminal.
Transcript of testimony 2
Now I would like to talk with journalists. I want to talk with journalists about my situation. 5 months in the closed centre. I dream that one day I will have my freedom. They freed me, they transferred me to Morocco. Freedom is: transfer to Morocco. It’s not there.
On the 13th of May about twenty people shouted rage against the closed centres (1) in front of the 127bis and Caricole detention centres
Located in Steenockerzeel, 127bis has existed since 1994. It was placed right next to Zaventem airport in order to reduce the costs of (mostly forced) deportations. It was built according to a prison model with 4 wings lined with three fences. The centre of Caricole was built in 2010 a hundred metres away. In this detention centre, people arrested at the border at Zaventem airport are detained. The conditions of detention in these centres are very often inhumane. Several testimonies collected over the years prove this (2).
Through this action, we wanted to stay in contact with the detainees,as well as to physically show our solidarity, and to exchange directly with the detainees through the fences. It is a way for us to remind them that many people are in deep disagreement with the repressive and racist logics put in place by the Belgian state. During this action, conversations trough the fences with the detainees took place. We were able to exchange with the people inside, slogans were chanted together and numbers were exchanged.
During the exchanges, the detainees shouted “freedom ! They told us that there were a lot of them inside at the moment.
Not all the feedback was positive. A detainee in 127bis, visibly disillusioned with the demonstration, expressed his annoyance, pointing out that this kind of action would not lead to the liberation of the people locked up. It is true that this demonstration will not give them back their freedom. And we totally understand this kind of reaction, which is justified and legitimate. We hear this and share it. But for us in addition to communicating direct support to the people locked up, these demonstrations are one of the necessary steps in a wider struggle against borders and their violent systems.
This is why it is important to continue to support the imprisoned people and to fight the repressive mechanisms of the Belgian state and the European Union towards undocumented migrants. Moreover, demonstrations had already taken place in recent months in front several closed centres : at Merksplas (following the death of a person after a hunger strike (3)), at Holsbeek (closed centre for women) or at Vottem.
Today the European Union is about to adopt an Asylum and Migration Pact – aimed at reinforcing the external borders of the European Union – before the European elections of 2024. On the European territory, these repressive logics translate into the tracking down of undocumented people, through detentions and expulsion. As a result, thousands of people, relentlessly pursued by the authorities, risk their lives every day. Let us recall that on 17 May, five years ago, a two-year-old Kurdish girl, Mawda, was killed by the Belgian police (4).
In the meantime, inside the centres, the prisoners are resisting, as shown by the recent riot at the Merksplas detention centre (5). Their revolt resounds outside the walls and gates. Solidarity with the prisoners. Freedom and regularisation for all. Set fire to the closed centres !
On April 25 2023, fifteen Congolese detainees who had been held for several months in various closed centers were transferred to 127bis for collective deportation. The next day, eleven of these people were forcibly deported by military flight to the DRC. For the other four, the deportation was cancelled following appeals lodged with lawyers against this decision.
This event follows a recent diplomatic visit by the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Indeed, since 2006, a memorandum of understanding exists between the two countries to facilitate the deportation of Congolese people from Belgium. The visit of the Secretary of State aimed to put in place measures to dissuade Congolese people from seeking asylum in Belgium.
Recently, the Belgian government boasted that it had doubled the number of deportations in the first three months of this year.
Film https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/filmje-mersplas-4.mp4
Around lunchtime, around 30 detainees from the a closed centre started a riot in the canteen in Merksplas. They did this to express their displeasure against the living conditions at the centre. This happend at the same centre where two months ago, a man who went on a hunger strike as a protest against the situation died.
The police responded quickly and aggressively. With a force around 50 policemen, ready with battons and shields, they invaded the centre around 2pm. At that time the detainees already destroyed the entire third floor. The police removed about 15 people with force to the isolation cells” sounded an anonymous testimony from one of the detainees.
Around 3pm, the police communicated that they had already left the centre. Journalists at the scene could however see that at 4pm a large police force was still active to drag people to the isolation cells.
Both eyewitnesses outside the centre and some detainees spoke of an excessive show of force by the police. After this afternoon’s incidents, a floor of Block 3 of the centre, became largely unusable.
How the situation continues now is still unclear. With many people in isolation cells and conditions at the centre remaining inhumane, there is a lot of uncertainty. “Until next time!” was heard as the police left. Critics of the closed centres point to the violent and inhumane practices they represent and call for the immediate closure of all closed centres!
The violence of the prison system and detention itself have catastrophic impacts on the mental health of prisoners. Recently, several people have expressed their concern about fellow prisoners who are clearly in great pain:
“They don’t belong here. They need to be treated. This is inhumane. It’s mistreatment.”
“It’s a chemical straitjacket”: Many prisoners told us that they receive medication without any follow-up, and that there is very little information about the nature of the medication and the supposed treatment.
It is also not uncommon for prisoners to denounce the use of medication for repressive purposes to “calm down” inmates who rebel, or, in another context, to facilitate deportation attempts…
“Y. had broken the TV: they took him with 6 security officers and put him in block 5. There he remained very agitated and received 3 injections. Then he came back to our block. He couldn’t speak and he was drooling… We complained and finally they transferred him to the 127 bis so that we wouldn’t have to see all this.”
“And when we say something, the wardens tell us: it’s not us, it’s the Immigration Office that decides.”
2. Attempted deportation of three Algerian men
Three men detained in different detention centres underwent an attempted deportation on Wednesday 05/04/23 on the same plane to Algeria.
Their deportation did not take place and by 11pm all three were back in the centres of Vottem and Merksplas.
We learned that one of them was beaten up by the police after refusing to swallow medicine during the deportation attempt.
“They train themselves to use methods to trap us, we train ourselves to adapt to every change and resist.”
Physical and psychological violence, intimidation, coercion… the police escort does not hesitate when it comes to methods of forcing repatriation.
The Immigration Office is relentless in its desire to expel detainees, even in cases where expulsion is impossible (for example because the embassy of the country concerned does not issue a permit):
“This is unimaginable. There are some who stay in a detention centre for up to 18 months for nothing. Because they don’t know how to expel them or some resist to the end. It’s useless detention.“
At the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, the government plans to build a massive deportation prison. Already now, mass deportations via charter flights silently take place there every month. We want to break the silence and are organizing the “Stop Deportation! Protest Camp” in Schönefeld from June 1-6 2023.
– About ten days ago, several detainees reported a collective flight to the DRC. In the following days, contact with these people was very limited and several phones were on voice mail.
– The social workers, also known as “accompaniers to return”, are increasingly encouraging detainees to return voluntarily. Some people break down after many months in detention.
-With a view to Ramadan, many transfers take place in the centres. Detainees doing Ramadan are put together in separate wings. They are allowed a microwave and a fridge.
– Some people who have been in detention for many months say that there is a high turnover in the centres, meaning many deportations : “we called 3 of them today from the office, then we never saw them again. Security comes to empty their cupboard and they don’t come back. So we understand that they are at the airport. “
– In Merksplas, the disappearance of a billiard ball led to a strip search of the detainees: “A billiard ball had disappeared: this morning all the cupboards were searched and body searches were carried out. Everyone is naked and we can’t play billiards anymore”.
– In the Merkplas centre, the detainees have taken in 3 small cats which they feed and say that they are ‘undocumented’ cats.
– Many detainees suffer from serious mental health problems and do not receive adequate care: “There are mentally ill people here: they don’t belong here, they need to be treated, some of them talk to themselves, some of them cry all the time; they need care, they are very bad”.
– One person reports that he was put in solitary confinement for 48 hours, on the grounds that he is considered a ” leader “: ” It’s undignified, locked up like dogs, like a tiger in a cage “.
The Foreign Office persists in an absurd, arbitrary and inhumane application of the Dublin Regulation by deporting thirty four people by military flight to Croatia. As a reminder, there is a European regulation called ‘Dublin’ which allows the determination of the country responsible for the asylum application according to a whole series of criteria. The most regularly applied criterion is that of the first country of entry of the person into the European Union and where the fingerprints were taken. This allows Belgium to return asylum seekers to their ‘Dublin country’, usually the first country through which they entered the European Union.
A military flight deported this 17/03/2023 thirty four people of different nationalities to Croatia, a country known for its very violent treatment (torture, sexual assaults…) towards people in migration. The abuses of the Croatian state are pointed out by many reports and international organizations. The European Court of Human Rights has also condemned Croatia on those grounds.
We had not previously heard of expulsions by ‘military’ flight organized by the Foreign Office.
This approach shows that the Foreign Office wants to dissuade asylum seekers who have passed through Croatia from applying in Belgium. The OE wants to send the message that people will automatically be sent back.
The persons subject to this removal were all gathered the day before their departure at the closed center 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel. Some of them were transferred, while others were notified of their expulsion on 17 March at 10 a.m.
On the 17th, the detainees at the 127 bis detention center were awakened by the arrival of buses and a large number of police cars.
A detainee present at the time told us: “A bus from the airport came to pick up 34 people. Six were already at 127 bis, the others came from other centers and were brought the day before to 127 bis. We were all woken up by this. There were cops everywhere. We were all shocked.”
One by one, the people were taken away in a vehicle, some of them by force. They were then taken to the airport under police escort.
We learn that some of them arrived in Zagreb.
Among them, a significant number of people of Burundian origin. Members of the Burundian diaspora in Belgium were present at the airport to denounce these expulsions.
Numerous testimonies have been received from the centres relating the violence of the staff and the inhumane conditions of detention.
As a reminder, the objective of the detention centres is to place undocumented persons in detention in order to expel them from Belgian territory.
The functioning of a detention centre is similar to the functioning of a prison.
Our objective is to denounce the very existence of these centres. We are regularly in contact with detainees who are living serious violations of their fundamental rights, isolated from the rest of the world.
Below, we have thematically grouped several testimonies related to the daily life in closed centres:
Medical service
Each centre has a medical service to which detainees can refer for treatment. The theory is very far from the practice. Very regularly, we receive testimonies from people who are refused care, or whose medical problems are treated in a superficial manner.
Very few infrastructures take into account the issue of mental health.
For example, people recently told us:
“You ask for care : paracetamol. You are in pain: paracetamol. Paracetamol for everything and for nothing”.
“You have psychological problems, you’re nervous : painkiller or they offer you an injection”.
“When we talk to the director about medical follow-up, he says he has nothing to do with it… If he is the director, he has something to do with it, that’s not normal”.
Dialogue with staff
Detainees also reported having difficult contacts with staff members. They give very little consideration to their requests, and these rarely result in positive responses. As soon as they dare to stand up for their rights or ask for some dignity, they are directly punished or put in an isolated cell for many hours.
“As soon as you raise a rule or want to propose something, you get a “warning” or a 24-hour lock-up.
“We talk to a wall, our word is not taken into consideration… It goes in one way and out the other”.
Racism
Detainees also told us that staff members are openly racist in their words, behaviour and attitudes…
“There are big racists among the staff”.
“A guard from the extreme right, super racist. He doesn’t deserve to work here, even if you are racist, you keep your racism out. Your racism you keep to yourself. You don’t belong here with your racism. We are humans not animals, even if we are illegal”.
“They keep us here like animals, you live here for years and then they lock you up in a prison because you are a foreigner”.
“I don’t understand, we are human beings, we have children, parents…”.
“The social workers don’t know anything, not even a hello. And everything is in Flemish. We don’t understand anything”.
Food
Complaints about the quality and quantity of food are also very frequent.
“In the morning 7.15am : the door is opened for “breakfast”: a slice of bread
At noon : potatoes with a semblance of sauce
In the evening at 6pm : a sandwich. And if you ask for more, they throw what’s left in front of your eyes into the bin with a big smile.
Access to a lawyer
Every person who arrives in a detention centre has the legal right to be defended by a lawyer, either through legal aid or privately. Generally, lawyers appointed by the legal aid office are involved in the defence of detainees.
This is a type of litigation where detainees often feel helpless, as they have very little response from the people who advise them.
They feel abandoned in a legal labyrinth that they do not understand. Moreover, they are not helped by the centre’s staff who focus on their eviction.
“My lawyer never answers the phone even though I gave him money for my asylum application and appeal. He has his money, and I will have my deportation ticket”.
The circumstances push people to the limit and they sometimes lose all hope:
“Some people cut themselves, some swallow blades, lighters, batteries or go on hunger strike”.
“They extend our detention by 2 months to 2 months… until when? Some have been here for more than a year.
“Some are going crazy.
“I don’t understand. It’s better to die”.
“I was working before I came here. Now who will feed my family, my children?
“Some people let themselves be deported after 9 or 10 months to a country they don’t know because they are fed up with being locked up.
– Closed centre Merksplas. Several detainees reported that they were subjected to racism, especially by the “return assistants”.
– Many people under Dublin regulation have been deported within 5 days of their arrest without being able to notify their relatives or a lawyer. The Dublin Regulation is a European regulation which establishes which country is responsible for examining a person’s asylum application within the European Union. One of the criteria for determining which country is responsible is the first country of entry into the EU.
– Four women and four men with whom we had contact were deported to Croatia, the country were supposed to apply for asylum according to the Dublin Regulation. These people have passed through Croatia and have experienced a lot of violence there. Indeed, Croatia is known for its very violent treatment (torture, sexual assaults, etc.) of people in a migration situation and has already been condemned on several occasions by the European Court of Human Rights for this. Numerous international reports have also condemned the abusive practices of the Croatian state, such as police violence and collective refoulements. (1) Despite this, the Belgian state considers Croatia to be a safe country.
– Closed centre Merksplas and 127 bis. It is increasingly difficult to access a telephone in some centres. For most detainees, the telephone is the only means of contact with the outside world. Telephones are usually provided by the centre, either for a fee or free of charge. Currently, telephones are becoming increasingly rare. Inmates therefore share a telephone with others.
– Closed centre Bruges. 26 women are currently detained in the centre. While we were not aware of any women being detained in Bruges, it seems that the situation is changing.
– Several people report that they have been arrested at their place of work (Horeca, construction sites). These workplaces are regularly the target of identity checks.
– Numerous expulsions to Algeria have taken place. Detainees tell us that deportations are systematically carried out on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
– Closed centre Merksplas. A detainee in a critical state of health. He told us that he had an open wound on his leg and that he had only received paracetamol. In general, many detainees report being in a very precarious psychological state.
– Closed centre 127bis. Protest movement following the discovery of a positive covid case. The detainees are concerned about the health measures taken following the discovery of this case. In response, the director of the centre told them that they could not have access to masks for several days and that they should not worry.
– Several detainees report being pressured to accept voluntary returns.
Calls received this Monday 20/02/2023 from the various Belgian detention centres via the Getting the Voice Out collective
We learn that a women’s section has been reopened in the Bruges detention centre. This reopening would have taken place during the previous weeks. There are currently about twenty women being held there.
A detainee warns us of a hunger strike that has been going on for 8 days by two people of Georgian origin. One of them is a very weak 70 year old man. A moment after the detainee’s call, his phone was confiscated by security.
A man put in solitary confinement because he dared to ask a “why” to a measure.
Another man who has been in solitary confinement for 9 months says “I’m going crazy”.
Calls from several detainees looking for a lawyer, in a detention centre for 9 to 11 months.
A man released with an Order to Leave the Territory (OQT) after 8 months in detention!
Call from a man of Moroccan origin who was living in Ukraine (student visa) having fled the war, arrested in Brussels and taken to a closed centre.
A very weak man in medical isolation. He has attempted suicide and seems to be in great pain. It is very difficult to communicate with him. His very fragile state was confirmed by a visiting NGO.
Several people of Burundian origin awaiting expulsion to Croatia: https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/belgium-deports-to-croatia-targeted-for-numerous-acts-of-violence-against-migrants/: Two women and two men to our knowledge have already been deported. One woman was to be deported today to Zagreb. People mobilised at the airport this morning to explain her situation to passengers. We are waiting to hear from her. Next attempt to deport a Burundian man to Croatia this 22/02. All these attempts to Zagreb are forced and accompanied by a police escort despite the possibility to legally refuse deportation on the first attempt.
A large number of requests for top-ups to call family, lawyers, friends.
And twoo separate calls
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly inform on their situation. Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros Lycamobile recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank account especially created for that purpose :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
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SUPPORT THE FIGHTS against closed centres and borders
The fights against closed centres, deportations and borders (distribution of leaflets, posting, publications, events, logistics, various actions, prevention of repression) require energy as well as financial resources. Interested in supporting us financially? Donate, or even better, set up a standing order to :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos: BE 13 523045586439 Communication: Soutien aux luttes
Death at Merksplas closed centre after hunger strike – 15/02/2023
This morning,February 15, 2023, we received several calls from detainees informing us of the death of a person at the Merkplas detention centre. This 40 year old Georgian man had been on hunger strike for several days and had been placed in isolation. He was passing through Belgium and had been arrested because he did not have his papers on him about twenty days ago.
He was found dead this morning in his cell. Staff reportedly tried to resuscitate him but it was already too late. The fire brigade then intervened. The exact circumstances of the death are still unknown. The death was confirmed to the detainees by the staff of the center.
In the early afternoon, the detainees demonstrated and the police arrived en masse to try to calm down the demonstrations. About 20 detainees were violently taken away by the police.
No information on the support received by the family or the detainees was given
In the framework of the Dublin procedure, several people locked up in a detention centre have been expelled to Croatia, where they had already been subjected to serious acts of violence. Others are likely to be deported in the coming days.
09/02/2023
For several months now, people of Burundian nationality have been regularly arrested in accommodation centres (open centre, samusocial, Arianne centre, Fedasil centre, home, reference address) or at the Aliens Office. All these people are subject to a “Dublin Croatia”, which means that Croatia is the first EU country where they have been forced to give their fingerprints and therefore Croatia is considered the European country “responsible” for processing their application for international protection. In general, these arrests are part of a strategy by the Aliens Office to increase the deportation of “dubliners” and to systematically lock them up in detention centres. One of the objectives of this strategy is to deter further arrivals.
We have recently been in contact with five women locked up in the Holsbeek detention centre. So far, two of them have been deported to Zagreb. Three Burundian men are also locked up in the 127 bis detention centre. Appeals in extreme urgency against the Aliens Office have been lodged to contest these expulsions. They testify: “We are on death row”. “We can’t imagine what we went through while in Croatia. “It’s torture”.
The situation of migrants in Croatia is widely commented on by Human Rights Watch: the organisation reports that Croatian authorities are repeatedly held responsible for the illegal refoulement of people who have tried to reach Croatia from Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition, there are numerous reports of physical abuse by Croatian police as well as obstruction of access to the asylum process (HRW, 2023).
A statement, dated 8 December 2022 and signed by several international organisations (Amnesty International, Border Violence Monitoring Network, Centre for Peace Studies, Danish Refugee Council, ECRE, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, International Rescue Committee) deplores the Council of Europe’s decision to admit Croatia into the Shengen area despite ample evidence of human rights violations. “Between the beginning of August and the end of November, a total of 1,395 people reported being illegally deported from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to data collected by the Danish Refugee Council’s Protection Monitoring Programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (HRW, 2022) Furthermore, the NGO notes that the Croatian authorities have not conducted any investigations into allegations of police violence. The vast majority of complaints (almost 90%) were dismissed by the Ministry of Interior. (HRW, 2022)
“Croatia continued to deny access to asylum to thousands of potential asylum seekers. Humanitarian organisations have documented approximately 10,000 cases of refoulement and collective expulsion, as well as numerous cases of violence and abuse. In February, the Danish Refugee Council reported that two women had been sexually abused, forced to undress, held at gunpoint and threatened with rape by Croatian police officers. The Ministry of Interior denied this information” (Amnesty, 2021).
He is 44 years old. Originally from Tunisia, he has been living in Belgium for 12 years. On 13 December he was placed in a detention centre following a police check in Stalingrad. He had built his life in Belgium, but suddenly lost everything. He had asylum in Italy but now his papers have expired. He wants to go back to join his family. But the Belgian authorities are determined to send him back to Tunisia, a country in crisis where, cut off from his family, he has nothing left. Nahdi asks for asylum in Belgium, which they do not want to grant him because Tunisia is not a country at war. Then, faced with the despair of his situation, he started a hunger strike on 16/01/2023. Today, 06/02/2023, in the medical isolation cell of the detention centre of Merksplas, he is on his 25th day of hunger strike. He risks his health and his life. He asks for freedom.
“Freedom is precious. I continue until the end, you see, until death. I don’t have time. I have to take my duty.
The other time I spoke with the management here. They tell
me: “Why don’t you go to Tunisia and then go back to Italy? I don’t
have wings, you see. Leave me here, I’m going to Italy on my own. Italy
is close. Why should I go to Tunisia and then to Italy?
They don’t have the right to put me in a detention centre. If the police has a problem with me, they should put
me in prison, not in a detention centre. I’ve been in Belgium for 12
years. 12 years in Belgium. I have many things here in Belgium. You see,
I have a wife. I left her, I don’t know how. My business, my job I
lost. I lost everything. Now I have nothing left in Belgium to stay.
These people play with people’s minds.
They want me to eat. The other time they tell me “Eat, we’ll take you
to another centre”. What’s the problem with them wanting to take me
away? It’s the same. “Eat!” No, I don’t eat. I die here with you, I die
here.
We don’t have a medical service. Because here, the medical service only
works in the morning. At night there is no service that checks on you.
If you die at night, you die. At night, there is no hospital or
anything here. You see me, I haven’t eaten for 24 days, how am I doing?
I’m becoming a skeleton. Now 58 kilos. I’ve lost 17 kilos. A skeleton.
And still people look at you, want to control you. What do you control?
Take me to the hospital, if you want to control.
I want my freedom. We are treated like animals: you close, you open, you close, you give food. People play with your mind here. It’s worse than prison. Because in prison you know when you are going to get out. Here you know nothing. You spend two months in a detention centre and they add two more months. You don’t have the right to ask for asylum because your country is “normal”. Your country is not at war. What are you doing in Belgium? Why does a Tunisian ask for asylum? They don’t care about people here. You have to ask for asylum so that you can stay here. You stay 2 months, then they add 2 months and then they add 10 months. There are people here for 9 months. He is still here, he is struggling. People say he will die here.
If
someone dies here, we will be recognised as people and not animals.
Because human rights are not controlled here. There is a volunteer who
passes by, looks at us, talks to us, asks how things are going, how
things are going wrong.
He passes by and then he goes to his house, he laughs, he’s nothing at
all. There are no human rights here. In Brussels, where are the human
rights? There are none. They play with your health. Now, 24 days. Look,
you see? Come and see here. This is not normal. Someone will die here.
Because I spent the last four days not doong well.
In
the center, everything is against me. Around me only walls. People have
to understand. It is a prison, a trade of human beings. I’m all alone here, you know. I’m only out of here in my heart.
What’s my name? Nahdi Mouz. Like this, you see, my name is written to keep it. Show what’s in here.”
04/02/2023 He had been in the closed centre of Vottem for several months. Security men came to pick him up by surprise to take him to the airport for his first attempt to be deported to Tunis with a stopover in Rome; he resisted and the passengers stood up to prevent this deportation. The captain ordered the federal police to remove him from the plane; he was transferred to the Merksplas detention centre. He has many physical and psychological consequences and wants to testify about this violence.
An appeal to find the witnesses of this expulsion has also been launched”Call for witnesses – Brussels Airport – 27.01.2023A man was subjected to a very violent deportation attempt on Friday 27 January 2023. He was put on the ITA Airways flight departing from Brussels Airport at 11.40 a.m. in the direction of Rome. Several passengers objected to the deportation and some filmed the scene. We are looking for witnesses or videos of these events.Please contact us via our e-mail address gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or our mobile number +32484026781 THANK YOU”
————————————————————————————– Transcription of the testimony : Normally the social worker comes and says “yes, you’ve got a ticket” or whatever, but they didn’t tell me, they didn’t warn me. At 6am they came 7 of them, they tied me up, they put me clothes on, they’re not mine, they’re bigger than me. They put me straight into the car, yes, I was in Vottem and straight to the airport. At the airport there were 4 people, they already caught me as soon as I got out of the car. I was slapped and they took me to the cell and then we waited for the plane, and each time they pushed me, “yes, you’ll go back, yes otherwise we’ll hit you” threats and everything, and then I was tied by the foot and they handcuffed me. They put me on the plane and I started to scream, I screamed, I screamed, I insulted, I screamed, I asked my God to help me but afterwards, I reckon, the pilot told them “take him down, he’s going to leave traces”. I went to the hospital, I have blue marks, they hit me with their elbows and they insulted me and it’s serious, really. We thought there are human rights but there are no human rights here, I don’t understand. Q: This was the first attempt to deportyou?It is the first time! Normally you have a choice, either you want or you refuse. No, they came into the cell at 6 am, bim bim I didn’t understand anything, I swear, I didn’t understand anything. Thank you very much, goodbye.
Retour de la visite des délégations au CIV le 24/12/2023.
CRACPE: Collectif de Résistance Aux Centres Pour Etrangers. Site : www.cracpe.be
Chaque année nous nous rassemblons devant le centre fermé de Vottem le 24 décembre. Il s’agit, comme à chacune de nos manifestations, de montrer notre opposition à l’existence de tels centres où sont enfermées des personnes sur simple décision administrative de l’Office des Etrangers, parce qu’elles ne disposent pas, ou plus, d’un titre de séjour. Ces centres ont comme fonction de mettre en œuvre leur expulsion hors de nos frontières, quitte à les renvoyer vers l’insécurité, c’est à dire vers la guerre , la dictature, les persécutions de toutes sortes, politiques, sexistes, homophobes…, vers la misère liée à la dette des pays du Sud, à l’inégalité des échanges, au pillage des ressources par les anciens colonisateurs, ou encore au réchauffement climatique….
Pendant ce rassemblement une délégation, composée de députés parlementaires et de représentants d’associations, est reçue par la direction du centre. Durant une bonne heure la délégation a le droit de poser des questions à la direction. A l’époque de l’ancienne direction, après ces échanges, la délégation complète pouvait se rendre, accompagnée de gardiens, à la rencontre de détenus sur leur lieu d’enfermement. Depuis 2 ans, le nouveau directeur, ancien chef de la sécurité à Vottem, Monsieur STASSENS, refuse cette possibilité aux non-parlementaires en justifiant d’abord sa décision par « la volonté de ne pas mettre en danger les résidents à cause du COVID ». Mais ensuite, après nos insistances, il a clairement dit que nous n’y avons de toute façon pas accès, car seuls les parlementaires et les ONG accréditées y sont autorisés par la loi.
Monsieur STASSENS nous accueille cordialement mais, assez tendu, il se montre très prolixe et monopolise la parole. Il décrit le Centre fermé sous un jour très positif; les prisonniers sont présentés comme des “Résidents” ou des “Clients”, dont on s’occupe avec bienveillance; un quasi Club Med !
Il y a en ce 24 décembre 2022, 48 personnes enfermées, de nombreuses nationalités. 110 places sont disponibles ; il explique cette sous-occupation par le fait que les consignes du Covid sont toujours d’application. Mais il ne nie pas la difficulté de recrutement de personnel, ce qui expliquerait aussi le sous-effectif de personnel d’encadrement.Une aile (la bleue) du bâtiment est fermée depuis l’été. Et dans les chambres des ailes rouge et jaune il y a 2 personnes maximum pour 4 lits. Le mot confort revient souvent dans le discours de la direction : télévision, accès à internet, salle de détente, 2 heures de préau par jour etc….C’est le même discours que celui qu’on nous sert pour les prisons, « mais de quoi se plaignent-ils ? »
Rappelons que les personnes détenues dans les centres fermés n’ont fait l’objet d’aucun jugement et qu’il s’agit uniquement d’une décision administrative de l’Office des Etrangers. Pour rester dans ce lieu de « confort » il faut être un gentil mouton : être « gérable », nous dit le directeur, et si la personne est « dominante », « difficile à gérer », « a trop de pression sur les autres », elle sera transférée dans l’aile verte, en isolement. Nous entendons donc qu’il faut ne jamais se plaindre ou revendiquer, rester perpétuellement calme, et obéir sans discussion.L’aile verte c’est 11 chambres, avec télévision et leur téléphone, où le détenu est seul 24h sur 24. Il mange seul, dort seul, passe sa journée seul dans une chambre, même son droit au préau, il l’exécute seul. S’il est « calmé », il pourra passer quelques heures avec les autres. Pour la direction ce transfert (à durée illimitée) est destiné à « apporter une aide sur mesure aux résidents en difficulté » et fait suite à une décision collégiale interservices (directeur, infirmier, psychologue, …); cette décision est prise dans « l’intérêt du groupe et de la personne », « dans une perspective d’adaptation, pas de sanction ». Le but de l’isolement est toujours de « ramener la personne dans le groupe le plus rapidement possible » car « plus il y a d’isolés, plus c’est difficile à gérer pour les gardiens ! donc ils n’ont aucun intérêt à placer quelqu’un en isolement ».
A côté de cette aile d’isolement il y a le « régime différencié » : même principe d’isolement, mais les chambres sont plus petites et surtout plus « sécurisées » avec une surveillance permanente vidéo. Nous savons par exemple qu’une personne qui démarre une grève de la faim est systématiquement isolée. L’intérêt là est bien pour le centre : éviter que d’autres détenus ne suivent le mouvement.Et puis il y a ce que la direction appelle les chambres d’isolement, que nous et les détenus appelons les cachots, il y en a 6 : matelas sur un socle en béton, wc dans la chambre, sortie impossible, aucun contact, pas de TV, pas d’internet etc … théoriquement pour 24h, 48h avec accord de l’Office des Etrangers, 72h avec accord du secrétaire d’état. La mise au cachot est systématique s’il y a acte de violence : mais tout est relatif, qu’appelle-t-on « violence » ? Le cachot est quasi systématique la nuit précédant une expulsion (appelée « départ » par la direction) « dans l’intérêt du résident et du groupe » car « les rapatriements se font souvent très tôt et il faut se lever vers 4H00 ou 5H00 du matin car il faut arriver 4H à l’avance à l’aéroport. Donc le détenu peut tranquillement faire ses paquets la veille et ne pas réveiller les autres qui dorment au moment du départ ». Parfois aussi, on transfère le détenu la veille au 127 bis. Le directeur affirme que si le rapatriement a lieu dans l’après-midi, il n’y a pas de mise au cachot la veille et que si le départ est volontaire, le détenu passera sa dernière nuit dans une chambre de l’aile médicale. Il est évident pour nous que le but de cet isolement très surveillé est d’éviter une rébellion contagieuse, voire un geste désespéré : il arrive parfois que des personnes dans un acte de désespoir recourent à des moyens extrêmes pour éviter l’expulsion, avalent ce qu’elles trouvent : dernièrement, un briquet ou une lame, etc….
Les téléphones utilisés par les détenus doivent être sans caméra, la raison invoquée : « pour ne pas faire prendre de risques à ceux qui se retrouveraient sur des photos diffusées sur des réseaux sociaux, pour protéger les demandeurs d’asile et que leurs photos n’arrivent pas dans les mains du gouvernement qu’ils ont fui. »
Nous ajouterons aussi qu’il est impossible dès lors que soit photographiée ou filmée la violence dont nous font part régulièrement les détenus à leur égard. Sans photos, vidéos, seule leur parole est un témoignage. L’accès à internet : nous recevons des plaintes récurrentes des détenus : pas assez d’accès, dans les faits 1 jour sur 2 pendant 1 heure sur inscription, il n’y a que 10 ordinateurs et leur activité sur internet est tracée et mémorisée sur un serveur. Avec le téléphone (qu’ils doivent acheter, ou que nous leur procurons) c’est le seul moyen pour eux d’avoir des échos de ce qui se passe à l’extérieur. Un détenu nous a raconté qu’arrivé à l’aéroport il lui avait été montré un laissez-passer vers le Sénégal, alors que l’ambassade, à laquelle il avait téléphoné, lui avait certifié ne pas en avoir délivré. Nous avons interrogé la direction sur ce cas précis car nous suspections le retour du laissez-passer européen. « Ce document de voyage, délivré par les Etats membres de l’UE – et eux seuls -, permet d’expulser une personne sans qu’elle ait été identifiée par le pays « tiers » dont elle est supposée être originaire, et donc sans laissez-passer consulaire, au mépris de ses droits et du principe d’égalité entre Etats souverains (garanti par la Convention de Vienne). » (https://www.cncd.be/Le-Laissez-passer-europeen-un-pas février 2017) . La réponse de la direction ne nous a pas beaucoup éclairé : il nous a dit qu’indépendamment des pays vers lesquels les personnes peuvent être renvoyées automatiquement si le règlement Dublin le permet, il y a des accords avec des pays tels l’Albanie, le Kosovo, …. qui font qu’un laissez-passer n’est pas nécessaire. Mais que dans les autres cas le pays vers lequel l’OE veut envoyer la personne doit donner son accord via l’ambassade. Il explique alors pour le cas précis du monsieur sénégalais « qu’il arrive que l’ambassade laisse croire au résident qu’elle n’en a pas délivré pour être tranquille ».
Nous avons aussi régulièrement des plaintes de détenus concernant le traitement médical qu’ils suivaient avant l’entrée au centre, et qui serait refusé ou modifié par le médecin du centre. Le directeur conteste ces critiques et parle plutôt de problème de médicaments qui n’existent pas en Belgique et qui sont remplacés par un autre de même molécule, ou alors un générique.
Conclusions :Comme chaque année, la direction nous a présenté son Centre fermé comme très accueillant et il ne semble pas prendre en compte le terrible stress des “résidents”, qui sont enfermés injustement, ne savent pas pour combien de temps, et qui craignent à tout moment, et très rapidement, de se voir éloignés de la Belgique, où ils ont souvent de solides attaches. Confronté à une question récurrente sur l’utilité des centres fermés, avec 150.000 sans-papiers, et une capacité maximale actuelle de détention de 751 personnes dans les différents centres fermés, le directeur répond avec une certaine irritation que 150.000 est une estimation exagérée, que le centre est là pour refouler les sans-papiers, conformément à la loi, votée par les hommes politiques et qu’il ne fait que l’appliquer comme fonctionnaire fédéral.
InfoMigrants and journalist Bahar Makooi report on Aisha’s struggle to cope with racist violence in the Caricole detention centre as well as with several deportation attempts. While Belgium claims that there is no risk for Iranians returned to or in Turkey, the article also looks at several cases where the deportation of an Iranian person to Turkey would put them in danger.
And of the 3 Iranians who were subject to deportation attempts this week and whose deportations were cancelled at the last minute . Thanx for the mobilisation at the airport
On 4 January 2023, we received calls from several detainees concerning disturbing violence perpetrated by guards at the 127bis detention centre near Zaventem.
According to a first witness, the scene took place near the medical service of the centre. A detainee insists on speaking to his family and the discussion heat up when several guards jump on him and hit him violently.
Detainees who wish to testify about what happened tell us the following: “A man was violently assaulted by six guards because he insisted on being able to talk to his family. “They tried to strangle him”; “His last words were ‘help’ and then he passed out”
From their rooms, other witnesses observe as much as they can the consequences of this beating.One of them tells us that he thought he was dead: “he was all blue and unconscious”. They saw several ambulances arrive, one specifically equipped with resuscitation equipment, as well as three police cars. “The ambulance drivers were running with oxygen tanks. It was total panic”. A reamination ambulance finally took him, presumably to a hospital. Another detainee who witnessed the incident and was protesting was also mistreated and taken to hospital.
On 8 January, there was no news of the first man who was beaten and taken to the ambulance as a result of the beatings and violence by the guards. According to our information, the co-detainees who asked for news of him received none.
The second man taken to hospital managed to escape, taking advantage of the chaos. Good luck to him!
Since then, we have had great difficulty in obtaining more information through the contacts we have with some of the detainees at the centre. The phones of the direct witnesses who had warned us are cut off: one of them had told us “I will probably go to the cachot following my call but I don’t care. You have to know.”
This situation is most worrying and is emblematic of the violence suffered by the people locked up. This testimony confirms that people detained in closed centres are subjected to violence by the guards. The violence was so severe that two people had to be transferred to hospital. No information was given to warn the other detainees.
It is also disturbing that we have no news of the people who testified to this violence (probably put in solitary confinement, according to their testimony) and, more generally, no information about this violence. Physical and psychological violence is a daily reality for people in closed centres. It is essential to denounce them and to put an end to the detention of all.
Testimony of a person detained in a closed centre and on hunger strike, December 2022.
In June 2020, we published an article on our website denouncing the double punishment. As a reminder, these are detainees whose papers are withdrawn following a conviction for a public order offence or who have been convicted of a minor offence (speeding, unpaid fines, etc). They are then re-arrested or transferred from prison to a closed centre for deportation. This practice allows the Office (OE) to send back to a so-called country of origin people who have been living in Belgium for years or were born there.
This is the case of a man who has been on hunger strike for 20 days in a closed centre. He is asking us to alert and is demanding his release. He is 40 years old and has lived in Belgium for 20 years. His whole family is settled here. After a stay in prison, he was transferred to a closed centre at the end of his sentence:
“I travel from one prison to another” – “Ik word verplaatst van de ene gevangenis naar de andere”
Tesimony 19/12/2022
“Three weeks ago I was taken from the prison to the centre. Then I swallowed 2 and 1 euro coins. I was taken to the hospital but the doctors could not do anything. When I came back, I did not want to eat, I will stay on hunger strike until I am released. After 10 days, I was taken from this prison to another detention centre. I am constantly moving from one prison to another. I have already lost 10 kg and I have pain everywhere. It is terrible. Please help me. Tell everyone how things are going here. I have completed my sentence to the end. Why am I being punished a second time? Because I’m a foreigner? That’s discrimination.”
This person is doubly punished for what he is accused of. After serving his sentence, his residence permit is withdrawn and he is placed in a closed centre with a view to being repatriated to a country that is no longer his own. He is cut off from all her ties with Belgium and all his relatives. This is why we denounce the double penalty, which is racist and discriminatory. It is a practice that has been totally trivialised by the Migrant Office.
These practices are not rare. In November 2022, we published on our website the story of a person of Rwandan origin, who arrived in Belgium at a very young age and was deported because of public order problems. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/victim-of-the-genocide-in-rwanda-at-the-age-of-6-and-expelled-to-the-same-country/
For several weeks now, we have learned that new arrivals in certain centres no longer receive telephones but must buy them for 25 euros, Many of them now find themselves without the possibility of having contact with the outside world.
We can send the collected phones or give you the names of the people concerned so that you can send them yourself. contact gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly inform on their situation.
Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros or 5 euros Lycamobile recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank account especially created for that purpose :
The Getting the voice out collective is pleased to share with you the third episode of the Lance-Pierre podcast, the podcast that breaks down borders.
This episode deals with the issue of women in exile and confinement.
To discover it, go to Soundcloud or Spotify (FR )
Thanks to the Comité des Femmes Sans-Papiers for its participation, thanks to Sabrina for her testimony, thanks to Aziza for the song…
This new expulsion is part of a collaboration between the ‘Office des Étrangers’ and the Frontex agency, whose well-documented abuses are strongly criticised. More information on the Abolish Frontex campaign: https://fr.abolishfrontex.org/
We learn from co-detainees at 127bis on 15/11/2022: “Yesterday morning a large busload of Congolese from other centres was loaded. And a mass of cops escorting them.” A guard said to a detainee “we’re going to throw them out in their country”.
Situations of some of these “asylum seekers”:
There were two women. One of them, quite old, married and in Belgium for 11 years: at the centre, they had told her that as long as they were polite and calm, they could refuse the flight as many times as they wanted, but if they made trouble, they would be forced.
A man arrested at the airport in June 2022: he had applied for asylum in Greece, had spent a year in the camps in Moria without being able to obtain a response to his asylum application. He managed to reach Belgium. On arrival at the airport, he applied for asylum and was locked up. After a negative decision by the CGRA, he was subjected to a first expulsion attempt on 30/09/2022 to the DRC. He told us in the centre: “it’s the stress, I feel very bad”, “it’s really very difficult, especially for my mind. I didn’t imagine that it was like this”.
A seriously ill man living in Belgium for several years.
A man living in Belgium for 10 years. He has 3 children in Belgium.
A man living in Belgium for 8 years, arrested at work on 29/06/2022. At the centre, he had applied for asylum which was refused. He had undergone a first expulsion attempt on 24/09/2022.
Everything happened in total discretion. In some
centres, the people selected for these operations were summoned by the
social worker and put in solitary confinement immediately without being
able to inform their family or lawyers.
Each situation is different: many of them have been living in Belgium for years and have applied for regularisation, have been arrested during controls and detained in a closed centre because they are “undocumented”. They were forced to apply for asylum in the centre in order to be released.
Nicole De Moor went to the DRC the week of 13/11/2022 to sign a new return agreement for rejected asylum seekers. https://demoor.belgium.be/fr/contact
Nicole De Moor, Secretary of State for Migration, calls people who have been living in Belgium for years and have been refused regularisation “asylum seekers”.
Myria Doc, https://www.myria.be/fr/publications/myriadoc-11-retour-detention-et-eloignement : “Of the 648 people repatriated with escort,205 were repatriated via the 43 special flights organised in 2019. 40 of these flights were to Albania (93%), 1 to Albania and Georgia, 1 to Nigeria and 1 to DR Congo and Guinea.”Germany, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland also participated in the flight organised by Belgium to the DRC and Guinea.Of the 205 people removed in 2019 via a special flight, 195 (95%) were Albanians, 4 Guineans (2%), 3 Congolese (DR Congo), 2 Georgians and 1 Nigerian.”
16/11/2022 : We are regularly informed of individual hunger and sometimes thirst strikes in the various centres. Some of the detainees demand their release, believing that their imprisonment is unjust. Others refuse to be deported to a country to which they do not want or cannot return. These actions represent for them a final means of resistance. The management of the centres calls them acts of rebellion.
Collective hunger strike at the Merksplas detention centre
Update 19/11/2022 : They stopped their action following threats from the management
We are alerted this 15/11/2022 by the CRACPE* of a collective hunger strike at the Merksplas detention centre:
“They are 32 on hunger strike in one wing and think that the other wings will start tomorrow morning. They denounce: – not knowing how long their detention is going to last, the administrative slowness, they don’t know anything about their future, the detentions are prolonged continuously from 2 months to 2 months – the social workers do nothing to help – they are kept in detention even though the embassies do not issue “laissez-passer”, for example when they have family in Belgium and should be released – the conditions of detention are unbearable, e.g. lights out and confinement from 10.30 pm, poor quality food, cold at night because the heating is cut off and light duvets – being put in solitary confinement for any pretext, e.g. keeping a lighter in the pocket, for several days – limited access to mobile phone…
They demand to meet the director of the “Office des Étrangers”.
Testimony of a detainee: “We are mistreated to break us physically and morally. It is done intentionally. It’s discrimination. I call it torture”.
Update: 16/11/2022: They are still on hunger strike. The management tells them that “it’s Brussels that decides”.
These collective actions are usually very quickly and violently repressed: dungeons and transfers in order to break the protest movement.
Let’s call for solidarity with prisoners arbitrarily detained because they don’t have “the right papers”!
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL.
NO TO CLOSED CENTRES
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND SETTLEMENT FOR ALL!
*The CRACPE (Collectif de Résistance aux Centres pour Etrangers) is a collective from Liège. https://www.cracpe.be/
Op 7/11 ontvingen we een getuigenis van een gevangene in Merksplas. Federale politieagenten gingen het centrum binnen om een gedetineerde uit te zetten. Een getuigenis die veel zegt over de technieken en repressie die gebruikt worden om de gevangenen te overmeesteren en onder druk te zetten. De gevangenen zijn geschokt.
05/11/2022 We are regularly alerted to hunger and sometimes thirst strikes in the various centres. Some of them demand their release, considering their imprisonment unjust. Others refuse to be deported to a country to which they do not want to or cannot return. These actions represent for them a final means of resistance when there is no other way out. The management of the centres calls these actions acts of rebellion.
We report here on the last communication we received.
A detainee of Albanian nationality who has been held in the Merksplas detention centre for 5 months has been on hunger strike for more than 25 days. Currently in isolation, his health is very precarious. For the last two nights, he has decided to sleep on the floor to protest against the management of the detention centre, which does not allow him to share morning yard time with the other inmates. In the conversation he had a few days ago with the director, he repeated that he would rather die in his cell in Belgium than be deported to his country where he risks losing his life.
Collective deportation of Aghans this 16/11/2022 : A detainee informs us that there is a “special flight” tomorrow to deport Afghans to Austria . Three Afghans in closed centre 127 bis and several Afghans from other centres were placed in … Continuer la lecture →
Osman (not his real name) is an Alevi Kurd and has been on hunger strike for two weeks in theCaricole detention centre near Brussels.
He refuses to be sent back to Poland and to be one of those peoplethat the Dublin Regulation allows to be sent back to Europe’s borders in undignified conditions. While the government is currently acceleratingpressure on so-called dublinized people, Osman’s situation is a testament to the devastating effects ofthis regulation.
Locked up for almost two months, he has no other choice. His request is simple: to be releasedfrom the threat of deportation to Poland and Turkey, and to be able to apply for asylum in Belgium.
When he arrived in Europe, the fear of being sent back to Turkey prevented Osman from eatingfor twelve days. He arrived in Belgium in March 2022 and was arrested and locked up on 23 August in the Caricole detention centre.He left Turkey because he was in danger because of hisKurdish origin and his religious beliefs. In order to enter Europe, he obtained a visa for Poland, but never went there because he wanted to come to Belgium to be reunited with part of his family.The Dublin Regulation allows Belgium to send him back to Poland, where he has never been and does not know anyone, to process his asylum application.
On 6 October, a flight was scheduled to deport him to Warsaw. He was able to refuse it, but fears that another attempt will be made to deport him, and that this will be the first step towards a forced return to Turkey. Despite legal means to assert his claim for international protection in Belgium, he decided to go on hunger strike on 5 October without drinking for the first six days.
He explains his choice in these words: “I prefer to end my life protesting against being ignored here rather than being sent to Turkey and dying.
The flaws of the medical service.
Fatigue, weight loss, difficulty walking,frequent dizziness, fainting and severe stomach ache are the main symptoms Osman suffers from, while the medical service at the centre pays little attention to his complaints. An external doctor visited him twice and reported several somatic and psychological problems. The biological and urinary analyses she recommended have not yet been carried out by the Caricole medical service.
The Aliens Office continues to ignore the obvious, he must be released urgently so that he can feed again and receive appropriate medical help.
On the morning of October 20th, Osman was forcibly taken on a flight to
Poland. According to witnesses in the center, Osman was put in solitary
confinement yesterday, was tied up and spent the night tied up with a
boxing helmet on his head. Methods that testify to the violence and
relentlessness of the authorities. Despite his very poor health
described in an independent medical report, the administration wanted to
deport him at all costs. Osman testifies: "They put me on the plane with
four policemen holding me, my hands and feet were tied. Two policemen
were constantly watching me. As soon as I moved, they grabbed my head,
pushed it down and covered my mouth. I was tied up all the time."
The effects of the recent strengthening of the Dublin Regulation
Almost two months ago, the new “Dublin centre” opened in Zaventem, which Secretary of State Nicole De Moor is already using to intensify a system that has been strongly criticised by NGOs. Osman is now one of the many victims of the Dublin regulation and the recent acceleration of procedures ordered by the government.
By its stubbornness in keeping him in detention in an extremely worrying state, Belgium is admitting the possibility of killing him.
Furthermore, we learn that a dozen Afghans, also from Dublin, are locked up in 127 bis.
It is important to note that the administrative violence implied by the Dublin regulation and, in general, the procedures linked to migration and regularisation are all traumas and violence that are added to people’s experiences.
Five inmates escaped from the detention centre on 04/10/2022
The Caricole centre is one of the detention centres set up by the Belgian state. Its function is to detain people arrested at airports and borders. These include people who were visiting someone or visiting as tourists and who did not have the required papers to enter the country. These people are repatriated to their country of departure. Others apply for international protection and are arrested at the airport, their applications being deemed suspicious by the airport police and the Aliens Office. They are locked up in the Caricole centre while their asylum application is processed. The detainees are currently witnessing several very violent expulsions, including that of an Iraqi national expelled to Burundi. All the detainees were very shocked by this expulsion.
This 04/10 in the evening 5 detainees chose freedom and left the centre (our authorities call it an escape).
Update 09/10/2022: He was supposed to go before the Indictment Chamber on Tuesday 4/10/2022 for the fifth procedure introduced to obtain his release: he received the result on Thursday 06/10/2022: negative. The next day at 5am by surprise he is told to gather his belongings to leave; he sends us an urgent SMS at 6am: “I am being taken to the airport this morning for a flight at 10.30am….”: he has been forcibly deported and contacts us again to tell us that he has arrived and that he did not have too many problems on arrival. “I will try to rebuild my life in Rwanda.
A person locked up in the closed centre of Merksplas for 9 months has started a hunger strike this 22/09/2022. He is demanding justice and humanity.
Michel (not his real name) fled the war in Rwanda at the age of 6 with his family. He was forced to spend some time in refugee camps, first in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then in Kenya. During this time, his parents died. In 2001, he was repatriated to Belgium at the age of 12 with part of his family.
Recognised as a refugee in 2002, he is very traumatised by his journey and all the atrocities he saw during the genocide.
He then committed acts qualified as “delinquency”. He was convicted of public order offences and imprisoned several times between 2008 and 2014.
Following these convictions, the CGRA withdrew his refugee status in 2016. His lawyer lodged an appeal against this decision.
When he was released from prison, he followed a training course and found a job, with the help of his legal assistant in Namur.
But the final decision came in 2019: the “Raad voor vreemdelingen betwistingen” rejected his appeal against the withdrawal of his refugee status. He receives an order to leave the country.
He was arrested and taken to the closed centre in December 2021 in order
to deport him to his “country of origin”, Rwanda.
He testifies that he cannot and does not want to return to the country he left when he was 6 years old. He still remembers the murders and all the atrocities he witnessed, as well as the death of his parents during his exile. When he arrived in Belgium, he was traumatised and very quickly “went crazy”. He tells us that after his years in prison, he did everything to get his life back on track. He doesn’t know anyone in Rwanda, doesn’t speak the language, all his family members live in Belgium or France and have refugee status (uncles, cousins, etc.) He is very afraid of reprisals in Rwanda, as his father remains one of the genocidaires in the memory of many (he was a colonel in the Rwandan army and was wanted).
His release has been ordered 5 times by the Council Chamber. Each time, the Aliens Office appealed.
He will appear again this Tuesday 4/10/2022 before the Indictment Division for the fifth procedure to obtain his release.This 4 October 2022 will also mark the 13th day of his hunger strike.
We refuse all expulsions and denounce the racist and cynical repatriation policy of the Belgian state.
Transcription in Engl of the testimony
“Hello to you who are listening to the recording. I am a young man of 33 years. I was born in Rwanda and I have been living in Belgium for 21 years. I have been detained in a closed centre for about ten months. And for the past week I have been locked up in a cell on hunger strike. I’m going to tell you briefly about my life and the reasons why I’m here today. First of all, I am the youngest of six siblings, four girls and two boys. My father was a senior officer in the former Rwandan army, my mother a big businesswoman. My life started well and the first years of my childhood were not bad. In April 1994, I was five years old when everything fell apart. It was the beginning of the genocide in Rwanda. I remember that morning when I was awakened by the sound of distant gunfire. I was still far from imagining that my life would change. That gunshots and bombs would become part of my daily life and would lull me to sleep for many years to come. The war had been raging in Rwanda for several years already, but I was not aware of it. That morning I quickly became aware of the seriousness of the situation when I saw two dead people in front of our house, and the state of agitation that reigned everywhere in the street. One of my sisters told me that it was the end of the world and that we would all die. A few days later my exile began. I began a long journey through Rwanda with my family, hindered by horrific tragedies, to reach the Congo. We walked for months through the hills, the forest, then across a lake to arrive in 1995 in a huge refugee camp in eastern Congo. Death was everywhere, the screams, the blood. Throughout my journey it was absolute horror. In the camp, everyone had to undergo military training. The army was recruiting all the boys, even the children, to prepare for war. Cholera was rampant. And in 1996, about a year after we arrived in the camp, the war caught up with us. It was in the middle of the night, the camp was attacked, I saw my parents and one of
my sisters die. They were shot. I ran. It was total chaos. I was saved by a soldier and we fled with a group to the forest. We walked for weeks and arrived in another town in Congo. I learned that my brother and my other sisters were alive and in Kenya. I was able to join them some time later. In Kenya, after only a few months, we learned that several people in our group were being murdered or were missing. My sisters were then sent to France and Belgium and my brother joined them some time later. As for me, I went to the Ivory Coast where I stayed for almost two years. During my stay there a coup d’état took place. It was around the year 2000. The following year I arrived in France and was sent to live with my uncle in Belgium. I was then twelve years old. I started the process of regularising my status and in 2002 I was recognised as a refugee. I went back to school thinking that I could forget my past and live like everyone else. I didn’t have any psychological support after the trauma I had experienced. My uncle was very strict and unloving and at 16 he kicked me out of his house. I was left on my own and fell into delinquency. I was arrested and sentenced four times by the courts. I spent several periods in prison. And in 2016 the Office of the Refugee Commissioner withdrew my refugee status, concluding that I was dangerous and that I should be sent back to Rwanda. I was then incarcerated in Lantin and I lodged an appeal against this decision. Paradoxically, it was in prison that I had my first contact with psychologists with whom I was able to work on myself and elaborate on my tragic past. I was released from prison in 2017, 14 months before the end of my sentence. I was then on parole and I completely changed my life. I left the city of Liege to live in Marche-en-Famenne with my sister. I started training in Namur. When I finished my training, I started working and took a flat. In 2019, the Aliens’ Council confirmed the withdrawal of my refugee status, even
though I had been on the right track in my life for over two years. Some time later the Aliens Office gave me an Order to Leave the Territory. One of the conditions of my release was to respect any decision of the Aliens Office. Moreover, with this Order to Leave the Territory and my withdrawal of residency permit, I could no longer work and I lost my flat. A year later, I was arrested again and imprisoned for not respecting the conditions. I served the remaining 14 months of my sentence and when I got out the Aliens Office put me in a closed centre. To this day, I am still there and they are trying to send me back to Rwanda despite the fact that my family was persecuted and hated there, that none of my family members live there any more, everyone lives in Belgium or France, and despite the fact that all my family members who stayed there have been murdered. The court has ordered my release five times in the last ten months. But nothing happens, the deportation procedure is still ongoing. That’s why, in desperation, I decided to go on hunger strike, hoping for a better outcome. Thank you for listening to this recording.
Hello everyone, As you know, GVO fights against detention centres by bringing out the testimonies of detainees and by preventing the deportations .Thanks to the contacts with the detainees and by bringing out the testimonies, we can highlight the existence of closed centres and the conditions of detention (violence, racism,…). We need regular support for interviews with detainees, translations, collection of testimonies, audio editing,…
We are organising a meeting on 22.10.2022 at 15.00 in Brussels. If you are interested and available, please send an e-mail to the following address: gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
If you cannot come, we can arrange a phone call gettingthevoiceout.org Thank you
On 20 September 2022, a 20-year-old woman from Iran resisted her second deportation attempt.Hands and feet tied , accompanied by two policemen, she showed her resistance by shouting . This was how she warned the passengers who supported her. She was eventually ejected from the plane. Apparently, a secured flight is scheduled for tomorrow morning (23.09.2022).
September 22, 2022 is the date of the 24th anniversary of Semira Adamu, who was suffocated and died by 9 gendarmes during her 6th deportation attempt. Despite this murder, nothing has changed about the ruthlessness for Aisha. The second deportation was narrowly avoided as passengers on Turkish airline flight TK1938 stood up to support her in her resistance.
Aisha is currently being held at the Caricole detention centre.
During her first deportation, police and airline officials had already intimidated her by beating her before and after the attempted deportation. Aisha returned to the center covered in blood and bruises. Videos taken by passengers show Aisha can be heard shouting, “I am fighting for my life, please leave me alone, I am just a refugee, they want to force me to return, please do something! I beg all of you, do something. I don’t want to die, I’m only 20 years old, I don’t want to die”. “The passengers had the reflex to record what happened because too often there is still a lack of evidence of the violence deportees experience from police officers and staff in detention centres. This makes it possible to publicise what really happens in these centres. We need to make people aware of the violence of our migration policy: the border policy caused death 24 years ago and remains responsible for the deaths of thousands of people since then,” explains an activist. The coercive measures and violence increase with every attempt to deport her. According to our sources, Aisha faces a third deportation attempt on 23 September and will apparently be deported on a so-called “secure flight” to Iran.
Prisonners are concerned about a man on hunger strike for 25 days. He already had health problems when he arrived in the center 2 months ago, and is very weak. He is a man who has been living in Belgium for 5 years. He tells us that he does not want to stop his hunger strike. The doctor of the center does not seem worried and he does not have any medical follow-up adapted to his situation. We urgently seek an outside doctor to consult him.
Several detainees call us outraged by the violence of a guard.
The “Turkish chef”, as some of the inmates call him, comes into their rooms, pushes them around, knocks on the beds and calls them “bums” and other insults that they do not understand. Two inmates are particularly targeted.
The inmates testified that there is a head guard who is very, very racist with the inmates. He tries to provoke him either with words or sometimes he pushes them with his shoulder in the corridor. Yesterday (13/09/2022) he gave him the obligatory pill (medication?), he touched his mouth to see if he had swallowed the medication. Ron (not his real name) was very upset. He told him many times not to touch him but the guard insisted. He opened the door on the inmates without knocking. Once he told him: “If you want to fight here, there is a corner where there is no camera”. They trie to avoid him all the time. This morning they spoke with the director of the center but she told them that she does not work the next day. She is going to have a meeting with the others from the management and look into this matter.
In the meantime the inmates are hoping for justice:
“either there’s an investigation inside and this guy leaves them alone, or something outside to make the people who are going through it swing.”
UPDATE : A was admitted in the hospital on 05/09 and find his freedom on 09/09
5 September 2022
Co-detainees alert us and are very worried about the state of health of Mr A.
A has been on hunger strike for 17 days in the 127 bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel to demand his release.
He has the same profile as dozens of other detainees in Belgium’s detention centres.
Hearrived in Belgium 13 years ago. He was young and applied for a family reunification with his brothers and sisters who live in Belgium because his father and mother died
Like some other people in the centers, he once went to court for “disturbing the peace” and was convicted. Following this conviction and his sentence, the state locked him in a detention centre with the aim of sending him back to his “country of origin”.
The Office is once again carrying out the “double punishment”: the possibility of expelling a person in exile who is defined by them as a danger according to “their” public order after he has served his prison sentence has existed since 1980.
There are dozens of them stuck in the closed centres of Bruges, Merksplas, Vottem, 127 bis, Holsbeek for several months, even a year. The Foreigners’ Office is unable to expel them and is holding them hostage. Indeed, several countries refuse to take back these people who are, according to the State, “delinquents” and do not issue a pass that would allow them to be deported.
In the words of detainees:
“We have served our time, we have paid for our bullshit. Why are we, of foreign origin, doubly punished?”
“This is torture, madam.
“They are tyrants!”
This racist and discriminatory double punishment is trivialised. No one reacts, no one denounces; people are locked up for months and then released.
30/08/2022 The detainees we are in contact with are demanding their freedom, their rights, proper food and access to medical care. They are protesting against these detentions, against deportations. They are detained in total precariousness, living all day in groups of about twenty people from different continents/countries together. At night, they are locked in rooms with 2 or 4 beds (except for Bruges with their old 20-bed dormitories). The management selects who can be with whom and does everything to prevent exchanges by placing people who do not speak the same languages in the rooms. In spite of this, solidarity develops.
Protests are sometimes collective, sometimes individual. The management uses all imaginable means to silence them.
In Merksplas, we hear a lot about systematic dunking as soon as a prisoner raises his voice. On August 23, 2022, security came to take a man by force to expel him. Several inmates protest and try to prevent this kidnapping. Rage rises and objects fly; the management calls the police. The robocops arrive in force to put down this rebellion. As a result, 5 prisoners are put in solitary confinement as well as the man who was to be deported. This person was finally taken to the airport the next day at 7am by the police.
In Vottem, the CRACPE (Collectif de Résistance Aux Centres pour Etrangers) informs us: We had two very determined hunger strikers, total hunger strike, and for the second one thirst strike started. A week apart, the same scenario: we called in an outside doctor because the people were very ill. Both times they took them to the emergency room of the Citadel hospital and released them, just before the visit of the outside doctor! The first one left immediately, the second one really had to be taken care of (thirst strike).
At the Holsbeek detention centre, about twenty women are currently detained and suffering. They often have very difficult backgrounds: some are fleeing a forced marriage, others have been victims of domestic violence, and still others have been victims of human trafficking. Some women are detained after a request for co-habitation or marriage, considered by the Office as a fake marriage in order to obtain papers. We also regularly learn that women fleeing their country to escape violence linked to their homosexuality are locked up under suspicion by the CGRA and the office of lying and demanding proof of their homosexuality. In the centres, violence is numerous, racist, institutional and medical. We are currently receiving testimonies about poor medical care and violence from the centre staff. Racist dehumanisation is common, especially when workers address a woman as “You, black woman”. Words of a visitor who asked that her testimony be published 25/08/2022 :
“At the detention centre she was abused by the nurse who choked her and dragged her, pulling her by the hair, even though she knew she had been diagnosed with cancer. This story tortures me. I fight for rights for all and I hear every day the horrors that are done to these poor people who arrived here by chance. And in these closed centres. How can guards be hired to abuse and terrorise people who know nothing about their rights? How can social workers treat these people in such a way by preventing them from having visits, giving false lawyer numbers and blackmailing them when the detainees refuse to sign documents without knowing what they are about?”
The solidarity between all these women seems to be the strongest. This is what keeps them going in this hell, they tell us.
We also learn a new rule in this centre: in general, the detainees choose their own lawyer. If they cannot afford one, the centre puts them in contact with a pro-deo lawyer, which they can refuse (or change lawyer later). We learn that the Holsbeek centre recently refused to allow detainees to choose their own lawyer!
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The appeal is still relevant: APPEAL: We need people to keep these contacts and to denounce these repressive and useless lock-ups. We call on people to join us to publicise these situations, to relay the voices of the detainees in the centres, and to support their struggles. Contact: gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
Solidarity action on the plane during the attempted deportation of M!
Many passengers would have filmed.
Call to find these passengers for possible testimonies and to bring them legal aid if they are prosecuted;
Call for the collection of videos taken by some passengers.
CONTACT : Contact gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net ou whatsapp 0032473628733
This Syrian man, M., was arrested in April at the airport and locked up in the Caricole detention centre. He had spent 4 years in Cyprus where he had “provisional papers”. He was tired of waiting, lived in precariousness and wanted to try his luck elsewhere. The Office decided to send him back to Cyprus under the Dublin procedure. They tried to deport him four times.
However, M. categorically refuses to return to Cyprus.
On the third attempt of deportation, he alerted the passengers who reacted and asked for him to be removed from the plane.
On 9 August 2022, the day of a fourth deportation attempt in the Ryanair flight Charlerloi-Paphos (Cyprus), two people went to the airport at 4 a.m. to raise awareness among passengers. During the attempted deportation, M. was tied up at the feet and hands, he was bludgeoned multiple times, on his torso and hands among others. Some passengers came forward and filmed the police officers’ actions, who asked them to stop and told them that it was forbidden. After an argument between police officers and passengers. M. were taken off the plane. He was transferred to the closed centre 127bis. He is covered with wounds and an external doctor will come to make a report.
Let’s prevent all expulsions. An expulsion is by definition violent.
They are arrested in the street, on public transport, in airports, at home, at the Foreigners Office, in open centres. Sometimes they are also transferred directly from a prison.
Street arrests: sometimes the local police raids people during what they call “routine” checks on the street or on pulic transport. These are often police in civilian clothes .
At Brussels Airport (Zaventem) or Charleroi, people who came on holiday to visit family (!) are taken to the Caricole detention centre and put on a return flight within 48 hours because their stay is considered “suspicious” by the federal police and the Foreigners’ Office, which thus validates the police racial profiling. Other people arrive at the airport as asylum seekers and some are also considered “suspicious” by the cops, and locked up in the Caricole centre.
Arrests at people’s home: after an request for regularisation, a request for marriage or co-habitation or a procedure for recognising a child, the administration of the concerned communemust register the official domicile. Very soon after the police arrive at the home to “carry out a control” and, if they consider people “suspicious”, arrest them and take them to a detention centre.
Dublin procedure: exiles who have been fingerprinted or who applied for asylum in another Schengen country will be sent back to that country. They are arrested either at the foreigners’ office (Office des Etrangers) when they apply for asylum again or when they receive convocation, or in the open centres when their Dublin deadline is out of date.
Nationals from Eastern European countries are being arrested and quickly deported.
Several testimonies that we received report forced deportationson a almost daily rate. Sometimes these deportations are very violent, to the extent that recently a woman had to be hospitalised on arrival in the country.
According to our observations and information, the following nationalities are currently present in great numbers in closed centres: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Guinea, Senegal, Surinam, Albania and several Eastern European countries. This is quite contradictory considering that some of these countries refuse to issue a “laissez-passer“ – or issue it sparingly (Guinea, Senegal, Algeria…).
So many have been locked up for up to one year and then finally released because of a lack of agreement with the country of origin.
These detentions and threats of deportation are a strategy of intimidation and propaganda directed at the exiles and the public, in order to continue to spread racist ideologies and criminalise foreigners.
STOP DEPORTATIONS
NO TO CLOSED CENTRES
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Help :
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly inform on their situation. Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros Lycamobile recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank account especially created for that purpose :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
3 August 2022 – From Monday 8 to Sunday 14 August the No Border Camp 2022 will take place in Rotterdam. Hundreds of international activists will gather for a week of actions, meetings, workshops, discussion and culture in the context of the struggle for a world without borders and freedom of movement for all. The international ‘Abolish Frontex’ campaign is an important spearhead of the camp.
The No Border Camp, including its actions and workshops, will call attention to the repressive and militarized Dutch and EU border and migration policies, at a time they reach new heights with walls, racism, violence and push-backs at and beyond the borders. From the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in Ter Apel to EU cooperation with non-EU-countries to stop refugees before they can reach the EU external borders, and from the situation of LGTBQIA+-refugees in The Netherlands to the consequences of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Participants to the camp will also discuss issues such as movement building and strategy.
Abolish Frontex is a decentralized and autonomous network of at the moment some 130 groups and organizations from EU countries and beyond. The aim of Abolish Frontex is not to reform or improve EU border guard agency Frontex, or to replace it with more of the same. But rather to target the policies and system that keeps Frontex in place. Abolish Frontex is working towards ending the EU border regime, dismantling the border-industrial complex, and building a society where people are free to move and live.
The camp is organized by a coalition of activists from several groups in The Netherlands, and follows the previous No Border Camps in Rotterdam (2013) and Wassenaar (2019). The camp in 2019 ended with the occupation of the roof of the NATO Communications and Informations Agency in The Hague, to protest the role of NATO in forcing people to flee and its involvement in border security in the Mediterranean.
The exact location of the camp will be announced on Monday.
Apres plusieurs semaines ” turbulentes” , mais envers et contre
tout, de bonnes énergies aussi…., enfin ce départ tant attendu. Mon
cousin Moussa est à l’avance,destination Gare du Nord où on se fait une
chaleureuse accolade sur le quai.A croire que tous rentrent au pays ce
jour là ! Une file interminable et 3 guichets au contrôle retardent
l’embarquement de 45 minutes. Enfin installés, on palabre en ouolof avec
mes voisins de vol et ça les ravit.
2 fois à intervalle de quelques secondes,on entend soudain un cri
venant de la dernière rangée : un jeune homme entouré de 2 personnes
semblant l’accompagner. Au début nous ne réalisons pas ce qui est en
train de se passer, on continue à échanger dans la bonne humeur.
Souhaitant faire quelques pas avant le décollage,je me dirige vers le
fond de l’avion. Une dame affublée d’un gilet orange fluo m’interdit d
aller plus loin. Je la regarde d’un air perplexe. Elle réitère en
précisant “police”.
Et là, je comprends soudain la situation : rapatrié de
force, le jeune essaie de nous avertir.Il est “escorté” de 7 policiers
en civil. Je regarde ceux entourant le gamin. L’index levé, je leur dis
2 fois calmement mais fermement :”ça je ne peux pas cautionner”.Je
retourne vers mon siège. Sans m’y asseoir, je préviens les passagers
alentours.Le jeune homme crie à nouveau. On réalise alors la terreur de
celui-ci cette fois.2 hommes réagissent.
S’ensuit un début d’émeute de par ceux-ci, quelques autres s’en
mêlant. La police, secondée par l’équipage, nous intime l’ordre de nous
asseoir. Ce qui se fait peu à peu.Je suis la seule encore debout ,fixant
les policiers,le jeune homme et répétant ” ca je ne peux pas cautionner “.
Une hôtesse s’énerve alors sur moi en me tutoyant et me menaçant de
me faire descendre (surenchérie par un des policiers). Mon voisin perd
soudain son sang froid , s’en prend à cette hôtesse quant à la manière
dont elle m’a parlé.2 mamans accompagnées de leurs enfants refusent de
voyager dans ce contexte, s’emportent à leur tour. Le ton monte de plus
bel.Après plus d’une heure ,
les policiers font enfin descendre le jeune homme. Des passagers installés dans la partie centrale applaudissent.Première
et seule réaction de la sorte : une Européenne me dit quelque peu
exaspérée ” il est descendu,c est bon maintenant,vous pouvez vous
asseoir”. Mais le fourgon – incognito aussi- est à l’arrêt et 2
policiers sont toujours dans l’avion .Je ne cède pas,encore et toujours
debout…Après une dizaine de minutes,ils rejoignent finalement le tarmac
et la camionnette démarre .Une fois assise, je me rends compte que j’ai
la respiration courte et les jambes flageolantes. Que j’ai réussi à
garder mon calme – extérieurement- tout en étant intransigeante…Qu’ils
auraient vraiment pu m’empêcher de partir. Je demande à une hôtesse pour
changer de place. Invoquant une raison bidon, elle refuse. Une fois le
dos tourné, je m’ installe symboliquement à la place du gamin. Aucune
membre de l’équipage n’osera exiger que je reprenne ma place
initiale.Au décollage, discrètement mais de manière inattendue,je
craque. En larmes silencieuses, je ressens à la fois un soulagement
sans nom, une colère nauséeuse pour ce contexte d’une inhumanité si
violente et meurtrière. Une tristesse et une peur incommensurables pour
ce gamin et ce qui l’attend à son retour au centre fermé .Je réalise
aussi à quoi il a échappé,en tous cas aujourd’hui. Cet avion, nous
l’avons pris par choix et en toute liberté. A l’atterrissage, je pense à
l’enfer qu aurait été ce voyage pour cette personne,cet être humain,
OUMAR, d’origine guinéenne.
Depuis, de Dakar, j ai fait appel à Getting the voice out. Je leur ai
demandé d’essayer de localiser et identifier ce jeune réfugié. Ce
qu’ils ont réussi à faire en quelques heures de par mon information de
vol (respect). Le dossier de Oumar est apparemment plein
d’irrégularités.
G. Was arrested at the airport and taken to the Caricole. He is 17 years old and has been regarded as an adult after a bone test. Tests whose credibilityis unreliable as it is based on “white western references :without taking into account ethnic origin, social-economic level or dietwhich obviously have an impact on an individual’s growth and therefore his skeleton “1.
He was therefore locked up at the Caricole for several months.
From Togo he tells us that he wants the message to get through, that he wants people to know what’s going onthere.
“I saw a lot of things, you have to live in the Caricole to see what happens, you have to be mentally strong”.
G was deported to Togo. He agreed to talk about his experience at thecentre: racism, mistreatment, psychological and physical violence.“We, black poeple, I don’t know what we did to the Belgians”, G told us in his testimony, referring to a racist administrative system and practices within the centre.
He also talks about the complicity of the airline company “Brussels Airlines” in deportations: members of staff
come to the centres to put poeple under pressure to accept deportation and being deported, without resistance. Three people came three times to see G : “we are doing our job”: but how much do you get paid to do this?
15 detainees, including several Syrians, started a hunger strike at the Caricole closed centre on 16/06/2022 to demand their release. This Saturday 18 June they phoned us; they have been on hunger strike for 3 days and ask for support. They demand their release and their freedom of movement.
Following the action of 11/06, we received many calls from detainees crying out their rage, their difficulties and their incomprehension about this system of “prison”. They assert the illegality of their detention, the mental and physical torture they suffer. They demand their rights, their freedom, visits, competent lawyers to defend themselves. Some of them thank us for the support: “We didn’t know that there were also people to support us and demand our release.” “Why put asylum seekers in prison?”
Closed Centre Caricole: last weekend at Caricole, it was a huge mess: up to 10 people a day are brought to the closed centre, stopped at the airport (Brussels or Charleroi) for administrative reasons: Indians, South Americans, Sub-Saharans, Albanians, Georgians, Palestinians. Most of them are repatriated with the company that brought them to their country of origin within 24 to 48 hours.
Some known examples:
-A man of Moroccan origin with a valid residence permit in Spain who was arrested in Charleroi because “he was making too many return trips” was repatriated to Morocco
-An older Algerian woman married to a Belgian resident in Belgium wanted to join her husband. She was repatriated to Algeria
They generally choose, if they do not want to apply for asylum, to return rather than to appeal against these decisions as this would mean imprisonment for several weeks/months in a closed centre
Merksplas detention centre: a man was facing a fourth attempt at forced deportation to his Dublin country, Italy. On arrival at the airport he was stripped naked (searched) and threatened with gagging if he refused to be deported. To avoid deportation he mutilated himself. An ambulance was called, he received stitches and was taken back to the centre
Holsbeek closed centre: surprise and very violent expulsion of an Iranian woman on 31/05. She is still being held at the Tehran police station on 8 June. Her fellow inmates are still in shock.
Closed centre Bruges: inmates tried to file a collective complaint on 07/06/2022 denouncing (we transcribe their written complaint in Dutch):
“A lack of knowledge of the limits of the duration of detention, intimidating social workers, racist staff members, the non-delivery of essential medicines for some, the distribution of meagre meals at 12 noon and at 6 pm (we are hungry!), the pressure of an imminent return to the country even for those who have children, companionship, work, a house in Belgium, a non-answer/listening of the persons in charge in the centres to their various requests
We sleep 15 to a room and it is the guards who turn off the lights and force us to sleep. Impossible to prolong the evening
We are not criminals but only for papers.
The management refused to take this complaint and one of them, an Iraqi with a Belgian wife and child, was put in solitary confinement. The next day 08/06/2022 he was taken by surprise to the airport. We have no news of him to this day.
Ms MS is Afghan. She was detained in the women’s detention centre in Holsbeek from 8 April 2022 to 24 May 2022, i.e. one and a half months. Her husband is Belgian and has returned from Pakistan with their three children. The mother was detained at the border and suffered this long detention … for nothing.
As the wife of a Belgian and mother of a Belgian child, she has the right to stay in Belgium. But for this she has to apply for a visa at the Belgian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, as there is no embassy in Afghanistan. To apply for this visa, you need a valid passport. But since the Taliban took power, you have to go to them to ask for this document. And they charge a lot for it. Belgium also requires such absurd documents as a certificate of good conduct.
In the usual procedures, one can try to understand, but for an Afghan woman? Seriously? Our government requires people – women – to risk their lives to go and ask the Taliban (an organisation still labelled as terrorist) for permission to leave the country. Asking the Taliban to certify that someone is not a criminal might be comical, if it did not have such serious implications.
As a result of the absurdity of Belgian bureaucracy, she was detained for one and a half months. Today Mrs MS has been reunited with her husband and children. Fortunately.
Arrests are going on in the streets of Brussels, in public transport, at the airport and in some people’s homes. We are in contact with many women arrested at the airport, often fleeing forced marriages, very serious domestic violence, to the point where one of them tells us “I want to stay in the centre. This is the only place where I feel safe.“
We are also in contact with people arrested at the airport whose documents are declared invalid by the airport police. For some, they have a valid residence permit in a European country and yet are illegally deported to their country of origin a day or two after their arrest without having time to consult a legal service.
We have contact with young people who are arrested on the street or during a Stib check and taken to a detention centre. They are very young, sometimes even minors, and have been wandering in Europe for 1 or 2 years. They will be sent back to their country of origin or to the Dublin country where they were forced to give their fingerprints. Once expelled, their “journey” will start again to try to find a “nicer” welcome elsewhere.
We are in contact with women or men who are prosecuted for public order offences and transferred from prison to a detention centre for deportation. Many have lived here for years, have families here and do not know their country of origin.
Many of the people we have contact with are Algerians who cannot be deported at the moment, as well as Senegalese who cannot be deported because their embassy refuses to issue them a pass. They will remain locked up for several months. Two Senegalese were released after 9 months of detention. Several Algerians have been detained for more than 8 months.
The detainees also tell us about many deportations to Eastern Europe and South America.This list is not exhaustive. The detainees tell us about racism and provocation by staff in some centres.They demand their release.
CALL We are looking for more people to call/visit the detainees so that their words do not remain unheard and that the very existence of these centres of shame are known to the general public and do not remain forgotten.Contact: 0465242430 or eveline@riseup.net
Another move by the Office of Shame! Three children spent a night in a police cell, then transferred to a detention centre, two 12 year old girls to the detention centre of Holsbeek and a 10 year old boy to the one of Merksplas. Total illegality! When they arrived at the closed centres, noticing their young age, they were entrusted to the guardianship service, as they should be.
Flagrantly attempting to lock up unaccompanied foreign minors. This event was reported by the media, but it is common for minors to remain in closed centres, in total invisibility.Here oure last art .
SHAME to the Foreigners’ Office! FIRE to the detention centres!
“We live in total stress: we don’t know when they are coming to get us to expel us.”
“We don’t get a ticket anymore. They suddenly come and kidnap us.”
“They put us aside in a room and then when we come back to our room one of us has disappeared with her things.”
“It was her today, it might be me tomorrow.”
Closed centre 127bis:
“Two Senegalese were taken this week to be deported with an escort; nobody saw or understood anything.”
Closed centreCaricole:
“I had to go to the doctor. After the consultation, they took me to the “cachot” without explanation; the next day I was deported, bound and gagged.”
The “Office des Étrangers” is doubling its efforts to forcibly deport detainees who have been locked up for up to 9 months following the lifting of covid measures:
– more and more deportation “tickets” are being issued;
detainees are forbidden to inform friends, lawyers and family;
– no tickets and therefore no warning for forced evictions
– discreet kidnappings in the centres to prevent fellow detainees from alerting the outside world;
– reinforced escorts;
– presumably, at the airport police station, sedatives are diluted in drinks (2 testimonies corroborate this hypothesis);
– the lawyers are only informed once the deportation procedure has begun.
Thus, in recent weeks, to our knowledge, 3 women and 3 men have been deported with escorts, sometimes to countries they do not even know:
– An Ivorian man was deported to Benin;
– A Congolese woman was also deported to Benin.
They have to pay a ransom to be released in Benin and they don’t know anyone in the country they were deported to. We are trying to keep in touch with them…
S, Algerian born in 2006, 16 years old, travelled across Europe for a year, looking for a place to live. He travelled from country to country (Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands) to end up in a detention centre in Belgium at the beginning of 2022.
His fellow inmates had alerted us to the presence of a boy in the Bruges detention centre. They warned us that he was in great pain.
Our article on this subject.https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/s-16-years-old-detained-in-the-closed-centre-of-bruges-rather-than-protected-14-02-2022/
At the beginning of his detention he was crying, then he was revolted by what happened to him and in total incomprehension. As a result of the management’s decisions, he found himself in solitary confinement on several occasions and even spent a few days in a psychiatric ward. His fellow inmates tried to protect and console him.
The Office des Etrangers gave him the age of 18 and treated him as an “adult”. So they made him sign a paper in Dutch, a language he does not understand, in which he confirmed this age even though the visiting NGOs and the co-detainees, as well as some of the educators in the centre, confirmed that he was a kid.
He told us “I want to go home”, “I miss my mum”.
It is not uncommon for the OE to lock up young minors in a detention centre, disputing their age, even though it is written on their birth certificate, claiming that it is false.
It is thanks to our contacts with detainees that we are sometimes made aware of these unacceptable situations. It is totally unacceptable that very young people are mistreated by our authorities.
The Office des Etrangers did everything it could to get rid of them by looking for the Dublin country that was willing to take them back. He was confronted with a real carousel of “Dublins”: Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany; countries where he had left his fingerprints.
Finally he was deported to Spain and was very happy and relieved to be released after 3 months of detention.
We have not heard from him since his deportation.
We will repeat again and again:
Let’s close the closed centres, let’s stop rounding up and locking up women, men and children who are simply trying, legitimately, to improve their lives.
RECHARGE THE PHONES of detainees in closed centres.
We receive a lot of requests for phone top-ups from people detained in closed centres. Their telephone is very often their only contact with the outside world, whether it be with family, friends, their lawyer, or to make their situation known publicly.
Whether their arrest takes place on their migration route or in their place of residence, whether their family and friends are here or in the country, being able to warn and communicate with their loved ones is crucial. Many of them would not be able to do so without your help.
You can support these detainees by buying a 10 euro top-up from Lycamobile at your local grocery store, nightshop or bookshop. Then send us the pin code from this top-up to our email address gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net . We will send this code to the prisoners who request it. You can also, if it is easier for you, pay or even better make a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the dedicated account :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions
Triodos Bank BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB
Communication: Lyca
Pass this message on to your friends and acquaintances.
On Friday 18/03/2022 at noon, she was kidnapped by security agents and the police, without any warning. Her lawyer was denied the right to see her.
On 24/11/2021 she was arrested at Zaventem airport, while on transit to Canada with visa, and detained in the closed detention centre of Holsbeek.
She was fleeing from a very violent husband. Her parents, brothers and sister have been protecting her day after day, until the day when none of them was alive anymore. She has no one left in her country to protect her, she tells us.
She has submitted several asylum applications that were rejected by the CGRS. A request for release was submitted a few days ago.
Flight SN Airlines SN231 saturday 19/03/2022 11h35 to the Ivory Coast where she will be disembarked with escort.
Meeting at the airport at 9am on the bagagge reception flighte SN231 or/and on the starting gate of the flight to Abidjan to explain to the passengers the situation of this man and to ask them to refuse that someone travel with them by force!
This Sunday 13/03, eight “migrants”, probably of Sudanese origin, were taken away by the federal police from a camp in the Arlon/Luxembourg region.
Today 17/03/2022 they remain untraceable despite our searches.
Presumably, none of them has been able to inform a relative or a lawyer.
Supporters on the spot do not dare to intervene for fear of “reprisals” by the police.
It is very possible that the authorities have decided to prosecute them for “human trafficking” and that they have been thrown into prison.
The criminalisation of migrants through an abusively broad interpretation of “human trafficking” (which according to the law should be for financial gain) is unfortunately not uncommon and is part of the “strategy of terror” put in place by the Foreign Office with the complicity of the police.
We are therefore waiting for the press release glorifying the dismantling of yet another network of “dangerous smugglers”. Among these “dangerous smugglers”, we generally find many migrants who help each other without money and/or a few small hands trying to pay or reimburse their trip… to real criminals.
The eight Sudanese risk very heavy penalties if they are not quickly identified and located, in order to find them a lawyer specialised in this type of case. Many other migrants are currently in prison on light or inadmissible charges.
According to our information, arrests are going well and many migrants are being sent to prison rather than to closed centres.
Any indication or information on the whereabouts of these people is welcome!
PS : we found a first one in the St Gillis gevangenis
was brought to an isolation cell again this 09/03/2022. He is in a wheelchair disabled by the mistreatment he suffered during the previous eviction. He is in this isolation cell in the deportation center Caricole, completely naked in his wheelchair. The Office of Foreigners has programmed a new expulsion on 10/03/2022
Mr. is very weakened by the mistreatment he has undergone and will have difficulty in coming forward again to refuse this expulsion.
Flight SN Airlines SN231 Thursday 10/03/2022 11h35 to the Ivory Coast where he will be disembarked with escort.
Meeting at the airport at 9am on the bagagge reception flighte SN231 or/and on the starting gate of the flight to Abidjan to explain to the passengers the situation of this man and to ask them to refuse that someone travel with them by force!
She arrived on 25/06/2021 from Cotonou hoping to apply for asylum.She was arrested by the aeronautical police at Zaventem airport, considering her application suspicious.She was placed in a closed centre in Holsbeek, then in Bruges.An employee at the CGRA service did not hear or believe the reasons for her flight and rejected her asylum application.She has been locked up for almost 9 months in our “closed centres for illegals”.She is 26 years old.
She has already been subjected to five deportation attempts. The ‘Office des Étrangers’ wants to deport her shamelessly at all costs.
She will be subject to a new attempt to expel her with an escort this Thursday 10/03/2022.She is asking for support to prevent this deportation.
Flight SN Airlines SN231 Thursday 10/03/2022 11h35 to the Ivory Coast with stopover in Cotonou where she will be disembarked with her escort.
Meeting at the airport at 9am on the bagagge reception flighte SN231 or/and on the starting gate of the flight to Abidjan to explain to the passengers the situation of this lady and to ask them to refuse that someone travel with them by force!
Update 8pm 03/03/2022: The young man was brought back to the centre this afternoon. This morning, after a night in detention, he was taken by force to the airport. He was tied up to be put on the plane but was still able to make a noise to alert the passengers. They refused to allow the plane to take off with a person being deported against his will. The young man was taken out of the plane and dragged to the ground. Throughout the deportation attempt, he was abused. Physically injured and shocked, he is currently back in the closed center.
The
young girl, despite the fact that her expulsion got cancelled by the
council, was nevertheless expelled with to Bening with an escort.
Activists were present at the airport of Zaventem to warn passengers of
her situation. Several passengers stood up in the plane to refuse the
deportation; they were threatened with being removed from the plane if
they wouldn’t sit down. Finally the passengers sat down and the plane
took off. On
27/02/2022 , 24 hours after their arrival, we heard that she was still
at the police station in Cotonou with her escort, the authorities in
Benin questioning this expulsion. The escort continues to put pressure
on her to stay in Cotonou. Any political, legal, media or citizen
pressure is welcome.
Sixth expulsion attempt this 26/02/2022 – From forced marriage to expulsion: a new Semira?
This morning of 24/02/2022, they want her to take a covid test: she asks why… Suspicious, she refuses. Finally, after insistence, she learns that she will be taken to the airport on 26/02 for a new expulsion attempt to Benin. If she had not insisted, it is likely that she would have been told this news the day before or even the day of her deportation.
The flight number is SN229, departing at 11.25am, to Abidjan and then Cotonou, on Saturday 26/02/2022.
Below is the previous appeal to prevent her fifth attempt at deportation: once again, she found the courage to refuse.
09.02 :” From forced marriage to expulsion: a new Semira?
We learn today, with horror, the detention of a young girl of 17 years and a 5th attempt of expulsion this Thursday 10/02/2021 towards Cotonou.
She arrived in Belgium fleeing a forced marriage in Benin with her uncle on 25/06/2021. As soon as she arrived in Belgium, she was locked up in a closed center. Since then, she has made several requests for asylum, all of which were refused, as her story was not considered “credible”.
A test to verify her age had been requested upon her arrival, which, according to our information, was refused. She is determined to refuse this new expulsion, being very afraid to return to her country and asks for our help.”
*Flight SN 229 to Abidjan and Cotonou 11:25 am on Saturday 26/02/2022.
A person with whom we have been in contact, locked up in 127 bis, has informed us that this morning she received a ticket to her country of origin, Senegal. This person has been refused asylum in Belgium. However, she claims to be in danger of death if she is sent back there!
Once again, Brussels Airlines is collaborating with this inhumane policy.
Flight SN 203 Banjul via Dakar. Departure on 25 February at 12.15.
Let’s prevent this deportation by writing, faxing, phoning the people responsible for these criminal acts.
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11. Email: contact@premier.be
Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06. Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be
“Hello, I wanted to explain the things we go through here in this centre. The majority of the people who are here we all came, we fled either… there are people who fled death, people who fled abuse. Everybody has reasons to leave their native country. We came to Belgium, we asked for asylum, we asked for protection, we asked for everything here and it’s always the same……..”
Hello, I wanted to explain the things we go through here in this centre. The majority of the people who are here we all came, we fled either… there are people who fled death, people who fled abuse. Everybody has reasons to leave their native country. We came to Belgium, we asked for asylum, we asked for protection, we asked for everything here and it’s always the same. Our lawyers, they impose pro deo lawyers on us, they give us lawyers that we can’t communicate with. They don’t prepare us, they don’t come to see us, nothing at all. We’re locked up in this centre because we just want to live normally, like everyone else, what we couldn’t live at home there. There are homosexuals, in their native country, it is forbidden, it is killed, it is punished. Punishment is serious in their country. They have spent all the money they had, they don’t even have any money. They flee their country, they come here to take shelter from the danger that is there in their native country. I, for example, fled death, I brought back a medical report, I brought back photos, everything, solid proof. Many people here have solid proof. They come, they tell us: “Yes, wait, we’ll give you a lawyer”. The lawyer is never reachable. The situation we’re in psychologically is… It’s really bad. We’re so bad that people here are talking about committing suicide. We didn’t know that it was going to be like this, otherwise we wouldn’t have run away to come to Belgium. We were going to flee to another country in the European Union. There are lots of people, they arrived in Spain, in France, they stay 2-3 days. Here there are people who have been here for 8 months, 7 months. Here there is a guy who is afraid to tell his real age, he is a minor. Everyone, every person in this centre has a reason to leave, you can’t leave your home to come here just for the fun of it. No, each one of them has fled either death or… Most of them have fled death or torture. The help we get is being locked up in a centre
, we are woken up at 8am to have breakfast. If you’re not there in 15 minutes breakfast is over for you. At 11am you go to have lunch. If you’re not there from 11 to 11:30 or from 11:30 to noon, that’s it, you’re not going to have lunch. People go on hunger strikes, they don’t care about them. “Go ahead and die if you want”. We’re running away from slavery, we come here, it’s modern slavery, it’s modern slavery that we have here in the centres. The social workers who are here don’t help us. In any case, we spoke to the director and she told us: “These are not social workers who work for you, these are repatriation agents. There were Congolese people here, fifty Congolese or I don’t know how many, they put them on a military plane to return them to the Congo. Like sheep they were taken in the evening without telling them anything, without warning them. They put them in “cachots”, in isolation cells. The next day they were put on buses and taken to the airport. Hop! on the plane. Hop! Go home. Although they have done 16 years, some of them have done 16, 17 years in Belgium. They don’t know the Congo, they came here very young. They take our phones, because they can’t leave us our phones, if they leave us our phones with the cameras everyone will know what’s happening here. But they don’t leave us our phones and they don’t leave us anything. It’s to lock us up and deprive us of our laws and our rights. And they give us lawyers who are not there for us, they are for them.
UPDATE 12/02/2022 : She refused her deportation and was brought back to the closed centre of Bruges ; They are 2 from Benin locked up for almost 8 months ;
From forced marriage to expulsion: a new Semira?
We learn today, with horror, the detention of a young girl of 17 years and a 5th attempt of expulsion this Thursday 10/02/2021 towards Cotonou.
She arrived in Belgium fleeing a forced marriage in Benin with her uncle on 25/06/2021. As soon as she arrived in Belgium, she was locked up in a closed center. Since then, she has made several requests for asylum, all of which were refused, as her story was not considered “credible”.
A test to verify her age had been requested upon her arrival, which, according to our information, was refused. She is determined to refuse this new expulsion, being very afraid to return to her country and asks for our help.
*Flight SN 231 to Abidjan and Cotonou 11:25 am on 10/02 /2022
There are 15 people in the L1 wing of the 127 bis detention centre, including three in confinement.
On 1 February 2022, they decided to go on hunger strike to protest against :Their detention conditions
A lack of clear information on the duration of their detention. They never know how long they will stay: “It’s a lottery”. They refuse endless detention.
They ask for :
Their release even if they have an OQT
Stop deportations to their country of origin “where the majority of us will not be welcome”.
Respect from the staff in the closed centre
We want public opinion with us
To be treated as human beings: with dignity
A change in the reception system
Contact with the press
We ask for solidarity
And tell us:
“Free us and let us try elsewhere.
We can accept the negative procedures, we respect that, but release us and let us try elsewhere.
“We still have a life ahead of us, let us live our lives with dignity”
“Everyone has the right to live”.
At the time of the walk they decided to refuse to go back to their room. The security staff came and explained that the management would come and discuss with them the next day, adding that if they refused to go back up it would be with force, even if it meant calling the police. Finally, following these threats, they went back to their room and are waiting for the meeting with the management.
On the 2nd of February, they discussed with the management who told them that they could not do anything about the decisions of the CGRA or the OE, but that they would try to do what they could in the centre.
Two
of the hunger strikers from the 127bis detention centre explain the
reasons for their action and why they decided not to return after the
“walk” in the yard.
“It’s not really going well, it’s not going well at all. People
have started a hunger strike here. Ah, it’s hot, everyone this time. No
one’s going to go home after the walk, everyone’s going to stay out in
the cold. Yeah, that’s got to change, obviously.- How many of you are there?- Thirteen. Yeah, because there’s not that many people here at the moment. – Okay, and how long have you all been on hunger strike?- Since this morning. – And you’re going to stay in the yard at 3:00 this afternoon, right?- Yeah, yeah.- And what do you want?-
In a few days, it will be eight months for me and three months for
others. There’s been a minor here for maybe three months. People are
here and there’s no follow-up. Always negatives, negatives. And their
only problem is to tie us up and bring us back to the problems that
await us. It’s been negative and we haven’t been granted asylum, okay.
But let us take our chances elsewhere and try to have our own life.
Because they’re going to tie us up and put us on a plane to bring us
back to face the death that awaits us, it’s not their problem. And
afterwards, they will say that they were able to save that life. For
lack of evidence, they bring you back to face the problems that await
you. Eight months on and there’s no follow-up, you’re not released,
you’re here like this. You haven’t committed any crime, you’re in prison
like that, like a criminal. Here, everything is negativity, everything
is negativity. All they have is back, back, back. If we could have gone
back, we wouldn’t have stayed there for more than eight months. We
didn’t commit any crime to be imprisoned like this. We ran away from a problem to be imprisoned? Ah, frankly it’s too hard, it’s too hard. There are other people who want to talk. –
Hello? Hello. We have been here since this morning. Nobody eats, nobody
does anything here. We decided at 3pm on the walk there that we don’t
need to go back, we’re going to stay in the cold, here it complicates
things. We really need your help, frankly.”
AudioTestimony: detention in the “special wing” of the closed center of Vottem.
25/01/2022
A detainee recently contacted us to tell us about his detention in the “special wing” of the center of Vottem. This place is distinct from the “cachots”. It is nevertheless a wing where the detainees are isolated in their room with restricted access to exits and activities fàr a indefitive time This wing, also known as the ‘secure wing’, was set up in 2014 initially for so-called ‘criminals’ who were released from prison and also, according to Maggie De Block, for those ‘whose behaviour requires special supervision and monitoring’ (by which she means those who are recalcitrant to the system, those who have decided not to be treated in this way).
At present, the person who testified is still in isolation.
“Hello, I am someone from a closed centre. As I was in Morocco. I have been in Morocco for a long time because of the Corona it was the closed border. When I came back to Belgium, they stopped me at the airport and sent me to a closed centre. Now I’ve been in the closed centre for 6 months. Before I was in centre 127 in Brussels. They transferred me to Vottem, now I’ve been in Vottem for a month and a half. As I fell ill, as I asked for treatment, they gave me medicine, ten medicines per day. I asked for medicine and all that, to ask to be sent to the hospital, to check my health and all that. As I asked for five things, for medication, to go to the bank or to get my residence permit, they sent me to a closed room here in Vottem, isolation. It’s been seven days now in the room. I wrote a complaint about that. Nobody listened to me about the complaint. I write. And the people here are like a slave, they don’t give a fuck about you. You are like a dog here, not like a human. There is no human right. There is nothing when you speak for the right. They put you in an isolated room. They treat people here like a dog. I don’t understand the law at the Vottem detention centre, I don’t understand why they treat people like that. You’re sick, you’re not sick, you can’t stay in the closed room. Now it’s been six months. I have two children. I have a girl, I have a boy. My children cry for me every day. I went to court. Three releases and three negatives. I don’t understand the law in Belgium. “
Many detainees in closed centres are or will be deported these days, mainly to sub-Saharan Africa.
Most of them are people who have been arrested at the airport and denied asylum. They are desperate and tell us that they are in danger in the country they left but that the CGRA or the Office des étrangers did not consider their application valid for various reasons. Everything is based on written evidence, their word is not heard, the fact that they come from so-called “safe” countries etc.
These frightened detainees are constantly calling us for help. We juggle with their lawyers, some of whom are absent and others who are unable to find a legal solution to prevent deportations.
Last deportations to our knowledge: 28/12/2021: Forced deportation to Iran
28/12 /2021 : Forced deportation to Cameroon.
18/01/2022: Deportation to Istanbul twice for an Iraqi, twice Turkey refused him and he was brought back in CF to Belgium
19/02/2022: Collective flight to DRC with to our knowledge 3 men and one woman (more info to follow)
Indviduel Planned Deportations planned to our knowledge:
21/01/2022: to Cameroon
22/01: to Benin22/02: to Ivory Coast
25/01: to Senegal
The only way to prevent their deportation is to refuse a Covid test that many countries and/or airlines require. But, here too, the pressure is mounting in the centres: those who refuse the test are quarantined, and their expulsion is then considered to have been refused, which means that they will be accompanied by an escort at the next attempt! Detainees’ words:
“I have a ticket for deportation tomorrow, the 21st, and yesterday I refused to take the test. They are trying to do it by all means”.
EVERYONE has a legitimate reason for wanting to leave their country.Everything is done to prevent “foreigners” from settling in our country.
Freedom of movement and settlement for all.
NO BORDER!
————————————————————
COVID in a closed centre 21/01/2022
The detainees of the closed centre in Merksplas ask us to pass on their situation Since a few days, COVID cases have been detected in their block 3. Since then, a small number of prisoners have been placed in isolation in a separate block. The 10 others in block 3 are locked in their rooms, not allowed to do anything and only allowed to “walk” for half an hour. They tell us that it is the guards, who only occasionally wear masks, who are bringing in the virus and are the source of the infections.
They want the outside world to know about the existence of these prisons for foreigners and their living conditions.
Update 31/01/2021 “the intricacies of the Dublin agreements”
S is still detained in the detention centre in BrugesThe office des étrangers (Immigration office)
estimated that he was 18 years old on the basis of an age definition
test, a test with a margin of error of 2 years and still disputed by
scientists. S still tells us he is 16…He remains extremely fragile and traumatised. At the moment he can join his fellow inmates who support him during the day but we heard that he is again detained in isolation. The social worker first told him that he would be deported to the Netherlands, then to SpainIn fact, he has travelled around Europe and has left his fingerprints in several countries. At present he is told that he has to go to the Algerian embassy, which is very frightening for him. Faced with these uncertainties, he can’t take it anymore and demands his release.
A new illustration of the lack of humanity of an administration which, too often in silence, destroys lives. An administration which, once again, only applies the law when it comes to punishing, locking up and deporting, . Even if it means locking up a minor.
On 10 January, a prisoner at the Bruges detention centre told us that he had met a young man in great pain during a “walk”. According to him, this young man is a kid. He is Algerian and was born in 2006. He was arrested at the beginning of the year in Ostend by the police. Without papers, speaking neither Dutch nor French and having rebelled in the police station, a policeman decided to call him an adult and arbitrarily attributed an age of 20 to him. Frightened, alone, not understanding what was happening to him, he agreed to sign the documents in Dutch that were presented to him without translation. Among these documents, a declaration in which he confirmed – in Dutch – that he was born in 2002. The trap was sprung, and the teenager was transferred by the ‘Office des Étrangers’ to a detention centre to be held as an adult.
When he arrived at the centre, already in great psychological distress, S was placed in medical isolation, with only 30 minutes of fresh air per day. His telephone is not left with him, and he will only have access to it depending on the “goodwill” of the centre’s management. Confined to his cell, with no contacts, unable to communicate with the staff, completely isolated even though he is already very disturbed, his situation deteriorating rapidly.
Invisibilised by the administration – which always prefers to hide what happens in the centres, and especially the daily violence – it took, once again, the appalled testimony of a fellow prisoner for S’s scandalous situation to be brought to light.
We notified a lawyer as well as the Kinderrechtenkommissariaat. and the children’s rights officer, hoping to have S’s right to protection respected as soon as possible, which starts with his release. But this may not be enough in the face of the obstinacy, racism and dishonesty that characterise an administration that seems to have lost all humanity, a psychopathic administration.
This 14/01/2022 we learn that the management of the centre have decided to prevent him from any contact with the other detainees and he no longer answers his phone!
It is high time to close the detention centres, and to stop rounding up and locking up women, men and children who are simply trying, legitimately, to improve their lives.
The family and their lawyer are going to ask for a return visa for F. in court on 19/01/2022. If you want to support the family in court, come to the court this 19/01/2022 at 8.30 am in Rue des Quatre-Bras to support the family and for the return of F. to Belgium.
F. was born in Belgium in St-Josse-ten-Noode in 2001 and has lived all his life in Belgium with his family. F. has always had mental health problems. His parents are French of Moroccan origin and he was registered as a French national at birth by the commune. At the end of August 2021, F. and his mother went on holiday to Bodrum in Turkey. On their way back, they were stopped at Brussels-Zaventem airport because they had no proof of French nationality. They had travelled with their Moroccan passports.
From Brussels Airport, F. and his mother were taken to the Caricole detention centre. F.’s mother fell ill, testing positive for Covid. She remained in detention for a month while she had minor children at home in Brussels. She was released for health reasons after a month.
F., on the other hand, was kept in detention and was then transferred to the closed centre 127bis. A first flight to Turkey, although he is of Moroccan origin, was offered and he refused it. F. has great difficulty in expressing himself and orienting himself. However, he explained that he did not know anyone in Turkey. His sister also called the centre to explain the situation. A second flight took place and F. was not able to refuse.
F. was therefore deported to Turkey. He is currently stuck in Izmir, without any documents except his Moroccan passport. He has always lived in Belgium with his family and is unable to take the necessary steps to return to Belgium on his own.
He finds himself alone in a third country where he does not speak the language. He does not speak English either. His only “link” with Turkey is that he was on holiday in a hotel with his mother!
He is currently staying temporarily in a hotel rented by his sister. He is in full decompensation. His whole family is extremely worried about him.
The cruelty of the Belgian state and its determination to expel people of so-called foreign origin have no limits. The state and its Office des Étrangers shamelessly expel people, consciously closing their eyes to the consequences of these expulsions.
The family and their lawyer will ask for a return visa for F in court on 19/01/2022
Let’s prevent a forced deportation this Wednesday 12 January 2022
Mr. S. will be expelled this 12/01/2022 to his “country of origin”, Macedonia
He has applied for asylum which has been refused by the CGRA. He confirms that if he is expelled, he is in danger in Macedonia for political reasons and that his two daughters and his wife who live in Macedonia will also be in danger if he is expelled.
He asks us insistently to help him to resist this deportation.
He will first be put on a plane to Vienna, then to Macedonia
The two companies responsible for this flight on 12/01/2022 to Vienna are :
Austrian Airlines OS352 09:40
Brussels Airlines SN6001 09:40
We will meet you at the airport to talk to the passengers of the flight to Vienna on 12/01/2022 at 7.40 am (approximately two hours before the flight). Passengers must be informed that a man will be forcibly deported and that the pilot has the sole right to refuse to allow this person to be deported against his will.
Let’s also prevent this deportation by writing, faxing, phoning the people responsible for these criminal acts:
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11. Email: contact@premier.be Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06. Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be Annelies Verlinden Minister van Binnenlandse Zaken: 02/488.05.11. Email: kabinet.verlinden@ibz.fgov.be Monsieur Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T02 793 80 31 – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax02 274 66 40
On Sunday, January 2, 2022, people decided to start the year with an action in support of the prisoners of the Administrative Detention Center (CRA) of Coquelles, near Calais. They went there and made noise and shouted slogans for the end of borders, states, prisons and to demand freedom of movement and settlement for all.
They were seen and heard by the detainees, and from the courtyard of the additional building of the CRA, where the detainees can be heard and seen (which was no longer possible), shouts and slogans of solidarity answered. CRA cop-warden then quietly gassed, through the fence, the detainees who were shouting “Freedom!”
Like all prisons, the detention centers must disappear.
Update 26/12/2021: he was taken to the airport and then his escort was ordered not to put him on the plane…. he was taken back to a cachot but does not know in which centre. He tells us 100 times “THANK YOU”. THANK YOU to all those who have called, e-mailed the leaders and the people present at the airport. The struggle is winning!
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Help ! 3rd attempt of expulsion this 24/12/2021 towards IRAN
Mr. A asked for asylum on 17/10/2021 at the airport. He was locked up in the Caricole center. He was badly accompanied by 2 lawyers appointed by the center. His request was rejected by the CGRA (office of the commissioner general for refugees and stateless persons).
At his second attempt to be deported on 22/12 he had fainted at the airport police station after having been forced to undress completely. He remained unconscious for an hour, then was brought back to the center; he still does not understand what happened to him.
He wrote to us: “Hi, I was taken to the airport today to be sent to the police. At the airport, I had a seizure due to the stress of Dejar, I am still in a bad mood. ??? … I was sent back to the center. They had a terrible inspection. They questioned personality and humanity, I saw the decline of humanity in Europe for an oppressed person today.????”
CE 24/12/2021 The OFFICE des Étrangers is going to put him on a flight to Istambul then Isfahan (Iran) . he asks for help to resist his deportation . he tells us : “This will be the end of a life” .
Flight to Istanbul Turkishairlines TK 1938/TK 892 this 2/12/2021 at 11:25 am
We meet each other at the airport to inform the passengers at 9:15 am
and
Let’s prevent this deportation by writing, faxing, phoning the people responsible for these criminal acts.
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11. Email: contact@premier.be Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06. Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be Annelies Verlinden Minister van Binnenlandse Zaken: 02/488.05.11. Email: kabinet.verlinden@ibz.fgov.be Monsieur Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T02 793 80 31 – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax02 274 66 40
and flood the mailboxes of Turkish Airlines because this is not their first blow!
At the beginning of the Coronavirus crisis, many people who do not have Belgian nationality, but a residence permit in Belgium or people with two nationalities were stuck abroad without the possibility of reaching their country of residence. The Belgian state considers that this person, although he has stayed in Morocco for a whole year for reasons independent of his will, has violated the rules relating to his residence permit and can therefore no longer claim it. Once again we are witnessing an unacceptable situation linked to an absurd and inhumane migration policy!
TRANSCRIPTION / Hello, my name is … I am of Moroccan origin, my wife is Belgian.As I was in Morocco during the Corona, the border was closed, I stayed there for a year.After I came back to Belgium, they caught me at the airport becauseI was removed from the municipality. They sent me to the detention centrecalled 127. I stayed there for five months. I went in front of theTribunal. I went to court three times. The court released mebut the Aliens Office, they appealed, appealed… they said I had to go back to Morocco, I had no right to stay in Belgium.I have to go back to Morocco, I don’t have the right to stay in Belgium. I have twochildren, I have a girl, I have a boy. A girl of 4 years old, a boy of 6 years old.I’m now stuck. They transferred me to anothercentre: Vottem, in Liège. I’m stuck until now, I’ve been in the centre for five months, I’m depressed, I think about my children, I’m not well at all.I don’t know what the solution is to get out of here, as I told you, I’ve been to the Court and theAliens Office has not let me go.I don’t know what the exit solution is, as I told you, I’ve been to the Court and the I’ve been to the Court and the Aliens Office has not let me go. I have the right to get out.I have two children in my name, I’m married to a Belgian woman, I don’t know what to do.
State racism of the Foreigners’ Office and the CGRA
01/12/2021
In the last few days we have received several desperate calls from the women’s detention centre in Holsbeek
All of them come from the DRC.
They all arrived in September or October and were arrested at the airport by the federal police and locked up by order of the Foreigners’ Office.
They all applied for asylum on arrival.All of them received a negative response to their asylum application by the CGRA, following increasingly restrictive criteria for access to international protection.
All of them receive expulsion tickets to Kinshasa. All are desperate. They do not want to return to their country, some have family here, others claim to be in danger in DRC.
In principle, an asylum seeker is housed in an open centre until their application can be processed. In these cases, as soon as they arrived, they were all arrested on the basis of a daily practice of racial profiling by the aeronautical police and put in a closed centre on the orders of the Office des Étrangers.
An asylum application from a closed centre is fastidious. It is very difficult to collect documents from a closed centre. Access to a proper legal assistant and possible support (family, community, activists, etc.) is also prevented by this distance and detention.
While procedures are often very long, the CGRA shows an unusual speed when it comes to rejecting asylum seekers sequestered in closed centres and suspected of being “flight risks”.
*Once again, the efficient coordination between the federal police, the Aliens Office and the CGRA has allowed a rigorous and negrophobic screening at the border, the immediate detention and the refusal to grant asylum to these women in order to intimidate and expel them as quickly as possible.
If you ask for protection, something is wrong. They are fleeing a difficult life in their country and are suspected of disappearing as soon as they arrive in our country by the Office des Étrangers and are therefore locked up. They find themselves in a prison, at the mercy of the decisions of some bureaucrats paid to practice criminal migration policies.
Mr. M has asylum in Romania and lives there. He goes to Ethiopia to see his family. On his way back, he stops in Brussels to take a bus to Romania. He was illegally arrested at the airport and locked up in the Caricole detention center. After insistent appeals to the CCE (Conseil du contentieux des étrangers), the judge finally allowed him to buy a ticket to Romania only from Brussels Airport. We paid for his ticket. (127 euros) . He has arrived in Romania. His lawyer will nevertheless file a complaint on his behalf because what has happened is as absurd as it is illegal.
This kind of request for financial help is rather rare but we want to be able to answer it. Border violence is also monetized.
That’s why we ask for your support so that we don’t exhaust our budget usually devoted to phone top-ups for detainees.
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Triodos Bank BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: support THANK YOU
November 9, 2021 A closed center is home to multiple racist and sexist abuses, whether or not they are provided in the law. One of them, which this article intends to denounce, consists in taking a person by surprise and by force without even informing him/her beforehand of his/her deportation. As a general rule, but not systematically, people about to be deported are notified one or two days before the flight. They are given a ticket with information about the flight and the destination. But the immigration office and the airport police do not always follow this procedure, which makes it difficult to resist.
– On November 5, a Bangladeshi man detained in the 127bis detention center was called to an office where a (misnamed) social worker from the center was present. According to our contacts in the center, it was nothing but a trap. As soon as he entered the room, security men closed the door behind him, quickly took his few belongings from his bed and put him in a car. Witnessing this violent scene, the other inmates didn’t know where he was taken but suspect that this action was intended to evict him by surprise. They are all the more convinced of this because the mobile phone number he had in the center no longer works. – Another detainee who had been subjected to an expulsion attempt had, upon his return to the center, been called to the social worker’s office. She had warned him that the next attempt would be with an escort and by surprise. – On November 8, Hafsa suffered the same fate in the closed center of Holsbeek. Fleeing a forced marriage in her country, she had arrived in Belgium. She was detained there, as the (immigration) Office hypocritically refused to recognize the existence of forced marriages in Morocco. She was forcibly taken to Brussels Airport in her pyjamas for an Air Arabia flight to Tangiers to be deported against her will, completely tied up. During her first attempt to be deported (art here ), which she had refused, the police had promised her an escort and a forced deportation in the next few days. This brutal threat was carried out on this sad morning of November 8 without her having been warned beforehand.
The borders have been reopening for several months, and at the same time the expulsions of migrants have resumed. These sudden abduction techniques are in addition to the dehumanizing “means of coercion” used by the police, about which Myria (federal center on migration) sees nothing wrong (see the photo below and the report, p.57 .
The report also indicates that “the execution of repatriations is regulated by an unpublished protocol signed between the OE and the aeronautical police of Brussels National Airport (known by the acronym ‘LPA-BRU-NAT’)”.
Within the closed centers and in the face of the racist methods of the foreigners’ office and the airport police, resistance and solidarity are being organized among the detainees: refusal of the Covid test, hunger strikes, various information given by whistleblowers who are also locked up, etc.
We invite you to regularly consult our Facebook page and our website, where various calls for support are published.
The State does everything to make the migrants it locks up invisible, to undermine their struggles and their support, to prevent them from communicating, from testifying and from making contact with the rest of the world. For it is necessary to dehumanize them in order to be able to use them politically, to make scapegoats of them, concepts like “the transmigrant”.
It is the same with undocumented migrants, for whom the stick (the threat of deportation) and the carrot (the false promise of regularization) are tools systematically used to stifle their struggles for a dignified existence. The false promises of the Beguinage have shown this again recently.
Only a common resistance – in the closed centers and outside the centers, by the precarious victims but also by their supporters – will be able to change things. The balance of power is not to our advantage, but it can change, history is not stingy with surprises when the fight is just!
The man we are in contact with and who is about to be deported has been in Europe since 2010. He applied for asylum in Germany in 2014. In Belgium he did a short stay in prison and then was transferred to a detention centre as a “criminal”, thus suffering a double punishment that many organisations, including our collective, denounce.
He wants to go to Germany where he has friends and where he has applied for asylum. He says that he has not seen the outside of a prison since 2017 and that he wants to be released!
The foreigners’ office booked him on a flight with a police escort on Wednesday 10 November 2021 to Casablanca. He has refused his covid test, but they say he has to do another test at the airport and even if he refuses, he will still have to get on the plane because he is vaccinated.
He is afraid to go to Morocco, he says he will be thrown in jail there and that he will be mistreated by the police. In Morocco, he is not free at all, there is nothing for him there.
He will try to refuse deportation and asks for our help to prevent his deportation.At the same time he has just filed an application for asylum (this 09/11/2021 at 4pm). If the foreign office does not reject this asylum application the flight will be cancelled. We will have news around noon on 10/11/2021 and we will keep you informed.
Flight AT 833 , SN 4053: departure 5:10 pm 10/11/2021 Meeting at the airport this Wednesday 10 November at 3pm to explain to the passengers that he doesn’t not want to leave, that this deportation is forced and that they can prevent it by telling the pilot of the plane who is legally the only one in control of the aircraft.
Mrs. Hafsa El Mangad has fled a forced marriage and asked for asylum upon her arrival at the airport of Zaventem. She was locked up in the closed center of Holsbeek for the processing of her asylum application. According to the foreigners’ office, “there was a risk of escape”.
Her father back home wanted to marry her to an older friend who was already married. She refused categorically. Her father tried to persuade her by harassing and beating her. She decided to flee to Belgium where she has relatives and wants to apply for asylum.
Her request for asylum was refused by the CGRA, which ruled, as it often does, that there was not enough evidence, adding to its argument that “there are no more forced marriages in Morocco”. After filing an appeal, the “Conseil du contentieux des étrangers” did not find any arguments to reject the decision of the CGRA on the form.
She is desperate and started a hunger strike on October 25, 2021. Her co-detainees express their solidarity with her. A first deportation attempt has been aborted after she refused a Covid test.
On October 29, a “psychologist” of the center announced a new expulsion attempt that very evening, explaining that there was an agreement (whose precise content we would like to know) between Belgium and Morocco to accept expulsions without a Covid test.
Mrs Hafsa El Mangad received a ticket for a flight to Tangier from Air Arabia on Friday, October 29 at 9:30 pm. She refused this first attempt of deportation. The policemen promised her an escort and an expulsion by force in the next days.
On her return to the centre, they pressured her to eat again, which she is now doing.
She is desperate and determined to resist any expulsion. She warns that a return to her country would be hell, if not death.
Her niece living in Belgium asks us: “But where are the women’s rights for the exiled women”?
UPDATE 01/11/2021: He was taken to the airport. Activists were present to talk to the passengers. In the offices of the federal police several agents in civilian clothes were waiting; Then without explanations Mr. was brought back to the centre 127bis around 01.PM
Deportation with police escort Brussels Airlines flight SN 299 to Cotonou scheduled for 1 November 2021 at 11.05 am. One
of our contacts, locked in 127bis, was told that a flight was scheduled
for 1 November 2021 at 11:05 to forcibly deport him to Benin. He has
never lived in this country but had transited through it to flee the
persecution he was the target of at home. His aim was not to stay in
Belgium but to join his brother. Unfortunately, he was arrested at
Brussels Airport and has been locked up in the closed centre for 4
months. Like many others
Without knowing anything about the Belgian system, he started his first asylum application from the detention centre, under extremely stressful conditions. The General Commissariat for Stateless Persons and Refugees did not consider him credible enough. On his second application, he could not even be interviewed! Yet he tells us that he is in danger of death if he is forced to return to the country he fled! He had been subjected to a first expulsion attempt which he had refused. He will be accompanied by a federal police escort who will put him on the plane by force, handcuffed, and will keep him in his seat until he arrives in Cotonou.
Mr. C is of Malian origin but has a residence permit in Spain since 22 years, valid until 2024. He came to Belgium in 2014 having obtained a work contract. Due to a conflict with his boss who didn’t pay him anymore, he lost his job. Being in need to provide for his small family, he committed an illegal act and was arrested. He spent 7 months and 2 days in prison. At the end of the sentence, he was given an order to leave the territory. Although he wanted to comply and return to Spain, he was taken directly from prison to the airport on the 21st of September for a deportation to Mali.
Knowing very well that this expulsion was illegal, he refused and by consequence he was taken to a closed center.
After more than a month in aclosed center and a after being on hunger strike, the office booked him again a ticket to Mali for the 1st of Januari ’21, even if he had to go to court the next day.
Mr. C suffered a second attempt to be deported to Mali, this time with an escort. He was manhandled by 6 policemen who handcuffed him and tied his feet. Once on the plane, he explained his situation to the passengers and stressed the fact he has a residence card in Spain. He tells us that all the passengers of the flight revolted and shouted FREEDOM, refusing the departure of the plane if he did not get off. Following this failed attempt, he was brought back to the center.
A few days later he went back to court for an appeal. The judge decided again to release him.
But the story is not over. REINCARCERATION In order to be released, he was told that he had to go to the police in Zaventem to get his identity documents. The airport police handed him his Malian passport but refused to give him his Spanish residence card. He did not accept to leave without being given back his identity documents, and without giving him any further explanation as to why he was not given back his Spanish residence card, the police decided to re-arrest him.
He spent two days locked up in jail without food, with only water, and was then taken again to another center. The police promised him that he would receive his residence card at the new center but that he would have to wait for a new decision for his release.
While he was still locked up, he wondered: what decision other than that of the judge who had decided on his release was being awaited? Which laws are applied? Those of the foreigners’ office or those of the justice?
His lawyer also affirms that this detention is completely illegal and that he should be released with an order to leave the territory or at least be repatriated to Spain.
CONTINUATION AND NOT END: this 15/10 /2021, finally he was to be put on a flight to Barcelona!
Reversal of situation: flight cancelled! First he is told that Spain does not want him, then he is told that he will have a flight later on!
Mr. C remains illegally locked up.
Mr. C tells us that in the centers where he has resided many other detainees have European residence permits and that the Office is stubbornly trying to deport them to their “country of origin” illegally. “The people who have documents, they have problems, those who don’t have documents, they have problems! Always repatriations, repatriations, repatriations.”
Faced with this situation, the federal police and the police of the Brussels North area announced that they were preparing an intervention
This lively neighbourhood is regularly stigmatized by the media, the police and a part of the population for many years. The police have been intervening very regularly for decades in this neighbourhood.The pretext of insecurity in this district was an additional opportunity for the authorities to show their muscles and to carry out a nice communication operation. Scapegoats were found to take responsibility for the so-called “violence and incivilities”.
On Saturday evening, 09/10 2021, we were told “A dozen police vans, a bus, horses, dogs spotted in the North station district.
This is the police arsenal that was deployed. This intervention, defined by some media as a simple large-scale police operation, has a name: a raid. That is to say: a police operation of interpellation and mass arrest of people taken at random on the public highway or targeting a particular population”. The authorities are aware that many migrants in transit, without accommodation, gather at the North station at weekends until the lorry traffic resumes during the week and they can resume their journey.
As is almost always the case, certain media have relayed this communication linking theft, drugs, delinquency and… undocumented people. As a link of cause and effect. We would like to denounce this muddy comparison, which is stained with stereotypes and lacks any contextualization. The statements of the police relayed by the press, without any critical analysis, are only mediocre attempts to divert attention from repressive practices towards people in exile. They also attempt to justify raids in the eyes of public opinion, to make a racist and xenophobic practice invisible, or worse, to justify it by criminalizing migrants and others: media info: “25 people were not in possession of a residence permit, and 7 were in possession of knives or drugs”
We want to make clear that we reject the response to what is considered “delinquency”. The police will never be a solution. Repression will never be an answer to what the police state claims to fight (theft, delinquency, violence…). On the contrary, the police war on the poor, on young people in the neighbourhoods, on so-called “racialized” people, on migrants. It amplifies the institutional violence against all these people.
Since there is no mention of this in the articles published on the subject, we would like to remind you, once again, that the violence is generally not by migrants, but against migrants. An administrative, moral and sometimes physical violence, structural, generalized and assumed by the authorities for the purpose of dissuasion. A racist policy. An inhumane policy. An unbearable policy. A violent policy, known to those in exile and also known to the countries of departure with which Europe has no hesitation in signing agreements on migration. Countries where torture and human trafficking are the order of the day, to keep migrants away from European shores. The outsourcing of borders by Europe causing situations in Libya, Algeria, Niger, …. are only the best known examples. But it is not necessary to cross our borders to discover the unacceptable. Violence, repression and racist brutality on European soil, and in this case in Belgium, are also a daily occurrence. Roundups, closed centers, police violence, expulsions, rarely make the headlines.
Here is the testimony we received from a person who was there:
“There were about 10 cop combis with a bus full of cops, strongly equipped”, there were also 2 cops with dogs, at least 4 horses, they blocked the entrance of the North station on the side of the BNP Fortis, there were dozens of arrests (they filled up the bus and the combis). At one point, they shouted to their colleague to call an ambulance, they took out one of the people who had been arrested and held him down for several minutes (I filmed a lot because the guy was handcuffed on the ground and surrounded by 5 cops, one of whom had a collar cover up to his eyes. I didn’t arrive at the beginning, but from the moment I started filming it lasted 40 minutes”.
Saturday night’s raid is just one more example of the systemic racism inherent in the police and the state. In his statements to the press, Police Commissioner De Beule announced: “We will be implementing numerous actions in the coming weeks”.
Following a walk in support of the detainees at the 127 bis closed centre, we were able to collect testimonies from the detainees.
The conditions of detention and life are alarming: – A Ghanaian man has been on hunger strike for over a month and is in a very bad condition. On 3 October, fellow detainees alerted us to his situation: “He can no longer walk, he is like a skeleton. He is going to die. We learned on 4 October that he had been hospitalised because of his health condition and we will try to get news of him as soon as possible
– A man from Mali, with a residence permit valid until 2024 in Spain, was mistreated and beaten by his escort of six police officers during an attempt to deport him to Mali
.- As the temperature drops, there is no heating and internet access, which is essential for many administrative and legal procedures, has been very limited for at least a month.- No dialogue with the management of the centre is possible.
– The food is as usual of very poor quality and the portions are restricted.
This injustice, the repeated and daily mistreatment, the deterioration of health conditions inside the closed centres are amplifying a feeling of anger among the people locked up. The detainees are mentally broken and angry at the prisons in which they find themselves. Many cannot find words to describe the situation or feel that they are no longer considered human beings.
“We are not animals,” activists heard on Sunday. They do not understand why they are being detained and why they are being taken away from a country they consider their own. There are also people who have been locked up for many months and cannot see the end of it. On a daily basis, these people are forgotten, marginalised, and yet they exist and are only asking to be heard so that we can finally realise what is happening behind the fences of closed centres: migrants are locked up, gagged, hit, insulted.
One detainee shouted through the gates of his room: “we can die here, nobody will know, nobody cares”.
It is high time that everyone became aware of the violence of our racist borders and of the migration policy imposed by the state and its administration, the police acting at the borders and on the territory, and the so-called competent courts of the country. Let’s continue to make sure that these people can be heard by everyone and let’s use all the means to achieve this. They are very supportive of each other in the centre and demand freedom for all. Many of them tell us that they want their demands and their living conditions, or even their survival, to be treated urgently by journalists.
Some words from the detainees: – It’s not normal here anymore, we’re not human beings anymore”.
-I have no words to describe the situation to you”.
-” The man who has been on hunger strike for a month is a skeleton. He smells of death”.
– We are in Europe, in Belgium, the richest country in the world? Country of human rights?”
– “8 months in a closed centre and my country doesn’t give a travel pass. They know it very well
– “Those who want to leave we leave them here, those who don’t want to leave we expel them”
– “We are mistreated because we are foreigners, why mistreated?- “Our only solution is a hunger strike?
– “You have to talk with human rights”
– “We won’t forget, it hurts, we are going to die”- “We are mentally broken! What can we do? What can you do?”
– “Please call the media”.
This 06/10/2021 the hunger strikers are gradually transferred to other centres in order to separate them and break the movement
Border police: arbitrary and racist arrests 30/09/2021
In the last few days, we have been contacted daily by people arrested at the airport. They call us via the central office of a centre or from a phone at the airport. They contact us in panic because they are threatened with arrest and repatriation. They are students arriving in Belgium, tourists or people in transit at Zaventem or Charleroi airport.
After these arrests, we rarely hear from these people because they are locked up and isolated (Covid) in the Caricole detention centre for repatriation.
They rarely have the possibility to alert us, as they have no contacts in Belgium. They are repatriated in the following days without being able to defend themselves.
Last call from an angry tourist from a telephone of the Ministry of Interior on 29/09/2021: “If that’s the way it is, I want to be repatriated, no need to lock myself up for that. And I won’t set foot in your country again.
Since then, we have not heard from him.
Another example: the arrest of a young Congolese man who managed to alert associations and who has already been subjected to two violent attempts to repatriate him.
They are arrested by the border police at Zaventem or Charleroi, in an abusive and arbitrary manner without any way of defending themselves. Their only way of not being repatriated is to ask for asylum, which is rarely their wish. If they decide to apply for asylum, they are kept in detention center while their application is processed (sometimes several months).
It is not uncommon – and given the number of testimonies received, one could even say that it is common – to see racialised people suspected a priori and without any tangible evidence by the border police of lying in order to settle on our territory. It seems that in the imagination of the police officers guarding our air borders, our country is an El Dorado towards which “all the misery of the world” rushes, loosely disguised as tourists, students, people in transit or even lecturers. One could smile at this stupid and nasty paranoia if its consequences for so many travellers were not so dramatic.
And among our neighbours court just confirmed: “To be Dutch is to be white” : art here
Update 02/10 /2021 : One of their fellow detainees was forcibly deported. He was jumped and beaten by the police at the airport, then taken back to the closed centre.
This violence has reinforced the anger of the hunger strikers who continue their action.
SOLIDARITY
————————————————————————————————————————-
Detainees have reported this morning that there are major heating problems in 127 bis.
Depending on the room, the detainees have been without heating for several days to a month!
They tell us that they have not been offered any temporary solution (blankets, electric heating…). They also tell us that the dialogue on this subject with the management is almost non-existent.
Since this morning, many detainees in 127 bis are on hunger strike. They are protesting against their unworthy detention conditions:
– Heating problems
– Poor food
– Lack of dialogue with the management
– No medical care except medication to keep them quiet.
One of them told us: “Prison is better”.
Another: “we are left to die here”.
“Nothing works here”.
They are also very angry because a man has just been brought by the security probably for expulsion to Mali (country of origin) while he has papers in order in Spain until 2024;
They are very united in the centre and claims their freedom.
Attempted deportation on a FRONTEX flight on 21/09/2021
We have already published several reports about one of our contacts who is currently detained in the closed centre of Vottem. Previous calls here
Originally from Nigeria, he says he is a member of a political opposition movement and is in danger of death if returned. After two applications for asylum, the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons decided that his claims were not credible.
He has been detained for almost a year (!!) and has been subject to numerous attempts to deport him. It is more than likely that he will be put on a Frontex flight denounced by https://noborderassembly.blackblogs.org/deportation-alarm/.
This flight, with destination Lagos, would leave from Germany or Austria and would gather people deported from several European countries.
Let’s prevent this deportation by writing, faxing, phoning the people responsible for these criminal acts.
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11. Email: contact@premier.be
Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06. Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be
Annelies Verlinden Minister van Binnenlandse Zaken: 02/488.05.11. Email: kabinet.verlinden@ibz.fgov.be Mr Roosemont, Director of the Aliens Office Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be 02 793 80 31 – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
Known placements in detention centres, from the weekend 30/08/2021
He has Spanish nationality for 10 years, of Moroccan origin. He was arrested in Ghent and taken to the DC because he did not have his papers on him.
He is Romanian, living on the street with his wife and 2 small children. He was arrested and brought to DC because he did not have his papers on him and committed minor “disturbances of the peace” (shoplifting). His Belgian wife and children were directed by the SAJ (Service de l’aide à la jeunesse) to a hospital.
A man has been in Belgium for 15 years and has 2 Belgian daughters. He had a legal work contract. The police came to get him at work and he was put in a DC, following a confiscation of his papers (because of an old condamnation/arrest).
Alongside these arbitrary and clearly racist arrests, there is an increase in the number of people being held in detention centres.
Many of the detainees are desperate. They have indeed had extremely difficult lives. We hear that they are “flipping out” in the face of an uncertain situation. They clearly need psychological and even psychiatric support.
Many detainees have children who are recognised in Belgium and risk deportation to their “country of origin”. Many children find themselves without their father or mother, which will not help them in their development.
On the subject of the confinement of parents, the Office replies in one of the files: “contacts with family and friends can be maintained by short visits or modern means of communication!
The detentions continue, leading to inhuman situations of unspeakable suffering and obviously not arousing the indignation of any of those responsible.
We are all responsible! NOT IN OUR NAME! NOTINMYNAME
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people
retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to
contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly
inform on their situation.
Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their
home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home
country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with
them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros Lycamobile
recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code
written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by
SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees
who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even
better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank
account especially created for that purpose :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
Minor in 127 bis closed centre and currently in isolation 17/08/2021
We have received several calls today from detainees at the 127 bis detention centre for a 17 year old Sudanese boy who has been locked up for more than a month and whom security has put in isolation. He seems to be in a very bad way and cries all day long. He has no visitors and is extremely lonely. He is reportedly in solitary confinement at the moment (with a view to a deportation to Italy?).
Call received:
“There is here a child in a bad situation. It is
reported that the centre’s security put him into an isolation cell now,
alone. He is in a very bad situation, bad food, very bad everything, he
is only a very young boy, he has no family, no visits.
“This young boy is crying, crying all the day long. This
is not a place for a child. Everything is forbidden here. This is not a
place for refugees and not for a child. We are not criminals.”
“Visit us please. We are not animals. The food is very
bad. There is nobody who thinks about us… Come with bicycle if you want
to protest.”
“Ask to United nations to take a look here and to the jail where the boy is.Thank you so much”
He was walking on a dimly lit road hoping to find the light at the end of the road in Arlon. His name was Hassan and he was 60 years old. He was hit by a car on the way to a car park. He died on 29/07/2021 after more than a month in a coma.
TRIBUTE TO:
2017 :
Baha , Azerbaïdjan , mort dans un cachot au centre fermé de Vottem (Liège)le 02/02/2017
-Omar, 18, Sudanese, died under a bus in Brussels on 23 July 2017
-Dejen, 16, Ethiopian, died in Aalter after falling from a truck on 4 November 2017
-M, Sudanese, found dead in the canal in Brussels on 17 November 2017
2018
-Mohammed, 39, Ethiopian, died in Jabbeke chased by the police on 29 January 2018
-M, 22, Algerian, died in Zeebruges on 22 March 2018
-Mawda, 2, Kurdish, killed in Mons during a police chase on 16 May 2018
-Amalou Ourez, 20, Guinean, crushed by a bus in Berchem-Ste-Agathe (Brussels) on 19 June 2018
-X,19, Vietnamese, run over by a car in Jabbeke on 17 August 2018
-Imran Ullah, Afghan, run over by a car in Ramskapelle on the E40 on 9 September 2018
-Kebede, 25, Erythrean, killed on a parking in Wetteren on the E40 on 12 September 2018
-Gebre, 36, Erythrean, committed suicide in the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018
2019
-Adam usman Kiyar, 20, Ethiopian, very well-known in Brussels, died in a truck in Calais on 8 March 2019
-Amaneal, born in 1986, Ethiopian, his body was found dead on the railway in Silly (Tournay) on 17 April 2019
-Mahammat Abdullah Moussa, 25, Chadian, most likely dead on 17 April
2019 hung under a bus at the North Station in Brussels and his torn body
found at the arrival in FolkstoC
-Géri, 25, Erythrean, died after falling from a truck on the A29 near Rotterdam on 6 July 2019
– Nicknam Massoud fund in the Northsea in Zeebrugge on 25/08/2019,
drowned at his crossing of the Channel to GB, Iraqi, 48 years….
– Nixon, suicide in the open centre in Lanaken on 23/10/2019, SriLankais, 34 years old
– 39 from vietnam , women and men found dead on 23/10/2019 in a truck in Essex /GB after a drive past Zeebrugge
Pham Thi Tra My, 26, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Huy Phong, 35, from Ha Tinh
Vo Nhan Du, 19, from Ha Tinh
Tran Manh Hung, 37, from Ha Tinh
Tran Khanh Tho, 18, from Ha Tinh
Vo Van Linh, 25, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Van Nhan, 33, from Ha Tinh
Bui Phan Thang, 37, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Huy Hung, 15, from Ha Tinh
Tran Thi Tho, 21, from Nghe An
Bui Thi Nhung, 19, from Nghe An
Vo Ngoc Nam, 28, from Nghe An
Nguyen Dinh Tu, 26, from Nghe An
Le Van Ha, 30, from Nghe An
Tran Thi Ngoc, 19, from Nghe An
Nguyen Van Hung, 33, from Nghe An
Hoang Van Tiep, 18, from Nghe An
Cao Tien Dung, 37, from Nghe An
Cao Huy Thanh, 33, from Nghe An
Tran Thi Mai Nhung, 18, from Nghe An
Nguyen Minh Quang, 20, from Nghe An
Le Trong Thanh, 44, from Dien Chau
Pham Thi Ngoc Oanh, 28, from Nghe An
Hoang Van Hoi, 24, from Nghe An
Nguyen Tho Tuan, 25, from Nghe An
Dang Huu Tuyen, 22, from Nghe An
Nguyen Trong Thai, 26, from Nghe An
Nguyen Van Hiep, 24, from Nghe An
Nguyen Thi Van, 35, from Nghe An
Tran Hai Loc, 35, from Nghe An
Duong Minh Tuan, 27, from Quang Binh
Nguyen Ngoc Ha, 32, from Quang Binh
Nguyen Tien Dung, 33, from Quang, Binh
Phan Thi Thanh, 41, from Hai Phong
Nguyen Ba Vu Hung, 34, from Thua Tien Hue
Dinh Dinh Thai Quyen, 18, from Hai Phong
Tran Ngoc Hieu, 17, from Hai Duong
Dinh Dinh Binh, 15, from Hai Phong
– Ermiyas Ungessa, Éthiopie, 28 , death in Tournai ( Belgium) on 20/12/2019
2021
– Ilyes Abbedou,from Algerie, man without papers, 29 , death in a cel in a police station in Brussels in january 2021.
–-Mohammed Mesko, Syrie ,23, committed suicide in Bilzen after another refusal on 28/04/2021
— Name unknown, Syrian, 22 years old, drowned in the North Sea by suicide in April 2011
–Hassan Annour Ahmed Adam born on 01 January 1975, Sudanese, died on 30/07/2021 in Arlon hit by a car on the way to a parking.
When the Grand-Ducal police beat and rob migrants 04/08/2021 We have received a disturbing testimony, showing once again that the abuse of power – and this is a euphemism, speaking of fascization seems more appropriate – is not uncommon among the law enforcement agencies, in our country, but also among our Luxembourg neighbors. Below, the testimony we received:
On the night of 22 to 23 June, 6 migrants hidden in a truck are discovered by the driver who denounces them to the grand-ducal police. As soon as the doors of the truck were opened, the migrants were thrown to the ground, kicked and punched. They don’t know it yet, but this is only the beginning. The 6 migrants were arrested and then put into a vehicle which drove for about forty minutes to take them to a wood. The two policemen took them out of the suit, took their jackets, their phones and their magazines, before beating them again and abandoning them. It took them almost 3 hours to find their way back to Arlon. One of the migrants was very attached to his phone which contained the number of a sick family member, so a hostess tried to recover their belongings by calling the police station. The police officer on the phone was mocking, denying “this beautiful story” before becoming threatening: “we are going to have you arrested by our Belgian colleagues”, also specifying that it was “a pity” that the crime of solidarity did not exist in Belgium when the hostess told them about it.
A previous testimony already related the beating of migrants in a room “without camera” of a grand-ducal police station, after they were stopped in a truck. Theft, threats, racist insults, kidnapping and assault, do as I say, not as I do? How many long years in prison would a migrant accused of these crimes face? The passage through the parking lot of Arlon has increased, especially after the attacks of Wetteren and Westkerke, committed by security guards and a particularly sadistic dog handler already mentioned in a previous article. Another indirect consequence was the death of a Sudanese migrant, run over by a car.
Violence against migrants must stop. The root of the problem is the borders and their armouring, which the authorities constantly reinforce. Let’s abolish them! Freedom of movement and settlement!
Torture in the 127 bis detention centre Mr. X had testified to us on 05/05/2021 about the extreme violence he had suffered in the 127 bis detention centre, and we had avoided publishing it at that time to avoid pitting him at risk of further reprisals in the centre.
As a result of this violence, he suffered severe back pain which was treated by the centre’s doctor with painkillers. On 30/06/2021 (one and a half months later), following the persistence of these pains and his difficulty in walking, a scan was requested: “Major disc herniation”.
Observation by an external doctor 07/07/2021: “The scan effectively shows a herniated disc between the L4 and L5 vertebrae with compression of the L5 root (5th lumbar) which can cause very significant sciatic pain in the left inner limb and damage to the nerve which can eventually become chronic. If he had no symptoms prior to what he experienced in the centre, these findings can possibly be related to the trauma (prolonged forced position as he describes).
Statement by a visitor 07/07/2021: “He attributes his back problem to the violence he suffered in the centre on 5 May. He is very specific about what happened: he was arrested on 30 April and had to give up his phone. He had kept the sim card and refused to give it up when he was asked for it. He was handcuffed with his hands behind his back, then his feet were tied and his legs were folded over his back and he was hit in the back. And since then, he has been in pain. He is ready to lodge a complaint, he says.”
As a result of the serious injuries he sustained, Mr. X was released from the centre on 07/07/2021 with an Order to Leave the TerritoryThis day 09/07/2021 he asks that we publish : “So that this is no longer inflicted on others.”
I am at the 127bis closed centre. Yesterday
morning, Wednesday, around 9 a.m. I got messages from my lawyer and I
wanted to communicate them to my social assistant. I called the
security. There was a woman in front of my door. She opened the door and
I asked her if I could see my social assistant. She told me that the
social assistant would be there in the afternoon. I told her that it was
urgent, that I had to make an appeal, today being the last deadline for
the lawyer to get my file. She answered that it was not up to me to
decide and that I would have to wait until the afternoon. I also asked
her to take the piece of paper I was holding with the phone number and
email of my lawyer. I asked her to leave that on her desk so that she
could give it to my social assistant when she would see her. The woman wanted to shut the door while I was trying to speak to her. I had a small Nokia mobile phone. I threw it on the floor. I said it was complete nonsense. The
woman rang the security which arrived in number, asking what was going
on. I told them. They said listen, everybody here has to listen, I
wanted to speak to the woman but she wouldn’t listen, then I threw my
phone on the floor. “That’s what we said Sir, you can not do that, you should respect people.””Fair enough, people deserve respect, but we also do, we are human beings just like you!”Then they took my phone and left. They came back half an hour later with the director of the centre. They
said that they discussed what to do and that I had to be sanctioned.
They told me I would have to stay in a confinement cell for 24h and they
brought me there. They took away everything I had in my hands, my
pockets, they took my shoes, my belt, everything. I had my sim card in a
small pocket, they wanted me to give it to them. I refused, saying that
I would put it in my phone to ring my lawyer so that he could tell me
what to do. The
director came, with more than 7 men. They came to my room. He ordered
them to take me by force and get my sim card. The 7 men were after me,
they handcuffed me, trampled my back, doing everything possible to get
my sim card. They
handcuffed me, tied my feet with handcuffs, my hands behind my back.
They left. They came back a second time to check I was tied enough to
not get away from there. They tied me a second time. A
man took my feet from behind, I was lying on my stomach. He bended my
feet to reach my head. My back and my head hurt a lot. Then I shouted, I
stood up and I could not sit down, be in a comfortable position. I
cried and told them that they had broken my back. Then
they ran directly to take off the handcuffs and the tape. I had cried a
lot, the mattress was full of stuff, they cleaned everything, they took
the handcuffs and the tape, they left and closed the door. They left me
this way during 13 hours until noon the day after. I was on diet all
night, no food, no drinks, nothing, and no one came. They came the day
after to tell me that my confinement was over and that I could leave
that room. But I was unable to stand up. They insisted on my standing up
but it was not possible. I told them that my back was broken and that
it hurt a lot. I
stayed there for two more hours. They could see that I did not move. I
remained in the same position as the day before, lying with my belly on
the floor. Perhaps
they got scared, they rang the ambulance; I was driven to Vilvoorde’s
hospital. They took a radiography. The doctor said that nothing was
broken, so they drove me back to the centre. That’s where I am now, I am explaining everything to you from another isolation cell. Here is my testimony of what happened in the centre.
.After the arrestation of M.B.A. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/detained-and-soon-to-be-expelled-after-50-years-of-legal-residence-in-belgium/, again arrestation of a man 61 year old
Since 30 June, Mr K.H. has been detained in the Caricole detention centre.
He is Moroccan, 61 years old and has been legally resident in Belgium for 40 years. He has a valid residence permit. Mr K.H. is a psychiatric patient. He is disabled and recognised as a handicaped person.
He is accused of having remained absent for more than 12 months, without having made any application to the municipality of Molenbeek.
The sadism of the Office des Etrangers has no limits.
A detainee with whom we are in contact told us that, recently, several detainees from different countries had been asked to come to the social worker’s office without being informed of the reason for their summons.
Once in the office, the social worker had ‘closed the doors’ (in his own words) and told the detainee concerned that he was about to be deported.
The detainee was then transferred directly to the “cachot”and deprived of his telephone. The detainee was then isolated, with no contact with his family and no possibility of independent legal advice.
He was then promptly transferred to the airport.
It goes without saying that this practice puts a great deal of pressure on the detainee concerned. Caught off guard, he is not able to find out or make use of his rights in the face of this forced expulsion.
The other detainees live in fear of being subjected to the same procedure. It should be remembered that many of them claim to be in great danger if they are sent back to their country of origin.
This same detainee told us about another appalling practice: a detainee was persuaded to take a covid test because he was due to be transferred to another centre and that this would save him quarantine in his new centre. Once the test was carried out, he was immediately given a return ticket. The same practise were tell us by our friends from the CRACPE in the closed centre in Vottem Last update closed centre : https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/news-from-the-detention-centers-in-belgium-june-18-2021/
The use of such procedures is outrageous and violates the rights of detainees. Let’s not let them be ignored!
Mr M.B.A. is Moroccan. He arrived in Belgium 50 years ago, at the age of 13 with his parents.
He has always lived in Belgium with his whole family. He got married, had a child, got divorced… A normal life.
Until January 2020 when he leaves for Morocco and cannot return because of the pandemic.
The borders are closed. When they reopen, the tickets are expensive. He only managed to return in June 2021.
When he arrived at Zaventem, he was detained in a closed centre, although his identity card was still valid. He is to be deported to Morocco next Tuesday.
He should have informed the municipality of Anderlecht of his departure abroad for more than 12 months. Except that when he left, he did not imagine he would be stuck for more than a year because of a global pandemic.
Who could have foreseen this in January 2020?
This is one of the many Kafkaesque situations at 127bis, a lawless zone.
News from the detention centers in Belgium – June 18, 2021
The detention centers’ capacity is gradually rising with the relaxing of anti-coronavirus measures. Repatriations remain extremely difficult due to COVID-19 “safety” rules from most countries and airlines and because of the resistance of the detainees inside the centers.
The average length of detention is currently particularly high (it can go up to one year!) due to the difficulty to repatriate to most countries. Indeed, a lot of countries and some airlines demand a negative COVID-19 test. Many detainees refuse to undergo these tests to avoid being deported and the Immigration Office keeps them in detention. Proposals of vaccination have been made in some centers but the detainees have refused because for them, it means deportation. The Immigration Office has invented a brand new, sickening trick : Detainees are asked to undergo a COVID-19 test and made to believe it is to prevent a potential appearance or evolution of the disease or to prepare them for a transfer to another center. When the test is undergone, the Office books a deportation plane ticket in the two following days.
THE DETENTION CENTERS
In Bruges, around 60 detainees (for a capacity of 112). Among them, 12 Vietnamese people have been arrested at the Belgian coast while they were trying to make it to the UK.
In Merksplas, around 30 detainees (for a capacity of 146). Among them, a dozen of people from Tunisia held in detention, in some cases since 8 months. The detainees show solidarity and are supportive of one another. A man was nearly deported after 8 months of detention but resisted and was transferred to the center of Vottem.
It seemed that on June 3, 2021, some detainees were tested positive to COVID-19.
In Caricole, people get in and out quite quickly it seems : people are arrested at the airport, isolated for ten days and then pushed back to the country of departure if they do not ask for asylum.
URGENT CALL for psychological help for the detainees :
Some detainees suffer from serious psychological, sometimes psychiatric pain following a rough journey and being in detention for so long, without the hope of getting out. The medical staff doesn’t seem to care despite visits from independent doctors who testify of this suffering. One detainee has been moved to a psychiatric institution. We call for psychologists and psychiatrists to go and give psychological support in the centers.
People inside the centers :
The Office makes the decisions regarding who is placed in detention. Presently many of the detainees have been transferred from prison to a center (“double peine”), some have been arrested at the airport and are currently seeking asylum, others have been arrested in the street without their papers. The nationalities that seem to be in the most targeted ones at the moment are : Tunisian, Afghan and Guinean. People from Eastern Europe also seem to be very quickly deported. Some detainees have told us about proposals from social workers of “voluntary return” (or “voluntary repatriation”). The detainees understand these attempts as “blackmail”. This seems to fit in the objectives of the Belgian State Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Sammy Mahdi.(“Outreach Team” created by Mahdi (article in French) : https://mahdi.belgium.be/fr/mahdi-sengage-en-faveur-des-bureaux-de-retour-r%C3%A9gionaux-%C2%AB-personne-n%C3%A9chappe-encore-%C3%A0-un-trajet-de)
WORDS OF DETAINEES : “Even if I would be dead, it would be better, I would be in peace” “Either I kill myself or I kill someone else in here!” “I’m okay to stay in the center several years until I get my papers but not go back in my country where I’ll get killed !” “Every month they tell me ‘one more month’, ‘one more month, when will I get out of here ? They try to kill you mentally little by little” “Its Merdeplas*, not Merksplas” Following the liberation of one of his comrades, one detainee tells us : “While there’s life, there’s hope” Another detainee tells us he is “scared to go crazy”(*Merdeplas = Shitplas)
NOBODY has a place in these closed centres, it only adds suffering and humiliation to an already chaotic journeyLet’s support the undocumented migrants and fight against these actions of a racist and excluding state
The Earth belongs to everyone.
Freedom of movement and settlement for all
——————————————————————————————————————————-HELP
Twoo separate calls:
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people
retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to
contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly
inform on their situation.
Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their
home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home
country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with
them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros Lycamobile
recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code
written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by
SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees
who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even
better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank
account especially created for that purpose :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
Spread the message around you! Thank you!
SUPPORT THE FIGHTS against closed centres and borders
The fights against closed centres, deportations and borders
(distribution of leaflets, posting, publications, events, logistics,
various actions, prevention of repression) require energy as well as
financial resources.
Interested in supporting us financially? Donate, or even better, set up a standing order to :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos: BE 13 523045586439 Communication: Soutien aux luttes
Around twenty activists spread blood on the walls of the FRONTEX agency (European Border and Coast Guard Agency). This action is part of a European campaign that aims at putting an end to that agency and its world.
Since 1993, the militarised policy of Fortress Europe has caused the death of more than 40,555 people. Drowned in the Mediterranean, killed at the borders; passed away after committing suicide in the retention centres, tortured and killed after their deportation; the UE have blood on their hands.
One of the agency that heavily collaborates to this criminal repression is FRONTEX.
A new international movement is rising up today in order to abolish FRONTEX. A first day of actions aimed at the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in seven different countries.
Because Europe has blood on its hands and because we refuse to be passive accomplices of it.
In Nice on 05/06/2021, the feminist action ‘Toutes Aux Frontières‘ denounces the walls built up all around Europe and claims the freedom of movement everywhere, all the time, and a definitive break with the patriarchal and militaristic history of borders.
In Brussels, this morning too, in front of the Foreigners Office, a banner in support of #NoBorders was waved.
Attempted deportation on a FRONTEX charter flight on 26/05/2021
Nigerian national, he fled his country via Benin to find refuge in Belgium. He tells us that he is a member of a political opposition movement and is wanted by the police. He is in the closed centrum 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel since a few months. After two requests for asylum, the General Commissariat for Refugees and Stateless Persons decided that his statements were not credible.
He had been subject to a first attempt to deport him to Benin on 03/04/2021 which he refused. Previous call here He was told today 21/05/2021 that he would be deported to Nigeria on 26/05/2021;
He claims to be in danger of death! He needs support! Let’s prevent this deportation by writing, faxing, phoning those responsible for these criminal acts.`
Closure of business bcause of the coronavirus outbreak
Press Release
18/05/2021
Based on our information, several cases of coronavirus have been detected at the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem. To date, there are 4 persons with the virus among the retained, and 8 among the staff. « Outside », however, sanitary measures are strict and so severely repressed when not followed… hence, when we organised our yearly demonstration against the closed centre of Vottem on 9 May, we had to obey a lot of rules, for a gathering under specific conditions, and the usual march from Liège to Vottem was forbidden.
Since the first confinement, it is not the first time that this chaotic but foreseeable situation has happened: the virus entered through the barbed wire, probably spread by the staff members who have a life, social contacts etc. contrarily to the retained people. Indeed, for the latter, and since a long time now, visits happen under surveillance and behind a Plexiglas. While staff members obviously have the opportunity to go back to their home and benefit from adequate care, it is absolutely not true for the retained people. According to the testimonies we’ve heard, the retained people who have COVID have been placed in isolation cells! What does an isolation cell look like in Vottem? Is is a tiny room, all in concrete, with a tiny window like a dormer window, a mattress on a concrete bedrock, almost on the floor, a toilet bowl inside the cell, and a small sink. Hygiene conditions in isolation cells are appalling. The isolation is effectively complete; security guards come from time to time to check that “everything is ok” from behind the armoured door.
Whether sick or asymptomatic, an isolation cell has nothing to do with a medical confinement measure, and an isolation cell is definitely not a place where one gets cured! Among the people struck by the virus, some are sick and we are extremely worried about the quality of the medical follow-up they get; the isolation as such may even exacerbate the symptoms and be very damaging (humidity, cold, lack of hygiene)! It is also stressing and stigmatising, would one have “made the mistake” to fall sick? Besides, preventive measures are utterly ridiculous: a few retained asked for hydro-alcoholic gel, which was refused to them. In this pandemic crisis, each and everyone of us should have the right to health protection, health care and vaccination. Closed centres for foreigners are in all respects an exceptional regime, including in this area. Let us remind that these centres only aim at implementing deportation measures and at breaking down the resistance of the people in front of this planned deportation; people who wanted to build their lives here but who did not get their residence permit because of the restrictive policies of Fortress Europe in matter of asylum and immigration.
On ‘Getting the Voice Out’ website, you’ll find loads of testimonies collected in the different closed centres.
We remind our claims, more valid today than ever, in this situation of world pandemic:
A traduire en en_uk : Geloten centrum 127 bis AUDIO : “Covid is een persoonlijk probleem”
AUDIO LISTEN (FR)HERE MEI 2021 : “COVID is a personal issue”
Tanscription
“COVID is a personal issue” Ok, I start: a man came, he was in quarantine, he was tested positive on 31 March, hence he was held in quarantine for two weeks. After that, he joined the rest of the people in the centre, he stayed in a room with other people who started talking to him. (….) The man has been a victim for long – “but why were you not with everybody?” “I was tested positive” “Oh, you’ve got the virus!” “No, I became negative after some time”. ok In the morning, the man from the security came “Come, you’ll have the corona test”. He left to do the test. When he came back he said “after tomorrow I am leaving to Aachen (Germany).” Ok, good. The day before yesterday, we were watching TV and the nurse came, she had documents in her hand, so we helped him to read the French. When he opened it he saw that the test was positive, so everybody started to shout, how the hell can it be positive??!! The nurse took the man to the corridor for 20 minutes, they discussed for 20 minutes. When he came back he didn’t want to show us the paper and said it was negative. How can it be negative? Everybody saw it was positive! Another man went to talk to the nurse, asking “how can you mingle us with someone having the corona?” She answered “corona is a personal issue”. Everybody was surprised. Besides, he is not alone in his room, someone else is sleeping there! And he comes and mingles with all of us…” One has to speak about the truth here, you are threatening our lives, you are putting the life of people who already have health issues in danger. While we were discussing, a guard came to fetch his stuff. The man had gone to the isolation cell without his stuff. (…)In the morning we were told he was gone. When reaching Germany he was sent back to Brussels because he was positive. He can not enter Germany because he is positive. The documents say it is positive, not just slightly positive, this doesn’t exist. He was held in quarantine again. This morning, the director came and explained that there wasn’t any problem. “But how is it possible, the document says it is positive and not slightly, you are putting people’s lives in danger (….)” You should see how the nurse is talking to us, just as if we were animals and not human beings, and the way the social assistant behaved! They look like CIA agents, they are just here to say “go back to your country!” We don’t even have nurses to talk to, no one to talk to in that case. They want us to return, they give us 100 euros, take the plane, you have to go back. We are living in hell…Things happening in the centres have to be denounced, it is not correct, it is not the way it should be. We could reveal all that is happening in the centre if we had a smartphone. (….) We explained to the management: there is positive and there is negative, there are asymptomatic people, with no symptoms but who can spread the virus. We were all in touch with this man, perhaps we are all COVID positive. No one will do the test and we will stop feeding ourselves since we might be positive. If we die, we die.
We explained again and the nurse wanted to force us to eat. Please help us.
HOLSBEEK CLOSED CENTER] Two years after the opening of the filthy centre, 50 activists are demonstrating today in rage against borders and in support of the detainees. #NoBorder #FreedomForAll!
06/05/2021 : The first episode of our podcast “LANCE-PIERRE” (Catapult) is now available on Spotify, SoundCloud, Acast: listen to it, share and spread it all around you, it is a brand new furious sound against closed centres.
What is a closed centre, what does it relate to in the collective imaginary? What is the State seeking to hide from us behind these barbed wires and fences? What do the first people concerned by this reality say about it?
Just like thousand stones catapulted in the face of borders, until they are broken down.
French:
LANCE-PIERRE , Getting The Voice Out , épisode 1 : dès à présent disponible sur les plateformes de podcast ! Bonne écoute
Hungerstrike in closed center 127 bis An Eritrean man, imprisoned in the closed centre 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel was tested positive on COVID-19 two weeks ago and was put in quarantine for 14 days. Probably because of a potential deportation to Germany, the man had to take a new test on 27/04/2021. This test again turned out to be positive, but despite this, he was transferred back to the group where he also shared a room with another person. The results were never shown or communicated to the detainees but were discovered by them. Fellow detainees were not tested and for that reason started a hunger strike in protest today (29/04). They say: “They want to kill us!” They believe that the management deliberately kept the test results from them, thus endangering their health.
They accuse the management of a lack of communication and respect towards them. This afternoon (29/04) a meeting took place between detainees and the management. The management denies contagion after these positive test results. The detainees fear for their health. They continue their hunger strike and demand their freedom.
The detainees want to send these facts to the media and ask journalists to communicate what is happening in the centre.
It is also remarkable that the number of the Human Rights League, which the detainees tried to reach, is inaccessible. They get the message ‘this number is not allowed’. Just as some websites are blocked for them, apparently this number is also inaccessible for them.
Update 04/04/2021 Yesterday afternoon, our contact was transported to the airport for deportation. After he said to the police officers that he was in danger of death if he was deported, he was taken back to 127 bis. However, the deportation was only postponed. It was confirmed to him that in a future attempt he would be under police escort. The mobilization continues!
Forced eviction imminent!! Brussels Airlines flight to Cotonou. Scheduled for April 3, 2020 at 14.55 SN 231 vers Abidjan avec escale à Cotonou
One of our contacts, locked in 127bis, is about to be forcibly put on a plane to Benin.
He is a Nigerian national who fled his country via Benin to find refuge in Belgium. He tells us that he is a member of a political opposition movement and is wanted by the police.
After two requests for asylum, the General Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless Persons decided that his statements were not credible. He claims to be in danger of death!
He needs support!
ACTION: phone, mail, fax to
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11. Email: contact@premier.be
Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06. Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be
They were all taken to the police station and arrested. Four of them (2 women and 2 men) were transferred to the closed centres in Bruges and Holsbeek for deportation.
Testimonies of migrants and supporters: ROUNDUP at the camp of ‘La forest’ in Waremme – Tuesday 23.03.2021
“Following the call, I went to the site. it must have been around 9.15 a.m. There were no police vehicles left. as usual, I entered the forest with the aim of meeting any young people who might have escaped the police. there was no one left! i noticed that all the tents had been opened, all of them without exception. And no one left. everyone had been taken away, leaving not only their personal belongings (backpacks, mobile phones, etc.) but also sometimes their shoes. Obviously, this was not a voluntary departure.
“They tell me that they were taken out of their tents by police officers with dogs, at 7am, in the middle of their sleep. Their hands were tied with collars. Several times they asked in English, ‘What’s going on? What have we done? “. They received no answer and were taken to the police station. They stayed there with their hands tied. The police took photos, fingerprints and names. All this was done in English, some translating for others. No questioning about possible misdeeds. To this day, the young people who were arrested still ask me the “why. ”
“They took our things, asked our name and then we had to wait in the courtyard of the police house. We were tied up the whole time. yes, now everyone is free. They were very scared, especially because of the dogs and the fact that there were many policemen everywhere in the camp. They didn’t understand why they were arrested and nobody explained it to them. “Too much stress” They asked if I had ever seen this in Waremme and if it happened often… (also in Belgium, in Waremme?)
“A young man comes back to the forest. he is the first one to be released: he is stressed, afraid but trusts the volunteers he knows. he is sheltered. he explains that at 7am, someone knocked on his door. “I was asleep. I opened the door and there were police everywhere in the forest, at every “house”, with dogs. they took us out without telling us anything. Then, with bound wrists, he explains that the police tied his wrists with “plastic” – let’s understand collars – and then took him out of the forest and into the vehicles.”
“In the rush and fear, he cannot remember if the police let him take his bag or if they kept it. He will not find his bag.
D. will also tell us that he asked to go and urinate. it is possible but without freeing his hands, without removing the collars.
“They took our things, asked our name and then we had to wait in the courtyard of the police house. we were tied up the whole time. yes, now everyone is free. They were very scared, especially because of the dogs and the fact that there were many policemen everywhere in the camp. They didn’t understand why they were arrested and nobody explained it to them. “Too much stress They asked if I had ever seen this in Waremme and if it happened often… (also in Belgium, in Waremme?)”
And below, the testimony of the women who were there:
They were sleeping, the police asked them to come out but as they were sleeping they did not come out immediately and the police entered the tent. They lit a lamp and made them come out. They put on the collars. They took 10 people in the police van and took them to the police office. Then at around 4am they gathered them and took fingerprints and photos. No food during the day; Then they were taken elsewhere.
Thanks to the Freedom & Solidarity collective for collecting the testimonies. Note their denial in the press “Freedom & Solidarity is surprised to be quoted in the press concerning any consultation with the Police about the “collective” arrest (not to say raid) of all the migrants of the place called la Forest, this Tuesday morning, from 07h, in Waremme.”
21/03/2021: 127 bis – Hunger strikes, self-injuries, screams of despair and anger on the rise
They are around 50 in the centre: asylum seekers, undocumented, some arrested on their work place, some suspected of fake marriage (white or grey), a 62 years old man retained for 4 months, a Portuguese man with an employment contract in Belgium, a Palestinian from Gaza who is very sick, 5 men from the DRC threatened with deportation to their country of ‘origin’, etc.
There seems to be a great solidarity among all of them. They are all very worried about a Palestinian man in hunger strike for several days. The latter would have no lawyer, just like a few others retained for several months who do not have access to a lawyer whereas the managers of the centre should provide them with juridical assistance upon arrival!
Eight people also started a 24 hours hunger strike on Friday 12 March to protest against their retention and the systematic solitary confinements for those who claim for their rights (even simply to get a coffee in the morning!).
A Palestinian man has been on hunger strike for 9 days.
“Freedom” “No rights here” “You are just like livestock here” “We are with you” “They keep us like animals here!” I ” FUCK THE POLICE” “Here we are badly treated outside and inside, finally I think I was better off in my country” “I stay quiet because they record your behaviour here” “There is more staff than retained people here, and 3 directors, what for?” “They say we are in a centre but we are in prison” “They give us food just to keep us alive”
On 12 March, the management tells them that there is supposedly a COVID case among the retained, but when they asked to be tested, it was refused. They have no masks, the staff wear masks but they sometimes “forget” to wear them.
The retained tell us that activists came several times in front of the centre to show their support. They were extremely happy about that.
” We need help, You are always welcome “ ” Every thing is bad here” ” Thanks everybody “ ” We miss you “
We got a phone call from a retained during a gathering in front of the centre. “Ten guardians jumped on an Algerian man, in a “George Floyd” style, because he was shouting “FREEDOM”. “I had never seen this, and I was extremely scared!” He calls for the surveillance cameras to be seized, in the corridor where it happened between 2 and 2.30 p.m, to be able to view this aggression of Friday 12 March.
During another support gathering outside the centre, a retained asked for his chest to be photographed as well as scars following self-injury showing anger and extreme tiredness because of this unbearable situation (photo attached). He has not eaten and almost not drunk for 5 days to denounce his retention and this place he insists in calling prison and not centre. His co-retained say that they fear for his health and that he might be falling into a coma very soon. Retained are showing intense solidarity with his situation. He knows prison in Gaza and he never thought he would find himself in prison while living in Belgium. He wants to get out of there and join his young children. They placed him in a confinement cell in the cold during 24 hours because he would have spoken too long to activists who had come to show their support at the fences of the 127bis.
Two blocks of the centre are currently occupied, and the detainees are no longer two, but three per room, still without masks. They tell us that the food is bad and insufficient, that medical care is almost non-existent. Moreover, the promiscuity creates internal tensions.
They are mainly “double sentenced” in Merksplas, locked up with the intention of being deported to a country they do not always know, after having finished a prison sentence. Double penalty
“They treat us like dogs”. “I paid, I did my time, I paid”
A person who arrived in Belgium at the age of 7 tells us: “I paid my debt to society, to justice. And all of a sudden I’m told to go back to a country I don’t know. For me, it’s hard to swallow”. “I’m devastated by the stress”. “The bosses (=the hacks) provoke us, are aggressive”. “My life is here. I get crazy”.
A detainee testifies after an interview with an officer of the Aliens Office:
“He tortured me, he told me to choose between 2 cuntrys in Africa” “since that day, I haven’t slept” “he told me you’re going to stay here, we’re going to keep you for a year” “he tortured me good good good” “They told me they’ll give you 5 days to think it over, but I’ve already said what I think: “first of all, it’s not my country, I’m going back there, I’m going to prison. they’re going to torture me, it’s suicide for me”.
“Since Wednesday I have stopped eating, I have stopped taking my medication. They told me if you don’t eat, you’ll stay in the cell. But what difference does it make? I’m tired, tired. It’s strange the law in Belgium. I live like someone who has committed a crime. “The cell is disgusting, the bed with the toilet…”
When they have to go to the council chamber for a release request, some are not warned and not brought in, others are put in the solitary confinment the day before and then brought to the court, handcuffed:
11 people from a Merksplas wing start a hunger strike to demand their release. They are non-removable and some have been locked up for over a year (some for 15 months). As the movement spread to other wings, repression was used: about ten people were put in prison.
To our knowledge, two of them are still there and one person has been transferred to the secure wing of Vottem. They are demanding their freedom. Testimonies here:
Activists went to express their solidarity in front of the centre. see indymedia here
“I don’t know what to do… to find freedom”
“That’s how life is, sometimes things happen, you have to resist. You have to resist. We hope that afterwards there will be happiness”.
The repression is on. This morning 8 people were arrested by the police and 10 others were put in solitary confinement. However, they are determined to continue the strike. Here are their messages.
03/03/2021 Call for support, massive hunger strike!
Yesterday evening, a hunger strike started in the closed centre of Merksplas.
11 detainees have refused to show up in the refectory.
Since this morning the movement amplifies and a great number of people have joined the action.
They demand to be set free! Due to the sanitary crisis and the decrease of flights, the detainees are locked up for abnormally long periods, sometimes a whole year.
Some of them have family, friends, sometimes even children in Belgium and do not want to be separated from them.
Any act of solidarity is welcome!
The Centre for Illegal Migrants in Bruges (CIB)cim.info@ibz.fgov.be Zandstraat 150, B-8200 Bruges Tel. +32 50451040 Fax. +32 50315956
Since our last publication about the situation ( here), nothing new for the persons concerned with ‘double penalties’. They are the same ‘double penalties’ who are waiting, but they no longer know what they are waiting for. They are being displaced from centre to centre according to the pandemic situation in the centres. The Bruges closed centre was closed, most of the staff having been tested positive and quarantined. See testimonies here: The 14 detainees of Bruges were transferred to Merksplas or to 127bis, to find themselves back again in Bruges after one week. A nice bunch of friends who have been living this tyranny for months now.
They are currently extremely stressed and tired, and they sent us this message on 3 February 2021:
” There have been works for one week, one wing was transferred to another one. We are ten people with less access to the bathroom. One must ask the authorisation to go to the bathroom. On this day, we will be transferred to the other side for the day and come back here for the night. We’ve had enough of this, we want to speak with the management, ask for a transfer, refuse to leave the wing.’
Three of the long lasting ‘double penalties’ prisoners were deported with escort on a private jet to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the only non-European country which seems to accept deportations at the moment. One could question themselves on (secret) agreements between Belgium and their former colony DRC: Appeal here
New arrests
Contrariwise, there are much more entries and exits within the centres. Undocumented people from Eastern Europe are being arrested, generally on the street, and detained, and after several days, very often without being given the chance to warn a lawyer or to make an appeal against their arrest, are being deported by plane to their countries of origin (Albania, Serbia, Romania, etc.).
Another change: we notice more detentions of undocumented and/or migrants in transit arrested in cities, train stations, at home because they are undocumented.
As an example, a detainee tells us on 8 February 2021 that in one of the blocks in Merksplas, in a few days’ time they were 20 instead of 10 persons and 2 instead of 3 per room. WITHOUT MASKS! They are extremely worried.
Are we going back to mass arrests of undocumented and migrating people?
Since the situation is not going to improve, we are launching a call for support to get their testimonies in order to support them in their fights within the closed centres.
Stopdeportations
No to closed centres
And twoo separate calls
SUPPORT THE FIGHTS against closed centres and borders
The fights against closed centres, deportations and borders (distribution of leaflets, posting, publications, events, logistics, various actions, prevention of repression) require energy as well as financial resources.
Interested in supporting us financially? Donate, or even better, set up a standing order to :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos: BE 13 523045586439 Communication: Soutien aux luttes
Spread the message around you! Thank you!
PHONE RECHARGES needed for the retainees in closed centres
We receive loads of requests for phone recharges from people retained in closed centres. Very often, their phone is the only way to contact the outside, be it their family, friends, lawyer, or to publicly inform on their situation.
Whether their arrest took place on their migratory journey, in their home, whether their families and friends are here or in their home country, it is crucial for them to be able to warn and communicate with them. Without your support, they would be many incapable of doing so.
You may support these detainees by buying a 10 euros Lycamobile recharge from your grocery, night shop or bookshop. Send us the pin code written on the recharge by email at gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or by SMS on 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the detainees who asked for it. If it is easier for you, you may also pay, or even better set up a standing order of 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the bank account especially created for that purpose :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB Communication: Lyca
He would rather remain anonymous, and has been in a detention center for 7 months. His daughter could but once visit him. He was keen to testify about his pain of being separated from his family and about the sanitary measures which complicated even more the situation, that he doesn’t wish for anyone.
Excerpts from the testimony: “A relationship with distance like that, it doesn’t work, you know. It is very harsh for me and the kids too. And when I saw my daughter… my daughter, she looked at me as if I was a stranger, you know. She hid behind her mother and that was very hard for me too.”
“They say that now, even if we are separated, we are in Africa where (…) they say there are technologies. I do not agree because technology cannot give love to a child. You can’t touch through a smartphone. You can’t touch your child. There is no contact, no physical contact. I doesn’t wish that on anybody, you know. [I wouldn’t wish that on anyone (proposition de yozhik)]”
30/01/2020 :Ce midi, au déjeuner, les policiers au contact des sans-papiers du CRA de Vincennes ont tous revêtu des combinaisons intégrales de protection.
Depuis ce soir, les sans-papiers n’ont plus accès au réfectoire. Des gamelles sont distribuées dans les chambres.
Certains cas de Covid étaient déjà avérés mais les mesures actuellement mises en oeuvre prouvent que la circulation du virus est hors de contrôle dans le centre de rétention de Vincennes.
SôS Soutien ô Sans-papiers exige la libération immédiate des sans-papiers enfermés dans les centres de rétention et la prise en charge, dès ce soir, par les autorités sanitaires des sans-papiers enfermés au centre de rétention de Vincennes.
I personally have two young children; one is 2 and a half years and the other is 6 months old. And my partner is studying management. We are officially married.
The decision to expel me was taken and I don’t know how this is going to end.
Already now I’m finding it very hard to cope with this situation. The children are far from me and my companion she cannot manage to get by on her own: she has to leave the children at the crèche and then go to university to study, then she has to run all day and pick up the children no later than 4pm, these are the tasks I used to take care of when I was outside.
For me, I find it inconceivable that my children should be Belgian, and I’m married with a Belgian woman, besides my children are very young, they are not old enough to decide. If I am deported, will they follow me to Africa?
And what’s more, if I’m expelled with them to Africa, how will I manage? Are we going to sleep in the street? Because my mother, the only person I had left, died on 29 December. I don’t have anyone left in Cameroon. It’s been nine years since I left Cameroon.
In Belgian, I served eight months in prison, they took me out of prison, they put me in a detention centre, it’s been two months already.
As my children are small, they cannot manage on their own. My wife is also a student, she goes out early in the morning with the children, leaves them in two different crèches, goes to the university, comes back before 4pm to pick them up, prepares the food and everything, you see, it’s not easy.
I think that the reasons why they decide to keep people in detention centres is without explanation.
It’s without explanation, because people who have children, we are not criminals. We are not criminals; we have been told that we are a threat to the Belgian state… no! They did not catch me with weapons, I was not caught with drugs, I have never stolen, I’m not a thief, I’m not a terrorist, so I don’t know why they’re going to keep me here?
Currently there are 6 of us in our group, who came back from Merksplas because we were transferred for two weeks and then we were all brought back. We should have taken the Corona test again today because we are in confinement, they have not taken us to pass the test, the manager is coming tomorrow they will do it, until then, we are confined.
I am diabetic and I don’t smoke, and we are all locked up in a living room which is very narrow for 6 people, with a television and people chain smoke… it’s very hard for me, me who doesn’t smoke, who doesn’t drink.
I tried talking to the management about that… to make them understand that listen, you can’t put us like that, in a small room from 8am to 10.30pm, allowing people to smoke in that small space: we have to do everything in that space, that we’re not allowed to leave to go to bed. It’s my responsibility for those who don’t smoke, because I don’t smoke…”.
After numerous infections of the COVID-19 virus among the staff (36!) as well as the people detained in the closed centre of Bruges, we received several phone calls from detainees who were worried about the situation. They have now been transferred to the 127bis and Merksplas centres, where they are being held in total isolation, everyone alone in a cell. The precarious health situation and the (mis)management of the pandemic in the closed centres only reinforce the already existing institutional violence, leaving those who do not have the right papers to their own misfortune. They are deprived of their freedom and of their right to protection and fundamental rights.
Testimony “We have no rights, we are only a number”
In this passage, X tells us of the centre’s direction’s indifference in the way they deal with the sanitary situation in the centre. Although he has been living in Belgium for a long time and that his sister and her partner would take care of him, the system does not let go and keeps him locked up at all costs, risking a contagion of the virus. AUDIO HERE
Testimony “I know only Belgium”
Among them X, who has been living in Belgium for 27 years and has only childhood memories of Cameroon. In this passage of his testimony, he tells us about his double sentence: after having spent some time in prison, he does not know when he will be released from the detention centre. He invites us to deconstruct our prejudices and to think about alternatives to the repressive and criminalising ‘logic’ of the system. AUDIO HERE
Testimony “We are all human, with or without paper”
In this passage, X illustrates the violence of the system: deleted from the national register and forced to find ways to survive, he ends up in prison and then in a detention centre. It bears witness to the vicious circle of administrative exclusion. Audio HERE
Closure of business bcause of the coronavirus outbreak
Update closed detention centre of Bruges:
19/12/2020: They are very scared
In the closed centre of Bruges a wing was closed because of too many positive COVID cases. All prisoners were transferred.
In the only wing left open , 7 prisoners are still detained, one of whom tested positive today and being put in isolation. Those who remain should be re-tested for the 4th time. Another prisoner is diabetic and is very scared since he is high risk.
36 staff members were tested positive and are now absent since both were evacuated today in vans (destination?). Drivers from the Office des Étrangers were called for replacing the missing guards.
A director of the centre has suspended the video contacts because “too much handling, health risk”.
She is waiting on Monday for the directives from Brussels to find out what to do.
“They were transferred for going and infecting others in other centres?”
“FREE US PLEASE”
20/12/2020: The last 7 detainees at the centre would be transferred tomorrow 21/12/2020 .
SHUTDOWN OF ALL CLOSED CENTRES
————————————————————————————————————————————
Inmates inform us
On 11/12/2020: detainees of the closed center of Bruges receive the information that 2 detainees tested positive at Covid 19. All detainees tested. The prisoner we are in contact with doesn’t know if the staff is tested and wonders: “I guess the staff is too but I don’t know”.
On 13/12: they are told that 6 prisoners and 5 staff members were tested positive (block AB). An inmate from a non-infected wing establishes the responsibility of the director: “He is working with staff who have not yet been tested and he has not communicated anything to the inmates”.
14/12: a detainee in quarantine, 6 infected in his AB wing, his infected ‘chief’, 12 staff members! Detainees in D wing sabotage. They are thinking of refusing the third Covid test. He blames the management for a lack of communication.
“The only thing we’ve been able to do so far for us, is to give us the little masks but we’re still in contact with the guards. Just today, we had two more cases among the guards The director told us that we had to be tested again, this is the third time. Maybe in a week’s time we will be positive. Because the same guards with whom we share the pool table, the educational games, the TV room, the card games and so on, they tested positive. With them, we had no restrictions because here nothing is planned in relation to that. So we ask that we be freed. I don’t know why they are going to keep me in the center when they know that there are positive cases of coronavirus that can affect my health.
I really want people outside to know the reality that is happening in the center of Bruges. “
Health requirements obviously vary according to the profiles. Prisoners, marginalized and invisible in the media, seem to bother politicians very little. Behind their bars, they may get sick, be crammed into tiny cells and have no access to health care: politicians don’t care. Some lives are worth more than others.
Through the testimonies collected, we denounce once again the abbreviation of closed centers and the abject conditions in which people are detained. Locked up with their co-detainees and guards who come and go from the outside, the detainees fear falling ill: they are treated for cancer with paracetamol, they are unlikely to be given respirators in case of emergency….
The confinement does indeed seriously harm health, perhaps as much as the Covid 19.
It is time to stop procrastinating: open the cells, freedom for all.
Translation of the testimony
We are at the “center for illegal immigrants” of Bruges. It turned out that in the course of the past week we had several positive cases of coronavirus, including the educators, the detainees, the guards as well, and the director didn’t take any measures to keep us safe. In both groups there are infected people. As of today, eight of the chiefs are infected, six of the inmates are infected, and two of the educators are infected. All of us have been tested twice in this center, we entered here without coronavirus because we are tested right at the entrance before entering the group. So we were tested twice and all of us were negative, and then the guards going home and coming back brought the corona back inside. The only thing we’ve been able to do so far for us is to give us the little masks, but we’re still in contact with the guards. Just today, we had two more cases among the guards that were positive. When the results came, the directorate told us that we have to be tested again for a third time in a week, and we don’t know, maybe in a week we will be positive. Because the same guards with whom we share the billiard table, the educational games and the TV room, the card games and others, they tested positive. With them, we had no restrictions because here nothing is planned in relation to that. We tried to talk to the directors. Today she didn’t want to collaborate with us, all she told us was that we are waiting for the third test to see what new cases are among us. Then we ask to be released. I have children outside, I have a wife outside, it’s true that I’ve done stupid things but I’ve already paid for my stupidities. I don’t know why they keep me in the center when we know that there are positive cases of coronavirus that can affect my health. I really want people outside to know the reality that is happening in the center of Bruges. Inmates who are infected are still in the center. We have a room that they call “medical”, the medical room that has 7 small rooms. We also have access to it because when you have a request to the doctor, that’s where we take you. When you go to see the social workers, it’s through the medical you go through. They had one of our brothers in the medical room for 48 hours, and yet today he joined the group from the medical room where those suffering from coronavirus are kept. It’s little things, but they are all stuck. They were asked not to put him there but they put him there. Today they took him out without testing him to see if he is positive and now he is with us in the group so no measures are taken for our safety.
On
November 19, 2020, on the A16, a young 20-year-old Sudanese lost his
life and all his dreams. He was our compatriot,
our brother, our friend.
Mohamed
died hit by a car while he was trying to escape the police gas from
the back of a truck, vehicle of his desire to reach England as soon
as possible. Like his friends from his country, Mohamed left his
family trapped in a refugee camp in Darfur,
Sudan, and bravely tried his chance towards Europe. Seeking asylum in
France when all his compatriots feel rejected there was unimaginable
for him. So he set off towards a destination that became a sad
destiny.
Mohamed
KHAMISSE ZACHARIA is mourned by his parents over there in Sudan and
by us, his friends, here at the border with the United Kingdom. We
called his parents to tell them of his death. We
heard the despair of a mother. The associations
were together on our side. Mohamed brings us together. We are all
inhabited by the same desire to live that he had.
The
20 years of his life cry out to our hearts, our consciences and to
the conscience of humanity. Here is our cry, that of the exiles of
Calais: “We don’t know what to do, we would like to reach the
United Kingdom, we dream of a dignified life, a life of human beings.
As you well know, our country knows war, the injustice of
governments. You know it, we are here out of necessity, after going
through too much suffering on the road. Let the police and the
government understand. Why are they chasing us on the highway when
scanners, security guards with dogs, detectors are already sifting
through all the trucks at the port? »
O
absent so present,
Thanks
to your voice, your greatness of soul,
The
breath of your lips comes to us,
These
lines were born from our hands,
Filled
with the colors of freedom, peace and justice
On 30 September 2020, we received a phone call from Jasmin Gushani, detained since 21 August 2020 for several months in the 127bis after being arrested one day when he was not wearing his mask on the street. “I apologised and put it back , but it was too late, they arrested me.”
His unfortunate retention conditions
He explains that he is sick because of the unhealthy conditions in the centre. “One week ago, I ate something at the canteen, and since then I have had heavy pains in my stomach.” Because of the sanitary conditions of the centre and the health issues it provokes, he will not be able to go to the tribunal to appeal for his release. He worries and tells us
“when I go to the bathroom, it is a mix of water and blood”, “I am sick, at the infirmary they just gave me a pill, which doesn’t help.” He has been eating very few since then. He is still sick today.
The inextricable concern about his demand for release
His demand for release is rejected and the arguments of his lawyer set back by the judge who, while quickly reading through his file, deems that Jasmin is a threat to national security because several stays in prison. His lawyer tells us that it is however only because of minor deeds.
When we speak with Jasmin, he tells us about his feeling of injustice and the violence he went through in the administrative process.
« I am feeling bad, I have been waiting for 12 years and lost my life, I am 38 years old, plus 6 months… I don’t have the time! […] Belgium is my country […] Since prison, I’ve already been to 4 centres, that is too much! I lost my life here. I wanted to live a normal life, I tried, but they refuse to give us documents everywhere, no wonder one has to do illegal stuff in order to survive. I would like to get out of here but they would not give me a second chance”
His situation is special, no Balkan country assumes the responsibility for him and is ready to take him back. He fits in the category of people who should be released because of the “impossibility to return”. Actually, he remains detained because he is demanding international protection to regularise his situation and rebuild his life; but his stays in prison, for facts of trying to cope and survive, have him locked in this ‘threat’ status.
Physical violence in the closed centre
He also testifies on the violence experienced in the centre when, on 4 October, he was beaten by co-detainees during the night.
“At night, the man sharing my cell woke me up shaking me, saying that I was snoring. I didn’t think it was the case, but it may have been because of the medicine I took… I stood up to turn on the light and speak to him but he got scared and ran away… He thought I was going to beat him but I just wanted to talk to him.
He came back with 8 guys, 4 were holding me while the other 4 were beating me, putting plastic in my mouth. I feel very bad, I’ve got bruises everywhere… in my back, my ribs, and my foot and fingers hurt a lot.”
After that, they brought him to a confinement cell, before transferring him to another wing. A doctor from the outside and two police officers will also come to determine his health situation and wounds. His social assistant fills in an official document noticing the facts for his legal file but when his lawyer gets it, he sees two mistakes which make the document inadmissible. One mistake in his date of birth, and the absence of date for his aggression. Jasmin says he starts to believe that she did that on purpose, they also tell him that his document should be sent as quickly as possible for his complaint to be possible.
The day after, another worker comes into his room to tell him:
“call your lawyer, people working here do not want the news about the fight to leave the centre, if you want things to move, ask him to come urgently!”
Health attack
Besides his physical health, it is also his mental health that is at stake after many years of exclusion, detention and institutional violence. Often he says that he has “dark” thoughts and shows self-destructive behaviours.
“I keep thinking and thinking, I want to leave. […] I felt bad today, I boxed the wall and the radiator, I cut my arms with Gilette razor blades, I can not stand it anymore.”
He feels abandoned, condemned to live a life without documents after 12 years in Belgium. He also says he fears another attack because “if you died here, no one would ever know.”
22/11/2020 : While we are constantly being told to avoid ‘non-essential’ travels, deportations are ongoing, with their disastrous consequences, leaving families apart and breaking lives.
Who is benefiting from all this (apart from a few pathetic politicians keen on flattering their lowest instincts, sticking to a system that is collapsing from all parts)?
14/11/2020: At Brussels airport on 10 November 2020, we welcomed five so-called ‘Dublin’ exiles of different nationalities, deported to Belgium through France and Great Britain.
The three exiles coming from Great Britain had been arrested by the police in their hotel or host place as soon as their asylum request had been notified as ‘Dublin’. They had been retained in a closed centre afterwards and then rapidly put on a ‘charter’ flight. We had had contacts with them thanks to associations in Great Britain a few days before their deportation and arranged an appointment at the airport. Infos here
Eleven other migrants locked up at Brookhouse, who were to be put on the plane, were released from the detention centre following appeals lodged by lawyers in Great Britain.
This so-called ‘charter’ was a TUI Airway commercial flight. They were nine exiles on board. The flight had a stop in Bordeaux to drop off three exiles, and then flew to Brussels where they dropped off three others and again to Bratislava to drop off the last three ones.
The two exiles coming from Paris flew on a Brussels Airlines flight to Brussels. They had been arrested during a convocation and brought to Charles de Gaulle airport. The exiles coming from Great Britain had met these two men at Brussels airport and had suggested them to join us.
They all had introduced an asylum request in Belgium, some several years ago already, which had been refused, and they had continued their journey to Great Britain or France.
When they arrived to the airport, they got a convocation from the Foreigners Office for this 12 November 2020 at 9 a.m, inviting them to reintroduce an application for international protection.
After an assessment of their situation, all together around a coffee, they were hosted by friends for a first night.
Other charter flights are foreseen to different European cities in the coming weeks . We are launching a call for volunteers to welcome them at the airport in Brussels and/or host them.
We condemn both airlines (Brussels airlines and TUI Airways) for their collaboration to these deportations!
10/11/2020 New works in front of the closed center 127bis. Continued development of prison-industrial complex in Belgium
A few days ago, about thirty people gathered in front of the closed centers Caricole and 127bis in Seenokkerzeel to show their support for all the people locked up.
The group noted that new work had begun on the field in front of 127bis, where the Steenrock festival was taking place.
We knew that the land in question had been purchased by the ‘Régie des bâtiments’. Today we note that the company in charge of the work is Lareco Bornem, the same company that built the family units in 2018 to detain children. APPEAL HERE
Whatever the project started, it is certain that it will facilitate the detention and deportation of migrants.
We recently learned that the new government intends to follow in Francken’s footsteps and build two new closed centers in Jumet near Charleroi (144 places) and Zandvliet near Antwerp (200 places).2017 here
It thus confirms its desire to pursue a repressive policy that conveys a criminalizing vision of migrants. We note once again that the State, via its Office des étrangers (home office) and secondarily the contracting and sub-contracting companies, continues to invest methodically in the reinforcement of the borders and continues its harassment of migrants. The construction of any new detention system must be denounced as one of the mechanisms of a larger system of state segregation that contributes to the symbolic, legal, physical and social marginalization of migrants, it is unacceptable.
No Borders! Stop all measures of screening and control of human beings! Close all detention centers!
07/11/2020: Since the outbreak of Covid-19, there haven’t been many new people detained in the centres. Many ‘surprise’ releases randomly took place , without being automatically motivated by court decisions. Detainees complain a lot about the non-respect of health prevention measures by the guards.Many people are being placed in confinement cells for silly reasons. Many detainees have been stuck for months, sometimes more than a year, because of the impossibility to deport them since most destination countries refuse to deliver let passes because of Covid-19. Many detainees are asking to be deported because they have had more than enough being retained in closed centres for months.
A huge number of fathers of Belgian children, recognised or not, are in closed centres. Sometimes they have 2, 3 or 4 children in Belgium. Some have been in Belgium for 20 years and retained for a year. ‘How can children be deprived of their fathers, this is unacceptable. […] I do not want to abandon my 6 years old son!’
One detainee rang the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Congo to ask them to stop delivering let passes to fathers. The embassy answered that they are not aware of the dossiers, and that they get 500€ per let pass. ‘For 500€, you take children away from their fathers?’
Short summary of the situation in each centre:
127bis Currently, many people from Eastern Europe are being retained and very rapidly deported. A huge solidarity exists among them.
Testimony by one detainee: “there was a Tunisian guy in the room next door. He was super thin, he did not eat, and he fainted at some point. Mohamed called the security, thinking he was dead. The staff of the centre just picked him up and put him back in his bed.’
Merksplas In the three wings there are around 30 people, often people who were convicted of minor offences. We also notice that they are being fetched at their houses or transferred from prison to the closed centre.
A social assistant told someone retained for a year in the centre: ‘what are you doing in Belgium? You should go back to your country, there is no place for you here.’ However he has been in Belgium for 20 years and he has a daughter here. He got angry and broke the Plexiglas : 24h of confinement!
On 1 November, 9 detainees started a hunger strike, mainly in bloc 4, to protest against the failure to respect the Covid measures and ask for their release seen the impossibility to deport them. Five persons were taken to confinement cells, each time with 10 guards. One man was brought to the hospital. He rang us and shouted « PLEASE HELP US ! »
Bruges In Bruges, they are around 20 for the moment. Very few information reach us from that centre. Censorship is rife. “This is not the centre of Bruges, this is Vlaams Belang.”
One of the detainees had accepted his deportation. He was brought to the airport then back to the centre with no explanation. He was taken to confinement for having “refused” his flight.
Holsbeek Holsbeek is a closed centre exclusively for women. They are now a dozen inside. Many have been retained for long periods, sometimes more than 6 months. Some of them were arrested at the airport and directly transferred to Holsbeek. Others were retained just at the end of their orange card validity (work permit).
Globally, retention conditions (‘you only eat, go out and sleep’, ‘troubles with the guards’, etc) are extremely anxiety-provoking. Besides, just like in any other centre, the staff members do not respect the health prevention measures with the detainees, which worries them a lot.
One of the detainees made a proposal: that a corona-infected person went there… ‘This way we will all be released! FREEDOM!
Vottem Many of the people in the closed centre in Vottem are double penalties. Most of them come from prison or they were arrested following issues of public order. Obviously, these persons do not understand why they are not released since embassies do not deliver let passes and that there are no or very few flights to their countries of origin.
Caricole One detainee tried to commit suicide and cut his veins. Another also said that some people are not eating.
As a conclusion, the sanitary crisis has had a huge impact on closed centres. On the one hand, people were released without reason. One may guess that the Belgian State realised that it was not possible to deport them because of the pandemic. On the other hand, we notice that the persons ‘kept’ by the Belgian State often are considered as a threat to public order. The people who are currently retained are living in disastrous conditions: isolation, very few contacts with the outside, stress, very few information regarding their ongoing procedures, lies, incomprehension, etc. They are considered as second-class citizens and their rights are violated.
Again and again we claim
No Borders!
Let’s burn the closed centres!
————————————————————————————————-
Call for phone recharges for retainees in the closed centres
We are currently overloaded with requests for phone recharges from
people retained in closed centres. You can support them by buying 5 or
10 euros Lycamobile recharges at your grocery shop, night shop or
bookshop. You just have to send us the pin code that is written on the
recharge to our email gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net or by SMS on our
mobile number 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the
retainees who asked for a recharge and enable them to keep in touch
with us and the outside world. I
If it is easier for you, you may also pay 5, 10, 20 euros or more
(!) or even better make a standing order on the following bank
account: Collectif Contre Les Expulsions
10 detainees started a hunger strike at the Merksplas closed centre
block 4 on 1 November 2020. Some have been placed in confinement cells, a
young man was brought to the hospital.
They are claiming their release since no deportation is possible at present.
Some have been retained for almost a year.
They are calling us: PLEASE HELP US!
Phone, write….
Alexander De Croo Eerste minister: +32 2 501 02 11Email: contact@premier.be
Sammy Mahdi Beleidscel en Secretariaat van de Staatssecretaris voor Asiel en Migratie, 02/488.06.06Email: info.mahdi@mahdi.fed.be
Depuis le début de la crise de la Covid 19, le trafic aérien est extrêmement limité, beaucoup de frontières sont fermées mais des personnes continuent d’être enfermées dans les centres de rétention administrative (CRA). Mercredi 28 octobre, le gouvernement annonce un deuxième confinement et la fermeture totale des frontières extérieures à l’Europe. Pourtant, l’État refuse toujours de fermer les centres de rétention ! Les prisonnier.e.s du CRA de Cornebarrieu Toulouse répondent en lançant une grève de la faim vendredi matin ! La grève a lieu dans plusieurs secteurs et les prisonnier.e.s sont solidaires entre elles et eux, plus d’une trentaine de grévistes.
Les prisonnier.e.s demandent leur expulsion ou leur libération, ils et elles ne comprennent pas cet enfermement à tout prix alors que les vols vers leurs pays d’origine sont suspendus. Ils et elles nous racontent, dans les témoignages qui suivent, leurs conditions de vie indignes, la saleté des lieux, des conditions inadaptées au Covid-19, le racisme des policiers et du médecin qui ne les soigne pas, le désœuvrement total car il n’y a rien à y faire, aucune occupation n’est possible.
” The Belgian State has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for its inhuman migratory policy. “
In 2017, several Sudanese were retained in our closed centres and several were illegally deported to their “country of origin”.
We had several contacts with some of them in 2017: here our post of 2017 on the visits of the Sudanese embassy in the closed centres. and here
Following the fight by some in the centres HERE , the support by some of the hosts, and the legal pressure by brave lawyers, some were released but many others were deported.
One , deported, had lodged with his lawyer a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights and WON the case. ” Belgian State convicted for its degrading migratory policy”.
This sentence does not make us forget that the Belgian courts (on appeal) will have done nothing to condemn these practices. It comes almost exceptionally at a time when many cases that very clearly involve serious violations of the rights of migrants are judged inadmissible by this same Court.
Above all, we are under no illusion as to the impact of this judgment, both on any changes in Belgian legislation and on the structures of state racism.
We welcome this little legal victory against these illegal deportations but we will continue to support the fight of the retainees against ANY deportation and retention.
“In particular, the Court deems that the procedural shortcomings by the Belgian authorities before the eviction of the complainant to Sudan did not enable the latter to pursue the asylum request he had introduced with Belgium and led Belgian authorities to insufficiently evaluate the risks incurred by the complainant in Sudan. Besides, by deporting the complainant to Sudan in spite of the ban they had been imposed, the authorities made the appeal that the complainant had successfully started ineffective .”
Great Britain sent back migrants by charter to their country “Dublin” in Europe.It is still in the process of doing so.Several charters have already been organized to France, Germany, Italy, Spain… in the last 2 months.
We were adviced that a charter should deposit people in Belgium this October 22, 2020, then would continue its road towards Germany and Romania to deposit others.
The future deportees sorted by the administrations are currently in a closed center in GB (Brookhouse). They have been qualified as ‘Dublin’ following fingerprinting or an asylum application. They have no access to the outside and are therefore deprived of the right to legally oppose their expulsion. Associations try to obtain informations inside the center and to warn lawyers to cancel these removals, very often with success. https://movementforjustice.co.uk/
This Home Office strategy seems to us to be part of a political game between the UK and Europe. The migrants are taken hostage before 01/01/2021, the beginning of the Brexit when, without agreement, the Dublins returns would no longer be relevant in the UK!
The day before, we hope to be informed in which airport the stopover in Belgium will take place and will propose a ‘welcoming committee’. We hope that our authorities will release them directly (with a TQO of course) as in the other European countries and call to go to collect them on their arrival…
Unfortunately, they can be sent to a closed center, starting with isolation because of Covid. Without immediate contact, the time limit for an extreme emergency recourse may therefore be exceeded.If you know migrants who intend to go to UK, who have arrived in the UK, recently or not, whatever their way to travel, try to keep in touch with them. Ask them to memorize your phone number (+32 …), that they warn you if there is a risk of expulsion to their country Dublin, and especially if it is Belgium. Usually, they throw away their phone on arrival, otherwise it could be confiscated, examined and the contacts deleted.
In case of trouble, warn gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net.
Le 19 août 2020, Abdulfatah Hamdallah du Soudan a été retrouvé mort
sur la plage de Sangatte, près de Calais. Pendant la nuit, il avait
tenté de traverser la Manche vers le Royaume-Uni en utilisant un jouet
de plage gonflable et une pelle comme rame improvisée. La ministre de
l’Intérieur, Priti Patel (GB) a accusé “d’odieuses bandes criminelles et
des passeurs qui exploitent des personnes vulnérables” comme étant
responsables de sa mort, bien qu’aucun passeur ne soit impliqué. En le
décrivant, lui et d’autres personnes traversant comme des victimes de
réseaux criminels cupides de trafiquants, elle espérait justifier la
sécurisation et la militarisation accrues de la Manche. Ces mesures,
présentées comme nécessaires pour les “stopper”, sont en fait à
l’origine des raisons pour lesquelles tant de personnes entreprennent
actuellement ce voyage, et sont la cause principale des dangers mortels
auxquels elles sont confrontées en cours de route.
La sécurisation des frontières britanniques : fabrication d’une crise
En décembre 2018, le gouvernement britannique a parlé d’un “incident
majeur” lorsque plus de 200 personnes ont traversé la Manche dans de
petites embarcations au cours des deux mois précédents. Jusqu’à présent,
en 2020, on estime que 6 000 voyageurs illégaux ont atteint le
Royaume-Uni de cette façon, 98 % d’entre eux ayant demandé l’asile. Le 7
août, la ministre de l’Intérieur a annoncé son intention de “rendre cette route non viable” en “commençant par empêcher les bateaux de quitter la France” et en “interceptant les bateaux et en renvoyant ceux qui tentent de faire la traversée“.
Ce projet s’est principalement révélé au travers de la militarisation
indéniable de la Manche sous la direction de l’ex-Marine Dan O’Mahoney
dans sa nouvelle fonction de Commandant de la Menace Clandestine de la
Manche (Clandestine Channel Threat Commander). Une flotte de
patrouilleurs côtiers et de vaisseaux patrouilleurs de douane de la
Force frontalière coordonne actuellement ses activités avec celles de
ses homologues français et des garde-côtes nationaux des deux côtés de
la Manche pour intercepter les bateaux des migrants dès que possible.
Des navires de guerre de la marine française ont été déployés tandis que
la Marine royale et la Force frontalière mènent des exercices
d’entraînement conjoints. Des drones de la société privée de défense
Tekever (bientôt remplacée par Elbit) et du ministère de la Défense
assurent une surveillance aérienne constante parallèlement aux sorties
des avions de la Royal Air Force. En plus de localiser les bateaux qui
sont en nécessité d’être secourus, une vidéo publicitaire du ministère
de l’Intérieur montre que les images capturées par ces drones sont
utilisées pour criminaliser les demandeurs d’asile et condamner les
voyageurs qui pilotent leurs bateaux pour “faciliter l’entrée illégale”.
Les récents efforts du Royaume-Uni ne mettront pas fin aux voyages
non autorisés sur de petites embarcations et en fait, les arrivées ont
augmenté au cours des mois d’août et septembre 2020. Alors qu’un plan
d’action conjoint pour 2019 promettait 3,2 millions de £ pour
l’équipement et les technologies de sécurité pour les patrouilles en mer
le long des côtes françaises, la France aurait réclamé 30 millions de £
supplémentaires au Royaume-Uni. Ceci pour que sa police intercepte les
personnes prêtes à embarquer alors qu’elles se trouvent encore à terre
en coopération plus étroite avec les moyens de surveillance aérienne
britanniques. Si cette demande était acceptée, ce serait une nouvelle
étape dans la longue histoire de l’exportation de la police des
frontières britannique vers la France en échange d’un financement.
Stratégie qui ironiquement a été à l’origine de la “crise” même des
passages de petites embarcations que l’on connaît aujourd’hui.
Au cours des dernières décennies grâce à des dépenses de plus de
315,9 millions de £ entre 2010 et 2016 et de plus de 45 millions de £
depuis la signature du traité de Sandhurst en 2018, la frontière
britannique externalisée dans le nord de la France a été de plus en plus
sécurisée. Cet argent a permis de financer des kilomètres de murs et de
clôtures autour de la ville, de l’autoroute, du port de ferries et
d’Eurotunnel, ainsi que de nouveaux capteurs et de nouvelles
technologies de surveillance pour détecter les personnes se cachant dans
des camions ou à bord de trains – principaux moyens utilisés par les
gens pour traverser clandestinement la frontière.Il sert également à
financer plus d’un millier de policiers anti-émeutes français stationnés
en permanence à Calais. En plus de patrouiller dans le périmètre du
port, ces policiers commettent quotidiennement des actes de harcèlement
et de violence contre les migrants, expulsant et détruisant constamment
leurs squats et leurs camps de fortune. Ces attaques manifestes des
autorités, se combinent avec le refus systématique de produits de
première nécessité tels que logement, nourriture, produits d’hygiène,
installations de lavage et même de vêtements dans le but de dissuader
les gens de se rendre ou de rester à Calais pour tenter d’atteindre le
Royaume-Uni.
En outre, dans le but de réduire le nombre de migrants qui se lancent
dans des voyages maritimes, les organisations Calais Migrant Solidarity
et Human Rights Observers observent que la police française confisque
ou détruit régulièrement des bateaux, gilets de sauvetage et autres
équipements de sécurité maritime de tous les migrants qu’elle arrête à
Calais. Les autorités locales ont également sévèrement restreint la
vente de ces articles à toute personne sans pièce d’identité valide,
exigeant que les coordonnées des acheteurs soient enregistrées. Ces
mesures n’empêchent pas les traversées par bateaux, mais les rendent
juste plus dangereuses et contribuent à des décès à la frontière, les
gens partant sans être préparés ou essayant même de nager. Elles créent
également un marché lucratif pour les passeurs. Loin d’empêcher le
passage des embarcations, de sauver des vies ou de mettre fin à
l’exploitation, cette sécurisation des frontières à Calais a eu l’effet
inverse.
Ferries not Fences (Authors’ photograph)
La libre circulation, pas des “routes sûres et légales”
Alors que, dans un effort d’apaiser l’extrême droite et de projeter
une image de “reprise du contrôle de nos frontières”, la ministère de
l’Intérieur vise à rendre non viables les traversées en petits bateaux
dans la Manche, les groupes de défense des droits des migrants et les
organisations humanitaires nous demandent de les rendre en fait inutiles.
Selon eux, la mort d’Abdulfatah illustre le besoin urgent d’établir des
“itinéraires sûrs et légaux” pour que les demandeurs d’asile puissent
atteindre le Royaume-Uni sans avoir à risquer leur vie ou à compter sur
des passeurs pour le faire. En pratique, cette proposition pourrait voir
la création de centres en France pour les personnes qui demandent
l’asile et s’inscrivent pour réinstallation ou regroupement familial au
Royaume-Uni. En cas de succès, ces personnes seraient autorisées à
entrer dans le pays (R-U). Ce serait une alternative à l’obligation
d’être présent sur le territoire britannique avant de demander l’asile,
principale raison du franchissement irrégulier des frontières.
Si ces “itinéraires sûrs” modifieraient certainement les situations
actuelles (ils seraient examinés par le ministère de l’Intérieur
actuellement), ils ne remettraient pas nécessairement en question le
régime frontalier existant et pourraient même le renforcer. Des
programmes de réinstallation externes font déjà partie de la politique
frontalière du Royaume-Uni (et de l’UE). Pourtant, ils n’aboutissent
généralement qu’à un nombre infime de transferts réussis, tandis que la
majorité des personnes se retrouvent dans des conditions de vie
désastreuses dans des camps de réfugiés, attendant des années que des
décisions soient prises. En outre, les programmes de réinstallation
externe maintiennent le pouvoir discrétionnaire de l’État de décider qui
mérite d’être protégé, en retirant aux réfugiés le droit de rechercher
la sécurité dont ils ont besoin. Les candidats à la réinstallation
doivent se présenter comme des victimes parfaites, en s’adaptant aux
récits préétablis de persécution personnelle et en contestant les
hypothèses sur la sécurité de leur “pays d’origine”. Cependant, le
problème central des programmes de réinstallation est, qu’ils
accompagnent habituellement d’autres politiques d’externalisation et de
sécurisation des frontières et contribuent ainsi à délégitimer et à
criminaliser toute personne qui traverse les frontières de manière
autonome pour rechercher la sécurité, les qualifiant de “faux” réfugiés
avec pour objectif d’abuser de l’hospitalité des États d’arrivée.
Les “routes sûres et légales” et le renforcement de la police des
frontières apparaissent comme des positions opposées dans un débat sur
les frontières et les droits humains, mais ce sont en réalité les deux
faces d’une même médaille. Theresa May l’a clairement exprimé dans un
discours prononcé en 2015 en tant que ministre de l’Intérieur,
lorsqu’elle a décrit la politique frontalière britannique comme “Humaine
pour ceux qui ont besoin de notre aide, dure pour ceux qui en abusent”.
Il est urgent d’adopter un cadre différent pour le travail de
sensibilisation : un narratif qui ne traite pas les personnes qui
traversent la Manche comme des victimes ou des criminels, mais qui
reconnaisse que leurs voyages et leurs trajets subvertissent et
résistent à la sécurisation croissante qui définit la politique
frontalière britannique depuis des décennies. Le défi consiste à
poursuivre la dénonciation de la violence et l’injustice de la frontière
externalisée du Royaume-Uni sans lui offrir par inadvertance des
possibilités de persister sous de nouvelles formes.
Être solidaire des migrants de Calais et de la Manche, c’est
exiger rien de moins que l’abolition de cette frontière, et la libre
circulation pour tous.
Despite the limited occupation in closed centres, tensions are high: fight among retainees, repression and racism by the staff, police intervention, confinement, transfers, suffering, rebellion, etc. Most of the retainees are ‘double penalties’ but besides, asylum seekers are arrested in open centres and migrants in transit on the street. They are retained in view of their deportation to their Dublin or ‘origin’ country. The retention length gets extremely long, a year for some, because of the impossibility to deport to several countries; which partly explains the tensions.
-“this is not double penalty, it is triple penalty: prison, closed centre, separation from my children. I do not believe in justice anymore.
-“There are many fathers here: why do they take away children from their fathers when they greatly need them?”
Racism and repression
-“This is not the closed centre of Bruges, this is Vlaams Belang”.
-“They do not like Arabs. They turn on the air conditioner too high, it is very cold, they do it on purpose”.
-“All the staff are accomplices of the Foreigners Office”.
-“Real prison”
-“It is terrible here, we do not exist”.
– “The social assistant told me I would be sent back to the country that is ready to accept me”.
– A lot of racism. A guard is particularly violent and racist, very provocative.
– 10 security guards beat me: “I am not ok, I have been sick for 3 days. I called the guard to tell him I needed a doctor. He stayed 30 seconds, not even. He told me it would not be possible to go to the infirmary until the day after at 10:30 a.m.”.
– Words by a guard “It is not a hotel here, FUCK YOU!”.
Retention conditions
-“Showers are disgusting, not enough food, guards are racist.”
– “I want a press article to be written on the situation and the living conditions in the centre.”
Internal tensions
– Fight in a centre: “I stood up to turn on the light and speak to him
but he got scared… he ran out, he thought I was going to beat him
although I just wanted to talk to him. He came back with 8 guys
(co-retainees), 4 of them were holding me while the others were beating
me. I feel very bad, I have bruises everywhere.”
Hope and despair
-“I am feeling bad, I have been waiting for 12 years and lost my life, I am 38. I don’t have the time anymore! Today I was feeling bad, I banged my hands onto the wall and heating, I scratched razor blades on my arms, I can not stand it anymore. I am sick (stomach pains), at the infirmary they just gave me a pill but it doesn’t work, what is this? Since my time in prison, I have already been to 4 centres, it is too much! I lost my life here. I am thinking a lot, I want to leave. I wanted to live a normal life, I tried but everywhere they refuse to give us documents and then they wonder why we do illegal things in order to survive. I would like to get out of here but they do not give me a second chance. I just want to live a normal life”.
-“If I get out of here, I want to have documents, even only the orange card so I can work, study and get married. If I get out without documents, I won’t know what to do, my life is over.”
-“Please continue to call me, I don’t know what I will become, I really have very dark thoughts.”
– It is like a prison. I never did anything wrong, what have I done to be here? I am only here because I am a Dublin. I need to be safe(…)
– All I want is that they bring me back to the Netherlands where they gave me asylum.
Call for phone recharges for retainees in the closed centres
We are currently overloaded with requests for phone recharges from people retained in closed centres. You can support them by buying 5 or 10 euros Lycamobile recharges at your grocery shop, night shop or bookshop. You just have to send us the pin code that is written on the recharge to our email gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net or by SMS on our mobile number 0032(0)484026781. We will then send the code to the retainees who asked for a recharge and enable them to keep in touch with us and the outside world. I
If it is easier for you, you may also pay 5, 10, 20 euros or more (!) or even better make a standing order on the following bank account: Collectif Contre Les Expulsions
Ongoing repression and sufferings. Countless confinements, suicide attempts and transfers in all the centres. Also a lot of extremely rapid deportations to countries of Eastern Europe.
Mainly Moroccans and Algerians currently in closed centres for several months, sometimes even a year!
We hear a lot about issues related to paternity. Notably the example of a man who has a registered child (with a birth certificate) having to go through a DNA test in order to prove his paternity after a decision by a judge. That request will firstly be rejected by the centre.
Besides their willingness to be free, the retainees claim for their rights and mainly their rights to health and legal assistance, of which they are regularly deprived.
Covid measures are stil in force. Retainees are very few compared to the places available, and their contacts are limited. According to several testimonies, the wearing of masks and the distanciation measures are rarely respected by the staff.
In Merksplas :
Since the outbreak of Covid-19, any newcomer is automatically installed in block 5 which is the isolation unit. They are alone in a cell that really looks like a dungeon.
Two Covid tests are planned at the beginning and end of their retention in block 5. After one week, they are brought back together with the other retainees.
Every day, the isolated retainees only have the right to two walks of one hour each, alone in a cage of 7m x 3m, with fences even above their heads. The cages are aligned and they may sometimes speak to each other from one cage to the other.
A woman host explains the situation of a man in a testimony on 15 September.
“It seems that he was told he had to wait for the end of quarantine to hire a lawyer. After that deadline he was told that it was too late, that the 3 days had passed.
They gave him 5€ credit for his phone but they refused to give him the paper with my phone number on it.
Hence he remained confined for the time of his quarantine and then spent a certain amount of time with the others. They sent him back to Germany the day before yesterday and he came back to Belgium yesterday.”
Suicide attempt after serious racist comments:
“A man retained for 7 months in a centre took a lot of drugs in the night of 18 September and yesterday too, after heavy racist comments by one guard. This morning they found him unconscious and 5 guards carried him to a confinement cell in block 5”.
Words by retainees:
“I cost you 200 euros per day. These migration policies are a real business, it is incredible, I already costed you 40,000 euros!”
“I don’t want documents, I want to LIVE! No one is illegal, neither am I.”
“I’ve always been illegal. That’s how I live and it never prevented me from living!”
In the 127 bis :
They are around 20 for 120 places. Many isolations and transfers as soon as they claim for their rights, even when they do so in a polite way. But it is complete rebellion when they are ill-treated: “Sorry, but if they are arrogant with me, I can be too.”
In Bruges :
They are around 12 for 112 places. The requests we get are mainly requests for medical assistance. In front of the deprivation of liberty that the State imposes on them, they are claiming for their right to health.
In Holsbeek:
We currently have very few contacts with them. Last month, they were 4 women for 60 places.
A young Romanian girl, 19 years old only, was deported to Romania only one week after her arrival although all her family is living legally in France.
In Greece, it took the fire in the refugee camp at Moria, for Europe to finally pay attention to these shameful camps. However, 12,000 people are still in an administrative limbo, homeless and without any solution, and there is no indication that the situation will improve. Britain now expels migrants by chartering planes to other European countries. Britain has also threatened to send the army against the boats that come to the rescue of these unfortunate, undocumented migrants. In France, migrants are harassed. In Calais, not content with constantly destroying the tents of the exiled, the prefecture (local and regional governments) and the town hall want to prevent associations from distributing food and water to people who are in need and who are cruelly lacking the basic necessities. Given the increasingly repressive news, the call for signatures to support the mobilisation in Calais remains open until the 25th. The call is attached. Your organizations can sign at this address: calais-rises@riseup.net Also, each association, each collective is invited to organize a local support rally on Saturday September 26, the day before of the World Refugee Day. Let’s gather together in large numbers in front of the prefectures, let’s organize soup kitchens in the squares. More information on the place of departure and the route we will take will be available soon on the website of the ‘Association Terre d’Errance’.
It was on 22 September 1998. Semira Adamu, a young girl of 20 years old, was murdered by the 9 policemen who wanted to deport her.
She had already resisted 5 deportation attempts hence this time they were determined, even if it meant to kill her. Although her death enabled a big awareness-raising among the population, it did not change the atrocities caused by migratory policies, the latter even hardened with the times.
We can see more and more exploitation of the undocumented, raids on our streets, broken lives, deaths, etc.Therefore, 22 years after, we do not forget and we still do not forgive!This is a call to make those atrocities visible for everyone to remember.Here are a few ideas of things to do during the coming week:
– decorate the streets with the effigy of Semira: stick posters to your window or in the streets, paint walls that are too grey
– speak about degrading migratory policies with your neighbours, when queuing in a shop, on social media
– go show your solidarity with the retained people, even with only 2 or 3 friends, it is really possible to communicate with them and show your support. You may bring things to make some noise in front of the centre. The 6 closed centre here
– help the undocumented (whether settled or just passing), help them survive, continue their path or escape in case of arrest.
– go shout or scupper the responsible and tools of these policies: the Foreigners Office, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons, the police, the Stib (that delivers the undocumented to the police during controls), Brussels Airlines (that actively repatriates), etc.
The Opale Coast : its beaches, its dragon, its squares, its carnival and … … and the determination of the State to harass refugees.
For 30 years, people in exile in transit to England have never been properly treated by local and national authorities. In 2017 the justice system ordered the state and the city of Calais to distribute water and to install toilets and showers. The authorities had to respect this obligation, but only did the bare minimum : while continuing to chase people away and destroy their shelters, they have organised distributions that are far away from anywhere, invisible and insufficient.
Further more harassment from the police and the administration is never ending.
Recently, there has been discrimination in the buses, which is intolerable.Blocked at the border, prevented from crossing and prevented from staying, these people survive as best they can, with no shelter other than tents provided by the associations, which are confiscated and destroyed on a daily basis.
The people were not sheltered last winter or during this summer’s heatwave, we fear the worst for this winter coming soon.
This summer, thousands of people tried to reach the UK by crossing the Channel in various boats.
We all realize that a policy of repression will never solve anything.
In 2020, men, women and children are thirsty and hungry.
In 2020, men, women and children have no shelter and are prevented from sleeping.
In 2020, men, women and children are victims of inhuman treatment.
In 2020, men, women and children risk their lives on dangerous travels.
The strategy led by municipalities, prefectures and the State must change.
We are mobilizing for a real dignified and human welcoming organized by the authorities.
We demand that the life and migration projects of exiled people be truly listened to and taken into consideration.
TOGETHER LETS STAND IN SOLIDARITY LET’S MAKE IT VISIBLE AND LOUD GATHERING SATURDAY 26th SEPTEMBER for a great festive mobilisation of solidarity !____________________________________
Dossier on the new wave of charter flights to France, Germany and Spain deporting people who have crossed the channel in small boats. The next flight is planned for 3 September. Compiled by Calais Migrant Solidarity, Corporate Watch and friends.
The British government has vowed to clamp down on migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, responding as ever to a tabloid media panic. One part of its strategy is a new wave of mass deportations: charter flights, specifically targeting channel-crossers, to France, Germany and Spain.
There have been two flights so far, on the 12 and 26 August. The next one is planned for 3 September. The two recent flights stopped in both Germany (Duesseldorf) and France (Toulouse on the 12, Clermont-Ferrand on the 26). Another flight was planned to Spain on 27 August – but this was cancelled after lawyers managed to get everyone off the flight.
Carried out in a rush by a panicked Home Office, these mass deportations have been particularly brutal, and may have involved serious legal irregularities. This report summarises what we know so far after talking to a number of the people deported and from other sources. It covers:
* The context: Calais boat crossings and the UK-France deal to stop them.
* In the UK: Yarl’s Wood repurposed as Channel-crosser processing centre; Britannia Hotels; Brook House detention centre as brutal as ever. * The flights: detailed timeline of the 26 August charter to Dusseldorf and Clermont-Ferrand.
* Who’s on the flight: refugees including underage minors and torture survivors.
* Dumped on arrival: people arriving in Germany and France given no opportunity to claim asylum, served with immediate expulsion papers.
* The legalities: use of the Dublin III regulation to evade responsibility for refugees.
* Is it illegal?: rushed process leads to numerous irregularities. ____
The broadcast – as sudden as it was unexpected – of the shocking images of the acts of violence, even torture, inflicted by the police on Jozef Chovanec in February 2018 at Charleroi airport remind us of the murders of George Floyd and of Semira Adamou by the police.
Because in the three cases, death was caused by suffocation, resulting in cardiac arrest. In the three cases, police violence was unbridled, demonstrated by ignoring the pleas of George Floyd, by the smiles while Semira was dying, or by the Hitler salute of a policewoman present during the torment of Jozef Chovanec.
But also because, despite the evidence provided by the image – a rare thing – it took a long time, a very long time, before any thought was given to shedding light on these cases and bringing the police, and in particular the executioners, into question. Investigations never take place, or are botched or even sabotaged: police violence, however legion, generally goes unpunished. The forces of public order and the police are only challenged when the public or media pressure becomes too great for the affair to remain stifled by the closing of ranks by the police and the cowardice of institutions and politicians.
Jozef Chovanec’s murder dates back two years, and it turned out that the images were known to exist by many members of the police. The fact that the police hierarchy now states that it did not know of the existence of the video is inexplicable: clearly the police organised to cover-up the events. Yet procedures exist, these may be flawed or unenforced, but they in no way affect the impunity enjoyed by the police, which is systematic … and clearly systemic. To announce the opening of an investigation only following the dissemination of the images by the media is an obscene demonstration of the impunity.
Not only is the victim suffocated, but the events are suppressed as well.
The facts are repeating themselves, illustrated by numerous public testimonies, but nothing changes (nothing positive anyway). We keep in mind the “last eleven minutes of Semira” transcribed from a video of her deportation https://ccle.collectifs.net/Les-onze-dernieres-minutes-de.html. The same suffering, the same tragic end, the same attitude of the torturers, the same denial of responsibility, the cover up of the events surrounding the victim and the case. Same tragi-comic communication from police and political authorities.
Since Semira’s death in 1998, we have witnessed serious violence reported during forced deportations, violence committed by police officers who were voluntary escorts of the federal police at Brussels airport and at Charleroi airport.
The Office does not mention the presence of an escort during these deportations: however, according to other statistics, 25% of deportees are accompanied by an escort, tied up, handcuffed, and mistreated: figures from MYRIA (https://www.myria.be/files/Myriatics_11-detention.pdf.)
According to the testimonies received, this team of the federal border police does not hesitate to use terrible and illegitimate violence, which could be classified as torture. Insults and humiliations are common. Wide-spread racism and sexism. Several complaints have been lodged against this ill-treatment, although the majority of the victims, once deported, do not have the means to express and expose the violence they have suffered. Once again impunity seems guaranteed.
Many migrants wishing to settle in Great Britain have arrived safely in recent weeks (several hundred per week).
Many of the camps in the Pas de Calais area have been dismantled, which has pushed migrants to cross the Channel with the help of smugglers, who are working actively. Info on Calais here
It seems that the management of this border is both chaotic and unsecured. A little politico-capitalist game is underway between France and the UK around the “security” of this border before the Brexit negotiations are completed. The UK threatens to bring in the army to push migrants back into the Channel: “We are working to make this route unviable and to arrest the criminals who facilitate these crossings and to ensure that they are brought to justice,” said the Home Secretary Priti Patel, quoted in this press release. Info mainstream media: here
One hypothesis is that it is convenient for France and Belgium to clear the coastline by dismantling the camps and by turning a blind eye to the activities of the smugglers.
In France UPDATE Support people in detention centres: here
In Belgium, there is little activity around raids and roundups at the moment. However, we still have many accounts of serious mistreatment of undocumented migrants in car parks and in parks in Brussels by the police or private “security” agencies, in order to maintain the pressure on undocumented migrants, to protect borders and to keep a good image of our repressive and racist system.
But this will not last and we must once again expect arrestation and imprisment along the border, and in Belgium precisely.
Attached are flyers in several languages (French, English, Amharique, Tigrynia, Arabe, Dari – Farsi and Pashto , Oromo) to inform people arrested and locked up in prisons or in Detention Centres, in Belgium in the coming months. To distribute, to print, to photograph and to display in strategic places, so that everyone can find it on their smartphone.
She receveid a ticket for a flight at 2.55 p.m to Cameroon, here native country. To be able to deport her, the Foreigners Office was obliged to do a screeing test for Covid-19 on her. Michelle refused to do it because she doesn’t want to return to a country she fled.
She testifies this 27 July, just after she refused the screening test to the centre’s director and psychologist: ‘The director tells me: ‘OK, since you refuse to cooperate, we will turn our backs on you’. ‘Turn your backs on me? What do I cooperate to? Do you know what awaits me in my country? I don’t want to return. I went to the embassy to ask for a visa because I was fleeing. I get here and you want me to return voluntarily? […] I’d rather go back with an escort because I know that I will refuse first and I will come back with bruises, which will prove that I was forced to return.
She was released this 28 July 2020! The relentlessness of the Foreigners Office and the manipulations of the staff of the closed centre were not sufficient to undermine Michelle’s determination and strength. The scandalous pressure by Brussels Airlines phone calls did not change anything either.
CONSIDERATIONS ON CHAOS IN THE CLOSED CENTRE
Preamble
We strongly oppose all detentions, especially the detention of undocumented migrants. However, in view of the ever more worrying situation that authorities at all levels and responsible officials trivialise, we would like to make some updates. The situation which has been brought to our attention, lead us to raise awareness on certain aspects and unacceptable facts in the detention of undocumented migrants.
Some facts:
The law on the detention of migrants, who do not have, or no longer have documents allowing them to stay in a European Member State which has a closed border policy, stipulates that the migrant can be detained with a view to her/his removal from the territory. This is strictly limited to the time necessary for the execution of the measure, without the detention period exceeding two months.
A two-month extension of the initial period of detention is possible in certain situations, for example:
• if the steps for removal have been taken within seven days after the decision becomes enforceable;
• whether these procedures are pursued with the required diligence, and;
• if there is still a possibility of effectively removing the undocumented migrant in a reasonable time frame.
In fact, a systematic extension seems to be the rule! The exception becomes the rule when if it is politically convenient for the authorities. This is happening far from the public gaze, without many people being alerted!
After a first extension, a new extension decision can be taken by the Minister. After five months of detention, the migrant must be released. However, if “the safeguard of public order so requires”, the detention is extended month by month after the expiration of the five-month period with a maximum of eight months of detention in total. It is important to appreciate the term “safeguard” of public order here!! How could these people, imprisoned and detained in scandalous conditions, endanger public order? But regardless, what public order are we referring to here?
Note also this outrageous possibility with regard to the time limit: if a person of migrant origin refuses to board the plane, which will take him to a destination that he fears, the Immigration Office (Office des Etrangés) can notify him of a new decision to detain her/him, and the two-months detention period starts again!
This, although this scenario does not comply with what is stated in the so-called EC Return Directive1 and certainly contravenes the right to liberty provided for by article 5, §1 of the European Convention on Human Rights2.
In the testimony below we see that the staff of the detention centre, including the management and the social worker, who are disrespectful, speaking in a familiar manner to the inmate ‘M’ abuse their power over her. For example, by saying that if she does not collaborate “we will turn our backs on you”, or that she risks being forcibly expulsed, which is usually brutally executed by the police.
However, according to the European Court of Human Rights, “any conduct by the police against a person which violates human dignity” constitutes a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention of Human rights, in particular “the use (…) of physical force against an individual when this is not strictly necessary by his behaviour. In addition, the Council of Europe, specifies that this must be assessed with regard to “the real or reasonably expected resistance on the part of the person to be expulsed.”
If we oppose the very principle of the use of force stated here, we stress that the police and the administration, which are tasked with implementing such practices are, apart from all human consideration, outside the law.
In detention centres the roles are well defined: the management is there to ensure the proper functioning of the centre. There is no question of getting together with other members of the staff in order to threaten and put pressure on the detainees. This is neither the job nor the role of the management.
The medical and psychological service is responsible for the medical and psychological monitoring of detainees at the centre. However, it is well known that the medical profession, including nurses, are complicit in the administration of medications to the detainees, of which, they are unaware of the real effects and risks, are sometimes forced to do so by the order of the guards.
Is there a follow-up, either medical or psychological, to the side-effects of the sedatives administered in these detention centres? Some detainees cry for help but what is the follow-up? Solitary confinement, hidden from the public gaze, isolated from everyone, seems to be the only answer to their distress. This is also the fate reserved for detainees who have attempted suicide, which is unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence. This is a double punishment for people who are already in serious distress.
With regard to social services: social assistants officially accompany the “residents” during their detention in the centre. They ensure the follow-up of administrative files. They also ensure the preparation of “residents” on their return. A DVD, in several languages, which provides information about returns and removals, is made available to detainees in order to help them to accept voluntary return. The detainees testify that it is rather a matter of putting pressure on them, generating fear and anguish, and the violent consequences of a refusal to cooperate. Politicians then exploit the return figures in their reports to increase public support.
This is an overview of the main issues encountered in the detention centres. However, there is still the issue of the airlines which are profiting from these expulsions. For example, Brussels Airlines, owned by the German company Lufthansa, prides itself on being “an airline with the human touch, close to our passengers of whom we take the greatest care.”
Since when does its staff replace the officials of the Immigration Office, when the regulations stipulate that the person to be deported will be notified? It is difficult to understand the hidden agenda behind this unhealthy relationship.
We can compare the treatment endured by M and many others locked up in detention centres to torture. This treatment is often repetitive, imposed on detainees, in all discretion and with peace of mind by the civil servants, which exposes its systemic nature.
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment3 defines torture in article 1 as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person. “. However, threats, intimidation, humiliation, and imprisonment can also be included in the above definition.
I’ll start with the day they came and promised me that they would release me at the airport. It was on a Friday. The social assistant and the psychologist (I’ve seen a psychologist since March) both came to tell me that a ticket had been foreseen for me with a departure on 30 July. I said: ‘what ticket?’. She said: ‘You can refuse but you have to do that at the airport’. ‘But why refuse at the airport? I don’t want to leave’. She said ‘I know you don’t want to leave, but they want to release you at the airport’. ‘But why do they want to release me at the airport level? The others were released here.’She said: ‘No Michelle, you can not stay here anymore. They will release you at the airport, you can not come back here because there are no escorts for the moment. Hence, you’ll go to the airport and say that you don’t want to leave,and they will let you. I said ‘OK’. Then she said ‘You’ll do the test on Monday’.
This morning, someone from the Office came to fetch me, because when you want to see a doctor, it is someone from the Office who comes to fetch you. They came and said: ‘Michelle, we came to fetch you to go to the hospital’. I asked ‘why to the hospital?’,they said: ‘you have to do the test’. ‘What is the purpose of this test?’ He said: ‘you have to do the test because you are going to catch a flight’. ‘But I never asked for any flight! Why is my name on the flights’ list?’ He said: ‘You are obliged to do the test’. ‘Obliged to do the test? But I am not sick! I have been here for 7 months. Why do they decide that I have to do the test today? I am not sick, I don’t want to travel. I never asked for any flight’. He said: ‘Ok, we’ll tell the doctor’. Then he left.
Ten minutes later the psychologist came. She said: ‘Michelle, I am telling you that they are going to release you at the airport, you have to do the test.’ ‘No! One has to think, if I do the test it is like if I accepted to leave. They are voluntary returns. At the airport they will oblige me to enter because I will have done the test already. I cannot do the test because it would mean that I accept to leave and I don’t want to leave.’ She said Ok and left again.
She came back with the director. The latter brought me to the big room and whispered to me ‘Michelle, we took all the necessary steps because you stayed here for too long. You can not stay here anymore. We did everything necessary so that they let you at the airport, but you have to do the test.’ I said: ‘No Madam, I can not do the test. If you want to release me, write a note, do as you did for all the others and release me directly from the centre. At the airport they will also release me.’ The psychologist said: ‘No, even if they force you on to the plane, you will shout and they will let you get off.’ I said: ‘No, I won’t have any reasons left to make noise and shout because if I do the test I accept to go on the plane. It would be more normal.’ The director said: ‘Ok, since you refuse to cooperate we will turn our backs on you’. ‘Turn your backs on me? What do I cooperate to? Do you know what awaits me in my country? I don’t want to return. I went to the embassy to ask for a visa because I was fleeing. I get here and you want me to return voluntarily? What will I explain? I’d rather go back with an escort because I know that I will refuse first and I will come back with bruises, which will prove that I was forced to return. Then I will be able to explain. If not, you ask me to return voluntarily? I will go back there to die? No no Madam, I can not accept to return.’ She said: ‘No, you will not leave because they will let you at the airport’. Then she promised me that the psychologist will accompany me to the airport until the moment they release me. I said: ‘why don’t you also call the airport police to tell them that I refused to do the thest because I fear they force me on to the plane because I will have accepted to do the test?’ She said: ‘No, they cannot do that. You cost too much money since we keep you in the centre, I need space for other people. You cost me 100€ per night. I cannot keep you any longer.’ I said: ‘If you cannot keep me any longer, then release
me. You released a whole centre, we were more than 150, you released everybody, I am the only one left. What proof do you have of what you are saying? I cannot see any proof. Bring me evidence that you will leave me free at the airport. Then I will leave. But I won’t do the test because if I did it would mean that I accept to take the flight.’
She spoke and said that they would ring the Foreigners Office, that they would be angry, and that they would really try their best to escort me. I said ‘Ok, no worries, because what awaits me there is worse than you turning your backs on me and escorting me by force.’ This is how we ended the conversation, and she left.
Less than 200 people are kept in Detention Centres for Migrants, which have places for up to 600; the Detention Centres are applying the Covid measurest.
They have been kept in these Centres for several months, some up to 9 months, with a view to being deported, even if these deportations are almost impossible to implement; either the flights are not insured or the countries of origin refuse to issue official travel documents. They do not understand why they are kept locked up and classify their detention as torture.
Here we publish an overview of the situation that we are aware of and the struggles, on many levels, of those detained.
Detention centre Bruges
Last week, the people detained went on a hunger strike to protest against their confinement. After 24 hours, seven of them were put in solitary confinement (cachot) and then very were quickly transferred to other Centres.
On 27 July 2020, the people detained, called us again: there are still six in the Centre with 15 security guards. Two of them are in solitary confinement, another has been on hunger strike for four days. They ask us to raise awareness on their situation: “there is no humanity here”.
At the Detention Centre for Migrants 127 bis:
They have about twenty people locked up at the moment.
Many of them have contacted us by phone to try to voice their anger and express their concern for some of their co-detainees.
1 July 2020: following the solitary confinement of one of the detainees, because he had demanded his rights, a solidarity movement was formed. All the inmates of the R wing demanded to be also placed in solitary because they also want to claim their rights!
Other detainees want to return to their country of origin, but their flight tickets are repeatedly cancelled: “Here it is not only physical but above all psychological abuse”. “They play with people, they have pushed me to the limit, I’m losing my mind. I want my freedom back. It’s my right.”
“I am full of rage and hate. I have been in Belgium for 27 years. I used to love this country. Now I understand why people become terrorists. Its like the Nazi system here”.
25 July 2020: “We must help this man madam. He is not well, he has fits and falls unconscious. He hallucinates and does not sleep at night. He tells us that the devil is coming to his room. He is very afraid. He is sick. He does not belong here, he needs treatment. Something has to be done.”
Others claim their rights and continue the fight, despite being repressed and daily threats of solitary confinement: “I prefer to continue fighting rather than fall into depression.” “Do they really think we’re afraid of being in solitary confinement?”
Closed centre Merksplas:
Many of the detainees have been there for several months. They live in hope: social workers tell them that after eight months they will be released, so they wait (most of them have already been there more than eight months!).
A man telephones us on the 28 July 2020: after a week’s imprisonment, he wants to contact a “human rights” lawyer to file a complaint.
A Guinean man was released today after 9 months of detention.
An Ethiopian man was released after seven months of detention and two attempted deportation: he also expresses his incomprehension in the face of injustice: “Why did I stay so long? Why am I labelled as ‘aggressive’ when I have suffered a violent arrest, “like in America”? ” “No luck” he said. He left to try to find a more hospitable land: “Belgium system is no good”.
Detention Centre Caricole:
Expulsion at any cost: 25 July 2020: two women seeking asylum were detained for several months and received a call from Brussels Airlines offering them to leave voluntarily to their country of origin, that they would find a flight and that they might be alone on the plane.
One of them tells us: “They take us for cattle, I told this woman ‘no’, that she does not know my life, that she does not know what will happen to me when I arrive in my country of origin”. They told her that next time, she would be escorted by the police and that it would be better if this could be avoided.
An inmate who has been locked up for several months and cannot be deported: “Let me at least go to my brother’s house. I’m so tired, I’m exhausted, I’m locked up, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to do anything I will regret, I’m fed up. I want to start my life again. I have no one in Morocco, so when I get there I’ll be leaving.
27/07/2020 A new campaign has been launched in Germany to push Lufhtansa to stop all deportations ! “The alliance calls on Lufthansa to take a clear position against racism and to stop transporting people against their will. More than 20 organizations have already joined the campaign nationwide. For many years, the airline has been benefiting from state payment for the forced transport of people without German citizenship. In previous campaigns, the company has already been publicly accused of this, but without stopping the forced transport.”
Here we are. Deconfinement is ongoing, the deportation machine restarted: inside the closed centres, plane tickets are falling. Anxiety and panic got hold of the retainees.
Michelle has been retained for 7 months now. Seven months of fear, tension and uncertainty leading to a huge psychological distress. Michelle left her country after being the victim of gender violence. She was beaten by her husband and then chased away and beaten by his brothers. She came to Belgium to ask for protection but the only thing she’s seen since then has been bars, rejection and disregard.
Her case reminds us too well of Semira Adamu’s, who became the symbol of resistance against deeply racist and patriarchal politics. Her death had caused a great political and media stir. For us to speak about it she will have had to suffer 11 minutes of agony. 11 minutes under a cushion, hold by a police officer, and his 8 colleagues standing and watching. 6000 people had come to her funerals. “Never again” could be heard. Should we recall that closed centres continue to destroy lives? Should we recall the beating, the racist insults everyday? The scarcity of food – when it is not rotten- and the psychological pressure? No need to enumerate the conditions, confinement speaks for itself. Confinement literally kills.
Today, there are plenty of Semira Adamu’s. Two years ago, on the occasion of her 20th death anniversary, activists were shouting this motto ‘They killed a woman, not her struggle’. Because the struggle is far from finished. Michelle is not ‘only a victim’of this system; she also is a resistant. She’s been fighting every single day for months. Behind their walls retainees are shouting their anger and denouncing the injustice. Unfortunately, they do not generate enough indignation to bring them to freedom. Since Semira Adamu’s case, the ‘cushion technique’ has been forbidden. However, the use of physical constraint or violence during evictions has still not been explicitly proscribed. On the contrary, it was reshuffled in a new directive (Bossuyt Commission’s directive) that makes this violence legitimate. Immobilisation techniques are still allowed, notably the use of handcuffs and vests, and they are regularly utilised. Eviction is intrinsically violent: while being deported under duress, these people are deprived of the fundamental freedom to choose; choose where to go, choose where to settle.
‘The hardest thing is when they handcuff you to drive you to the airport. They destroy us, I am scared.’ Michelle received her second ticket. She opposed her eviction. She fears a third ticket: what if there was a police escort next time? What is the physical and psychological pressure was so hard that time to silence her protests? Michelle would be sent back to a country where she really fears for her life.
Borders are unfair, they erect visible and invisible walls that divide and stigmatise. They support the power relations at work in our societies: class, race, gender domination. When retainees are evicted, the Belgian state, the European Union and the NGOs worry very little, if they do at all, about their fate. They are far away now. There is no one left to speak out and denounce. Speak the truth, denounce the unacceptable. Tired of the perpetual lack of action by the political leaders, we call for the anger of everyone, for the mobilisation of collectifs, in order to refuse these racist policies and honour the memory of Semira and all the others. All those who died because of the silence of politicians and the media. All those who saw their freedoms abused. All those who are being retained today and might be evicted tomorrow. That the ‘Never again’ shouted for Semira Adamu be heard at last.
We must not allow the State to deconfine raids, imprisonments and evictions.
In favour of the destruction of walls and borders. In favour of freedom.
We hear through a text message that it is “complete mayhem” at the 127bis and that “journalists should be warned”:
Following the solitary confinement of one of them because he was claiming certain rights, a solidarity movement started this morning and all the retainees of wing R called to be placed into solitary confinement because they also claim for those rights!
After discussing with the director who promised them that the retainee would soon leave the confinement cell the calm has returned.
They rang us yesterday.
They were EXTREMELY nervous. They got no answers to their questions (see below).
They are angry, outraged with these inexplicable retentions and call for an access to the media to explain and express themselves.
Retainees in the 127 bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel call us and ask us to spread their message. “We are treated like animals. The staff is constantly bothering us. No respect, no hello, no please, no goodbye.All our deeds and actions are controlled by the guards or by cameras everywhere. They keep distributing sleeping pills. It becomes a real psychiatric asylum. They say we are dangerous criminals and that they will keep us the time it takes. As soon as we ask for something they threaten us. The food is awful and there is never enough.When we ask why they treat us this way they systematically answer that it is the law. Is it really the law? Where in the law is that treatment written down? Some of us are ready to leave the country. But how? There won’t be any plane to our countries before months. The world needs to know.
We demand:
– Respect of human rights for us too
– A humane treatment- Enough food
– Respect from the staff – STOP threats and violence
– Hygiene in the places
– Transparency of the authorities as regards closed centres
– And our rapid release, since there won’t be any possibility to deport us in the short-term!
Our question: “Why this treatment?: we need answers.”
Signed: Retainees of the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel
A great part of the retainees in closed centres are actually former prisonners to whom documents were withdrawn following a condemnation for infringement to public policy or for a minor offence (speeding, unpaid fines, etc.). They are picked up at their home or transferred from prison to a closed centre in view of their deportation.
The possibility to deport a ‘delinquent’ immigrant after they have served their sentence exists since 1980 1. Deportation is not a judicial measure, hence it is not really a sentence but rather an administrative measure, which depends on the Minister of the Interior.
Being applied in an erratic way, it seems obvious that it is more a political strategy than the enforcement of a law.
In the years 1990, ministerial circulars (SP) somehow conformed its use and specified that those measures should not be applied to foreigners of the second generation unless under exceptional circumstances, i.e van attacks, pedophilia, important drugs trafficking, etc.
In 2005 (OpenVLD) a law puts an end to this possibility since it specifies that foreigners who were born in Belgium or who arrived in Belgium before 12 years old can no longer be deported. The spouses of Belgians and the parents of Belgian children can no longer be deported unless in extremely rare cases2.
However, since then, Michel’s government came by, with Jan Jambon, the friend of a certain Theo Franken (NV-A) holding office, and in 2017 the “Order to leave the territory was revalorised”. Here we are: assumed racist law that enables to deport foreigners without any judgement, even if they were born and legally residing here.
This contextual setting seems necessary to us in order to explain the absolutely staggering possibility applied by the Foreigners Office in case of minor offences against a foreign person living in Belgium for years or since always, knowing that the appeals have no suspensive effect!
The offences we hear from are sometimes speeding or unpaid fines! The people are then transferred from prison directly to a closed centre in view of their deportation.
Some of them arrived here when they were children, others were born here. In general, they have all their family residing legally here, or even with the Belgian nationality. Some never ever set foot in the country where the Foreigners Office want to deport them to!
They are desperate, some are revolting. Informed by their embassy that “no deportation would happen before beginning 2021” they refuse this new discriminatory retention:
« We served our sentence, we paid for our crap. Why we, foreigners, are being doubly punished?
The most recalcitrants are punished and transferred to the secured wing in Vottem, where they are totally isolated from the outside world and social contacts. Sometimes they stay there for several months.
At the time when media all over the world are gargling to speak about racism and relaying the demonstrations of thousands and thousands of human beings throughout the world denouncing institutional racism, here in Belgium the double racist and discriminatory penalty is being trivialised. No one reacts, no one denounces.
“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil” (Rabbi Heschel, friend of Dr Martin Luther King)
STOP CLOSED CENTRES
NO TO DOUBLE PENALTY
1 law of 15 December 1980 on the access to territory, stay, establishment and return of the foreigners
Retainees in the 127 bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel call us and ask us to spread their message. “We are treated like animals. The staff is constantly bothering us. No respect, no hello, no please, no goodbye.All our deeds and actions are controlled by the guards or by cameras everywhere. They keep distributing sleeping pills. It becomes a real psychiatric asylum. They say we are dangerous criminals and that they will keep us the time it takes. As soon as we ask for something they threaten us. The food is awful and there is never enough.When we ask why they treat us this way they systematically answer that it is the law. Is it really the law? Where in the law is that treatment written down? Some of us are ready to leave the country. But how? There won’t be any plane to our countries before months. The world needs to know.
We demand:
– Respect of human rights for us too
– A humane treatment- Enough food
– Respect from the staff – STOP threats and violence
– Hygiene in the places
– Transparency of the authorities as regards closed centres
– And our rapid release, since there won’t be any possibility to deport us in the short-term!
Our question: “Why this treatment?: we need answers.”
Signed: Retainees of the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel
Corona prevents us from meeting – so we’ll spread out instead! Join
the transnational solidarity action where ever you are and show that the
struggle against racist border policies continues!
2020 has illustrated, better than ever before, that in today’s world
equal rights for all human beings is still a distant goal. The situation
of migrants in most parts of Europe and other parts of the world is
shameful. Camps at the external borders of Europe are overcrowded. Camps
inside European countries remain. Many migrants are still
undocumented, living on the streets.
Even in these times, governments ignore the rights of refugees and
migrants. By and large, it has been solidarity groups, NGOs, courageous
citizens and migrants themselves who have countered the threat of the
pandemic.
We want to draw attention to the situation of migrants, open the eyes
of the wider public and demand practical solidarity. Because we
absolutely want this situation to stop. It is based on laws and
political decisions that definitely can and definitely must be changed. We call for actions on 20 June – World Refugee Day! “WE” – who are we? We
are antiracist activists from several European countries who formed the
project, “Coasts in Solidarity”. Our main aim was to highlight and
support the struggle of migrants at the closed UK border along the
Channel and the North Sea during this summer. We wanted to organise
harbour events, spread solidarity ideas and use the sailing vessel LOVIS
to get more public attention. For obvious reasons we cancelled those
plans. As the conditions for migrants have not improved, we agreed on
alternative ways to raise attention and public pressure.
Our Proposal for Action We’ve come up with an
alternative common action: A flotilla of paper boats with short messages
on them (like “Open your borders, open youreyes”, “Flight is not a
crime”) will appear everywhere! Everybody can fold them, small and
large, colored or not, and distribute them in public places, in buses
and trains, at shopping centres or in parks. Create your own ones or
download the “form” that includes written testimonies of refugees, which
can be folded into paper boats. This way, when the paper ship is
unfolded, the voices of those who are mostly silenced become audible.
In addition, there will be audio files with recorded testimonies of
migrants for downloading. Play them in public places, from balconies or
bicycles, in buses and trains and elsewhere, via mobile phones or
speakers.
Feel free to choose other actions or to combine our call with your demands. Send pictures of your action and demands via twitter #coastsinsolidarity
For the right to stay and to move! Stop deportations – once and for all!
Dignified living conditions and health care for everybody! Close down all the camps – once and for all!
Build solidarity cities and networks! Let us change societies from their foundations!
According to recent news, the European borders will open again on 15 June 2020. Flights will resume as of that date.
Some retainees already got the information that the centres will be filled again.
Raids and arrests will therefore resume in our neighbourhoods, in public transports, in parking places, etc. to refill these centres where more than 400 places are available.
However, a message has been circulating lately…
« When the borders reopen, the persecution of undocumented and asylum seekers will start again in order to fill the closed centres and relaunch the deportation machine. To confront that situation, an informal anti-raid network is organising itself.»
Let’s be careful in case of raids or arrests. Let’s prevent these arrests. Let’s go to the police stations where people have been brought to and claim their release. Let’s go in front of closed centres to show our soliarity with their struggle and claim their release. Let’s prevent deportations.
News from the centres on 1 June 2020 :
They still are a hundred or so (for 600 places) in closed centres. A lot were released after the COVID outbreak.
The remaining retainees have mostly been there since before the lockdown and kept there until flights resume. Many have been retained for 5, 6, or even 10 months: Ethiopia, Algeria, Guinea, Bangladesh, Morocco, Cameroon, Benin, Mali, Tunisia, Gaza, etc.
The Foreigners Office harass them and keep them retained to try and deport them as soon as flights resume.
Many retainees wonder why they are being harrassed that way: “Many were released because of the pandemic. Why are we still here? All these months in prison are very long. All we want is to be allowed to continue our asylum or regularisation requests outside, free!”
“Is all this legal?”
Bruges closed centre: they are still a dozen to be retained.
A man cuts himself regularly and for months they have moved him from isolation cell to medical service and vice-versa.
« In this room even a dog would not sleep. The mattress stinks, the bathroom is disgusting.It is stressful, very stressful, I can’t sleep. It is not normal at all. You have pain somewhere, you would like some medicine, they refuse to give it to you. They speak to you badly. There is no humanity. Ok, it is true, I am illegal because undocumented, but I am not a criminal. And I am not an animal.”
The last days, they revolted peacefully against these retentions and threatened to go on hunger strike. The police intervened directly. As a result: 3 were placed in isolation cells and then transferred to other centres.
« We wanted to start a hunger strike but we didn’t do it, we stayed quiet. Then the police came and placed 3 people in isolation cells. Why these 3 persons and not everybody, and why us?”
Caricole closed centre : they are 26, all retained since the beginning of the year, many of them are women arrested at the airport in January 2020.
“We are left behind we do not sleep, we have psychic problems because of this imprisonment. The doctor only gives us paracetamol, always. Sometimes we shout, then the management comes to speak to us and tell us that they will ask the Office. ”
« Our retention is extended for 2 months every 2 months. It’s a nightmare. The food gives us stomach pain and diarrhea. I haven’t eaten for 15 days. There is war in our country, we do not understand why we are not welcome here. »
Right in the middle of a world sanitary crisis, Belgium tried to cross a new boundary in its migratory policy. The first ‘push back’ ever recorded on the Belgian territory should have taken place Friday 8 May a.m.
E. is 16, she left Syria 5 months ago. Her journey led her to catch a flight from Greece to Belgium. She landed in Airport Brussels on Tuesday 5 May. As soon as she arrived, the authorities immediately tried to put her on a flight back to Greece, with the greatest discretion.
On 6 May, warned by the authorities, the Foreigners Office gave an order to leave the territory (Annex 13) to the young girl and planned a new deportation to Greece on Friday 8 May.
On 7 May, a whistleblower warns of the situation. Several actors urgently put pressure on the Foreigners Office to avoid this new deportation attempt.
Following the ongoing pressure by these different actors towards the Office, the Guardianship service was warned at 3 p.m on 7 May and the young Syrian girl was released in extremis. E. was retained for around 48 hours in the transit zone of the airport.
At no moment E. was allowed to use her right to international protection.
A situation all the more serious since she is minor, therefore vulnerable by definition, and according to article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she should be protected.
Such a deportation practice also called “push back”, is totally illegal.
This practice that is known to be implemented in Greece, Spain, at the border between France and Italy and many other borders of our continent, with the support of Frontex, was already denounced as illegal by the UNCHR in 2016, notably on the Balkans road. Resorting to that practice is illegal, violent and racist. How does Belgium allow itself to cross a boundary in the cruelty of the treatment inflicted to migrants? Who is hiding behind this kind of recommendation? It is in total contrast to international conventions since it violates the non-refoulement provision of the Convention on Refugees. If that refoulement is the first we are being informed of, we are wondering how many people might already have been subject to it in breach of their rights?!
We denounce all the deportations, all the more when they are applied to children.
Stop to racist policies ! No escalating horror ! No to Push backs
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. THIS CENTRE MUST BE SHUT DOWN. Testimony
« There are 120 places in the closed centre.
Most of the prisoners have been released. Many had a legal record. We are still 15. And there are more guards than prisoners. We don’t understand why the 15 of us are still being retained.
Some are coming from jail, others never had anything to do with courts.
2 Vietnamese, 1 Ethiopian, 2 Moroccans, 1 Albanian, 1 man from Egypt…
Some have been here for months. Some have children here in Belgium.
We do not want to stay imprisoned in such an inhuman way. And to remain in complete uncertainty about our fate, it is really a medieval situation…
We do not understand why we are still being retained, why some have been released and others (with very different profiles) continue to be retained.
There is absolutely no logic.
I served my sentence and I am being punished again… I want to be with my family…
It is much worse here than in jail. In jail, you know why you are there and you know when you get out. Here, your fate is in the hands of the Foreigners Office.
We still have rights, haven’t we?
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE; This centre should be emptied.
Since the publication by RTBF on 9 April 2020 of the article « Nourriture avariée, cachot pour les malades, distanciation pas respectée : le quotidien dans un centre fermé au temps du coronavirus » (Rotten food, solitary confinement cells for the sick, failure to respect distancing: the daily life in a closed centre during Covid-19) and the visit of Myria who confirmed the retainees’ saying, repression goes on in the centre.
Despite the food being less rotten, the tension in the centre remains extremely palpable.
On 10 April, there was a general search: body and cells.
Masks were distributed (of very poor quality according to the retainees), however the majority of guards do not wear them. Rumours about staff members infected by the COVID only increase the fears and anxiety of the retainees.
« Who else could bring the virus here. They are the only ones who have contacts with the outside.”
20 April : « Yesterday, during the meal, the room of two retainees was searched. Nothing has changed: there is still no hot water in the showers.”
21 April :
Five people tried to escape around 8 p.m but they got caught up. After this escape attempt, the whole 3A wing was searched, the retainees had to undress and were totally naked. One retainee completely freaked out and broke everything with a fire extinguisher: doors, windows, cupboards.
« All the retainees had to strip naked in front of the ‘big guys’ (the guards of the centre) while they were searching everywhere, it was humiliating. We are all punished although we didn’t do anything. One guy completely flipped… The workers of the centre no longer want to work here. They are under pressure. I didn’t do anything, it is not fair. Many others were released, not me, why? I am not even able to return to my country.”
The five people are currently in solitary confinement.
BRUGES
The retainees tell us about the lack of hygiene in the centre, they say that the precautions against the virus are not respected.
A man who wants to return to his home:
« I accepted all the return conditions but they keep me! I served my sentence, double sentence in the closed centre, triple sentence with the Coronavirus”.
« It is physical abuse here, but above all mental abuse.”
« They are playing with people, they are wearing us down, I’m losing my head.”
« I want to regain freedom. It is my right. »
« They give us masks but the guards do not wear any. However the risk comes from them who keep coming and going. If there is a case of infection, they will again put the blame on us. »
« We are angry. »
« The centre, I’m not telling you! Disgusting. If the hygiene inspection service came, this centre would be immediately closed down! »
« The situation remains the same, the closed centre is extremely dirty, it is disgusting. We are still 6 people to share a cell. The seats of the TV room are super filthy…»
This Monday, April 20 at 11 a.m., a group of undocumented people, the forgotten ones of this period of COVID-19 crisis, carried out a sharp- action fought in front of the Tower of Finances, where the office of Maggie De Block, Minister of the Social Affairs and Public Health, but also of Asylum and Migration.
With the help of placards, 60 undocumented people appeared silently for a few minutes, in order to raise a first alarm signal and make the reality of this part of the population visible to the eyes of Belgian citizens. The action was carried out in compliance with the health recommendations of the containment: those present persons were wearing masks, gloves and standing at a social distance of 1.5 m.
Before dispersing calmly, a spokesperson read the group’s message and demands:
“Before this pandemic, we, undocumented people, already lived every day in fear and difficulties. We were working in the black market to earn enough to live with our families and our children. A situation of explotation that we denounce however. Since the containment was announced, all areas have been closed and there is almost no work. Overnight, we find ourselves without any income and any help to provide for our basic needs. We do not have access to health care, we can no longer buy food or pay our rent. Despite these difficulties, we respect all the confinement rules set by the Belgian state.
Abandoned by this system, we are launching today this cry of injustice that is killing us. More than the coronavirus, it is above all this migration policy that condemns us to agony. Men, women, children, young and old, sick people… We are the forgotten ones of this crisis and we are dying slowly! We are citizens and claim our rights. We go out despite all the risks, to cry out for all humanity, to cry for justice.
Our request to the federal government are simple:
– We are asking for recognition by the Belgian state of our existence in this country for years: we want to be regularized. The regularization of undocumented people in the current situation is necessary and urgent.
– We also demand the release and regularization of detainees in closed centers.
We also appeal to citizens who support our cause: we ask them to react with us and to denounce this unacceptable situation.”
A few dozen supporters with papers were present. The police identified 6 people (including two legal observers of police violence) who are at risk of receiving a report.
We regularly receive increasingly desperate calls or messages from people still being retained in the closed centre in Vottem (CIV). « We are the forgotten of the Kingdom of Belgium, help me”.
They still are approx. 30 who ignore why they have to remain imprisoned whereas approx. 80 others have been released. The release requests introduced by their lawyers, who really made a heavy job, jointly, based on the coronavirus pandemy and the current impossibility to send them back in the countries of origin (or another one), give mixed results: when the judge instructs the release, it is often followed by an appeal from the Foreigners Office and it takes several weeks. And time is very slow when one is imprisoned.
They are obviously all very worried about their health: in this pandemy, they assert that social distancing is not respected, and it is rare to see a security guard wearing a mask. If every retainee has shower gel, often insufficently, they do not have soap to wash their hands, unless they buy it themselves at the “shop” in the centre. After many remarks by a retainee to the staff about the lack of individual protection and the disrespect of social distancing, he was firstly told that this was going to be discussed during a meeting, then he was placed in solitary confinement (courtyard forbidden, no internet, and alone) in a “disgusting” cell. He no longer has contacts with his co-retainees except on the phone. The reason they gave him, after him asking several times is: “You may provoke a rebellion when asking for better sanitary measures.”
When they had visits from family or friends, they still could get tobacco and a little money to buy cigarettes or waffles from the distributors, but since the visits have been forbidden, they are even more deprived. The CRACPE gave a little support, like us who continued sending phone recharges through text messages thanks to the emergency mobile phone set up since the start of the quarantine, which also allows us to have a constant contact with the retainees.
Many have family in Belgium, sometimes even wives and children, and the fact of not seeing them adds to the psychological stress of their retention. Others have their families very far, or in another European country; the whole world is affected by COVID-19. They fear for their health but also for their families’.
We heard that the staff of the centre led work stoppages; claiming for a risk premium. For us, it is obvious that such a promiscuity with so few protection means increases the risk of propagation of the virus, both for the staff and for the retainees.
For that reason, and because the function per se of closed centres, according to law, i.e implement deportation measures, became purposeless, seen the current situation, we call for the immediate release of all the retainees and in all the closed centres of Belgium.
Of course, we maintain our main demands: that closed centres be abolished and that deportations be stopped, as well as the demand to regularise the undocumented. At the time when agriculture lacks workers but also elderly houses, hospitals etc. all the undocumented we know are willing to put their skills at the service of the community!
Even after disgusting images on the retention conditions in the Merksplas closed centre were diffused, the Foreigners Office remains relentless on some files so as to maintain foreigners in retention.
While the courts are pronouncing releases on the basis of the illegality of retentions, the Foreigners Office makes appeals, which extends the retention of at least two weeks and obliges the court of appeal and the lawyers to meet during quarantine.
Retentions are clearly illegal since in theory they should only serve for deportations which are currently impossible.
Above all, retentions are criminal since they go on in a quarantine period and under conditions of promiscuity and insalubrity which are unworthy of a country like Belgium. The conditions in the five closed centres in Belgium are unspeakable and it must end.
Once again, we demand the release of all the people retained in the closed centres.
“I am in the Bruges detention center since March30th 2020. Since I have arrived here, I can’t buy shampoo, I can’t buy shower gel.
The management, the guardians and the inmates donot wearany masks and nobody respect the corona measures. The 1.5 meter distance between us is not respected, we all live together in one group. There is a room where we can go for smoking once in a while, we are 20 to 25 people in a 6 meters square room.
In the courtyard, guardians donot have masks or gloves and they don’t respect the measures. They stay together. In the two other TV rooms and the billiard room, it’s the same thing, there are two guardians, people go all over the place from a room to another.
In the courtyard, there is no respect of corona measures, nor in the two rooms.
For the rest, if you go to the doctor, if you call and go there, you must wait but at the end he does nothing for us. He treats us like animals.
Here, the meter and a half of corona measures, there is nothing at all, nobody respects that.
In the morning they take the temperature of the management people, only them, and if they have more than 37°, they don’t enter. But corona, as everybody knows, you can have « koorts » as we say in dutch (fever) only after a week or ten days.
If a sick person arrives here, everybody is going to be sick. We are all going to be sick because we all have contacts with each other, we hold hands, we stay close to each other, we even smoke cigarettes together. We have to light cigarettes with the chief’slighter,from their hands to ours. There is really absolutely no respect for coronavirus.
Moreover, in the dining room also, all the groups – there are two groups :A-B and C-D – go down to eat together. I am B11. We go down to the dining room, and we eat together. There is about twenty inmates and about ten employees. There is also two people working in the restaurant, who gives us food, and we are all in the same room. Nobody, not even one of the inmates or of the employees, respects the 1.5 meter measure.
I hope that you can give us a hand, this situation is really inhuman. I am sick, I have 42% of my lung capacity, I had tuberculosis in the past. Since I have been here, people go around and leave us in an inhuman situation. It’s been a week and a half since I had a shower. I have to wash with water and soap. They give a soap that really cuts your hand, I don’t know how this soap is made, but it cuts your hands. And in the showers,you have to wash yourself with water, there is no shower gel nor shampoo.
Thank you for your information, and we hope that you will give us a hand. I am the father of Belgian children. There are lotsof people here who have kids and places where they live. You can look after us because we are also human beings, even if we are foreigers, we are also human beings.
Thank you very much and goodbye. Our fate is in your hands, madam. We are not afraid of going on hunger strike or go to the isolation cell, but we are afraid of contracting the corona, of maybe dying with our family far from us, and without being able to go back to our native country when we’ll be dead, they will put us in a plastic bag and throw us here, in Belgium.”
For the past weeks, the whole Belgian society is being reorganised so as to follow the sanitary measures decided by the government. The whole Belgian society, well.. almost. In closed centres, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and for homeless people, the measures taken are not the same. The forgotten people of this capitalist society are still and even more subject to social inequalities, including gender and race inequalities.”We are abandoned to ourselves”, declares a retainee at the Merksplas closed centre.
Since the transmission of the virus happens through droplets, either by coughing, sneezing and/or touching objects such as door handles, food, cutlery, etc.,the measures prescribed by the Belgian sanitary services have been to avoid as far as possible that too many people find themselves in a same space, touch the same objects, in the common living spaces.
Testimony 01-04-2020:
no measures and in case of fever you are placed in isolation cell. Last week in Merksplas, a man had 39oC fever. They placed him in confinement for 5 days although there is not even a table there to eat, and no ventilation system.They took him out and placed him back with the others without making any test. Still in Merskpas, block 3, a man tells us: there is no distancing of 1.5 meter, water in the shower is cold, there is no soap to wash your hands. We are 4 per room, the guards do not respect the distance either, and do not wear masks. Today, on the floor above block 3, they controlled the people, they took all their clotes (even their underwear) supposedly after medicine had been stolen,but they could not find anything. They brought people to the showers to search them. He says that the centre must be clsoed and that it will be closed. Concerning collective institutions, washing hands, objects, surfaces and wearing a mask is highly recommended in order to protect, notably, the persons at risk (persons suffering from chronic respiratory diseases, cardiac diseases, renal diseases or diabetes) who could have respiratory complications if they contracted the virus. However, in closed centres, persons at risk have not been detected and no prevention measures have been implemented on 6 April 2020.
Visits have been suspended, but the workers of closed centres are doomed to leave the institution every day and have loads of contacts with many other people, contrarily to the persons retained. As far as the latest are concerned, they are never informed on the institutional decisions related to possible measures and existing cases. Already being exposed to a traumatic system (deportation threat, imprisonment, promiscuity, loss of landmarks, institutional violence, etc.), they are also exposed to the climate of societal fear surrounding the coronavirus, but with no access to information which could enable them to make individual or collective choices for their health.
Testimony 30/03/2020:
“Now my wife and sons can’t come to visit me. I’m in block n°3 in the closed center and it’s a very critical and dangerous situation, it’s like hell. We are three in each room using the same toilets and shower and 20 people leave close to each other in this block. Nothing’s done to protect us from the virus, we eat and play together, we touch the same doors and we smoke in the same room. There’s a lot of people working there going in and out. Nobody carry masks here and there’s no machin to control the virus. We saw on TV that 2 prisonners in Merksplas’ prison got affected. If everybody get sick what are they gonna do ? Now I always stay in my room because I’m afraid also for my family. I’m so stressed up that I only eat twice a day. They have to empty and close the center so everybody can stay healthy !I saw on TV that people are dying, I want to go out and join my family. Everyday my wife calls me and cries, she’s alone working and taking care of the children.”
The retainees are subjected to a hierarchical institutionnal power, against which they have very few means of action. Some try to respond to the constant violence and injustice they face by organising themselves collectively in different ways, by revolting, by trying to speak to the director of the centre, or sharing their testimonies. Each time the repression of their acts and attempts to make their voices and choices heard is very harsh so as to stifle any kind of solidarity
Testimony : 01-04-2020:
Demonstration and isolation cells!Strike began upstairs in block 3 : Two weeks ago, people from upstairs of block 3 started a demonstration and shouted because they refused to go back inside after their lunch outside because of coronavirus. Everybody shouted in solidarity downstairs but they didn’t do no strike. The police came, 6 guys from upstairs were put in isolation cells and 4 guys from downstairs as well for 3, 4 and 5 days : ” we didn’t fight and didn’t touch anybody !”
Testimony 30/03/2020:” after lunch, (which they continue to have in the refectory), the retainees led an action, they refused to leave the room without having talked to the director. A. strongly spoke to the director, telling him that it would cost absolutely nothing to the Belgians to empty the closed centres in this crisis period, that anywaythey would be locked down at home, and above all that in 3 months, after the crisis, they would still be able to find plenty of ‘illegals’ to fill back the closed centres…’ The director finally said that he would investigate/wait for news or information from Brussels. The retainees are ready to start that again, they are waiting for news beginning of next week. If nothing comes on Monday or Tuesday, on Wednesday they will ask to speak to the director again. A. insists on the fact that the talks will be peaceful, without violence. A.A. agrees for us to relay the information he gave us under the condition that he remains anonymous.
Testimony 30/03/2020:
“In the prison next door, in Turnhout, one person was positively tested to the coronavirus, I am worried, I saw that on TV. In the prison of Forest too. Everybody here is worried because for sure there are people infected here. 60 people are working every day here in the centre. The situation is really dangerous. We don’t get any information, they do not tell us anything. They release certain people because they have to reduce the numbers, but others remain here, we don’t know why, although we didn’t do nothing wrong”, tells us a retainee in Merksplas. (…) do you follow sanitary measures? Really, nothing has changed here since the outbreak of the virus. Business as usual, at the refectory, the people serving the food wear masks and gloves. The guards don’t say a word, they don’t wear masks. We are exposed to danger constantly, everybody. We spoke to the director this morning because we should all leave the centre, it is too dangerous. (…) Nothing changed,we go to our rooms from 10 p.m till 7.45 a.m, they lock us in. They come back to open at 7.45 a.m, we go to breakfast. In the refectory we sit as usual, then we go to the veranda where there is the snooker, the babyfoot, we play there as usual. In the room? We can all be there at the same time, which is 20 people currently. In the bedrooms we are now three, before we were 5, but apart from that nothing has changed (…) Please, something has to be done, otherwise we are all going to die here.
Hence, the persons retained in those centres do not have access to adequate sanitary measures and are confronted to the exacerbation of institutionnal violence. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, they are even more forgotten. In front of imprisonment and increased violence, more and more retainees get weaker,develop post-traumatic and psychosomatic symptoms(amenorrhea or heavy menstrual periods for many women; vomiting, headaches or traumatic injuries, severe depressions, even depersonalisation symptoms) or inflict this violence against themselves (escalation of self-mutilations).
Western capitalist societies rank and prioritise human beings through the system of imprisonment and borders. There are those who may access certain territories and those who may not. The (non) management of the coronavirus epidemy in closed centres strengthens this prioritisation. There are those who deserve their lives to be taken care of and… the others… the retainees of any kind (prisons, closed centres, psychiatric hospitals, factory workers, etc.), the unproductive of society who are usable (as shown by the call for undocumented or retainees to produce masks at a lower cost) and disposable…
We are deeply outraged, revolted and opposed to that inhuman unequal racist and capitalist system borne by Belgian authorities.
We call for the opening of all the closed centres, the release of all the retainees and the provision of places to welcome them.
At the time when, to confront the Coronavirus, several retention cetres are emptied in France, others are burning in Italy, the closed centres of Belgium are still quite full. Full of retainees who have no or very few information. We get loads of phone calls by retainees who are extremely stressed out by the situation.
Last week, a few people retained in wing L of the 127bis closed centre who were totally exasperated “got nuts” and expressed their anger by protesting. “It was real war”, told us one witness. Their rebellion was punished and several were placed in confinement cells. Beginning of March, among the 700 people retained, from 200 to 300 were spontaneously released, only the ‘sick and vulnerable’ ones, according to the Foreigners Office. Nevertheless, these releases happen very slowly and randomly, at the discretion of the Foreigners Office who would fear not to convey a ‘good image’ if they released everybody in one go.
Formal notices and appeals to courts against the illegality of retentions during the Coronavirus crisis enable the release of several retainees, but the closed centres still retain a certain number of persons. It is outrageous that retainees are only released thanks to the intervention of third parties because of the illegal nature of these retentions. Several social assistants even try to dissuade retainees to follow their steps because “if they take a lawyer it will prevent their release”.
Inside the closed centres, the stress caused by the situation is extremely high. Most of the retainees only get information through television. They live with thefear that the virus enters the closed centre through the staff who work there and continue to go back and forth from inside to outside. “In the prison next door, in Turnhout, one person was positively tested to the coronavirus, I am worried, I saw that on TV. In the prison of Forest too. Everybody here is worried because for sure there are people infected here. 60 people are working every day here in the centre. The situation is really dangerous. We don’t get any information, they do not tell us anything. They release certain people because they have to reduce the numbers, but others remain here, we don’t know why, although we didn’t do nothing wrong”, tells us a retainee in Merksplas.
The retainees are well aware of the difference there is between their fate and what is happening outside. The hygiene conditions are very bad and dangerous. The retainees are still several in their rooms, in the common spaces like the refectories, the bathrooms, etc. Very few measures are being taken, there are almost no masks, gloves, disinfectant gel for the staff or the retainees.
In the Merksplas closed centre: “We are three per room and we use the same toilets and shower, and 20 people are very close to each other in this block. Nothing is done to protect us from the virus, we are eating and playing together, we are touching the same doors and we are smoking in the same room. Many people are working in this block, who come and go. Nobody wears a mask here and there is no machine to control the virus. We saw on TV that two retainees of Merksplas are infected. If everybody falls sick, what will they do? They should empty and close the centre so that everybody may remain in good health!”
In Bruges and Holsbeek closed centres, “medication is given from hand to hand, withouth gloves nor masks”.
In the centres, some have been retained for several months. One of them has been expecting his deportation to Bengladesh for 8 months. Others are under the so-called double penalty, i.e situations where people were convicted to sentences for public disorder, served their sentences, and once out of jail are directly transferred to a closed centre to be deported. Some of them have parents, wives and children here in Belgium. https://www.revuenouvelle.be/Le-retour-de-la-double-peine
We call for the immediate release of all the retainees in closed centres. It is unacceptable that they are kept retained behind these walls whilst all of Belgium is under confinement. We call for the definitive closure of all the centres, camps, hotspots, as well as for the regularisation of all the undocumented.
The Foreigners Office refuse asylum requests but continue to deport.
On 16 March 2020, the day before the confinement, two Guineans were deported to Conakry.
An Ethiopian had to go through a thrid deportation attempt on 19 March 2020. He was driven to the airport to then be brought back to the closed centre afterwards. Neither his lawyer nor himself were informed of the reason for this deportation attempt and its last minute cancellation.
Many people remain retained in the different centres of the country and several lawyers’ offices thrive to have them released, either by introducing release requests or by putting pressure on the Foreigners Office.
All these retentions have become illegal due the world health crisis because the administrative retention of a foreigner is only allowed to ensure their fastest deportation. When, as is currently the case, the deportation becomes hypothetical if not impossible, the retention is no longer legal.
On 19 March 2020, Maggie De Block declared that the number of places in closed centres would be decreased to 315 places: 127bis Steenokkerzeel: 60 places – Caricole : 50 – Brugge : 60 – Holsbeek: 14 – Merksplas: 71 – Vottem: 60 and that 300 retainees would be released ‘in the following days’.
Many retainees are still waiting for their release which depends on the arbitrary decision by the Foreigners Office. Others will remain imprisoned despite the health crisis and the impossibility to deport them.
We demand the release of everybody and the definitive closure of the closed centres.
In the shadow of the Coronavirus mediatisation, the people retained in closed centres rebel against the racist administration that imprisons them, and abandons them in this pandemic episode.
This article tries to take stock of the resistance and fights that the State would rather see invisible. Most of the information gathered this Tuesday 17 March come from retainees who often sound the alarm, and from their supports and acquaintances in the outside world.
Merksplas closed centre:
A Guinean man was driven to the airport on Tuesday 17 March without any medical checkup nor any information related to the virus.
A revolt is also ongoing in the Merksplas closed centre where retainees refused to eat. Currently there are six people in confinement cells following the intervention by the police.
Some retainees were released by the administration. Internal rumours say that everybody will be released.
The staff of the centre do not wear masks. Apparently ‘it is a complete mess here.’
Vottem closed centre :
A few retainees had a chat with the director who asked them why they refused to eat. There are only one or two persons who feed themselves in each wing. “Beware, it can go far if you push too much’, said the director, referring to the confinement cell.
There were a few releases yesterday and approximately 5 or 6 men were released this Tuesday 17 March according to our sources. Rumours say that around 30 people should soon be released.
A. has been retained for 4 months and a half. He is sick and complains about a some thickness in his stomach, he is stressed and doesn’t go to the bathroom. ‘I amhere and I ignore the reason why.’
The CRACPE (Collectif de Résistance Aux Centres pour Étrangers) summarised the situation in Vottem in a statement, which notably says:
“Since Monday, a hunger strike movement started among the men retained in the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem.
They denounce their retention and the dangereous promiscuity in the context of the coronavirus epidemy. In this challenging time, they also suffer from the absenceof their friends and family who are many to live in Belgium. Visits have been forbidden until further notice.
A few have been released, in very samll amounts, since the end of last week, notably those who had very serious health problems, or among those who should have returned to Italy. All those who remain do not understand, and they started the hunger strike movement to obtain their release.
The situtation is extremely tense; some are desperate, as shown by an escape attempt on Saturday, and two suicide attempts over the last days.
They asked us to make this statement because they feel forgotten and can not get heard.’
In the L wing, the retainees sometimes refuse to eat and they all want to go on hunger strike.
On 14 March, a visitor used his privileged access seen his mandate to visit the 127bis and reported very serious sanitary issues: hygiene conditions have not been reinforced, toilets are dirty, there is no soap, no toilet paper, no adaptation measures in the rooms, no care reinforcement by doctors and nurses, etc.
On 15 March there were 12 releases following a hunger strike of several people, notably from Aghanistan and several African countries. This Tuesday we heard that3 people were released.
Still in wing L: the social assistant came at 11 a.m., the retainees asked her for information. She did not want to answer, just saying ‘may be tomorrow’ before leaving.
Nobody ate at lunch time and it is likely that everybody will continue. They are even more isolated than usual because visits are no longer permitted.
One of the retainees testifies: “we are not gangsters, we are not animals. We have questions but no answers, some people are here for 4, 5, 6 months without answers (ndlr: tickets). What with corona? We stay here? For how many months?“
A host also testifies: ‘I could feel they are scared of the virus, just like us, and that they fear being stuck there for x time. He told me that they were all shouting ‘we are not gangsters, why do you lock us?’
Seven new releases are known in the wing: 3 Erythreans, 1 Ghanaian, 1 Ethiopian (Dublin France) and 2 Arabs (Dublin Belgium).
Caricole centre :
According to our sources, there have been 29 releases lately.
Bruges :
It seems that the administration decided not to lock women in Bruges anymore. We heard that six women retained in Bruges were transferred to the Holsbeek closed centre.
Men have organise a demonstration in the centre to ask their liberation: 6 of them were take in isolation for 36 horesm
Closed centre for women in Holsbeek
We were informed of the release of 6 women. They all are in the centre waiting for their release.
According to an NGO, the Foreigners Office would have announced that there would not be new incarceration, except of people coming from jail. Since they are currently non removable, their retention would then be illegal. The people arrested at the airport could also be retained soon, but since the borders are closed and there are no more planes, there will not be too many people.
The Foreigners Office would also have promised to release mainly the ‘vulnerable’ ones so as to reduce the number of prisoners and guards.
The Foreigners Office would also have promised to release mainly the ‘vulnerable’ ones so as to reduce the number of prisoners and guards. Just in case, we insist that the promises of that ominous administration are not worth our consideration, not more than their despicable policies.
In front of the coronavirus, the government call for prudence and solidarity, and puts pressure on the workers, above all female workers of the public services that they nevertheless continue weakening.
The disastrous sanitary situation in the closed centres (as well as in prisons) is not an anecdotal failure of the State administration, but it reveals the structural racism of these isolation and freedom deprivation places. It shows how the State treats the bodies they deem unworthy and how its administration exposethem to all kinds of violence among which retention in itself.
As of today, closed centres should be emptied and destroyed as of tomorrow.
16/03/2020 In these times of true risk, acknowledged by the WHO, of propagation of COVID-19, it is urgent to immediately close down all the retention centres, hotspots and open-air prisons, etc. Seen the living conditions in prisons and closed centres for foreigners, the precariousness, the weakening the system is imposing to the retainees, and seen that these persons are being confined in closed spaces, it is obvious that the risk of contamination is high, which has to be avoided at all costs. The people retained, be it in closed centres, in prisons or any other confinement place, even temporary, should be immediately released. Besides, the access to medical care should be free to everyobdy (with or without documents) addressing any of the health structures of the country. Over the last days, several retainees have been killed by the State during the many revolts that happened in prisons in Italy. (see also https://mob.nantes.indymedia.org/articles/48727). The retainees are claiming their immediate release, amnesty and unconditionnal access to health care. In France, one case of Corona virus has been confirmed in a retention centre (CRA) in Lesquin, near Lille. The retainees are doing a hunger strike and ask for the immediate release of all the people retained in retention centres. https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/2020/03/15/freedom-for-all-liberte-pour-tou-te-s/ French petition “Fermez les Centres de Rétention !”http://chng.it/H5cCj8bTkv
We are joining their fight and claim the amnesty and release of all the people retained in prisons and retention centres.We continue demanding their definitive closure.
When retained in a closed centre, it is important to very rapidly address a lawyer (without blindly accepting one suggested by the centre).
Indeed, during their retention, some get an Order to Leave the Territory against which lawyers may introduce an appeal in extreme urgency with the CCE within the following 5 (if not the first OLT) or 10 days (if first OLT).
Others get an “X1” (decision to maintain the retention so as to determine the Member State in charge). This “X1” is then followed by an “X2” (decision to transfer to the Member State in charge with the decision to maintain the retention in the closed centre in view of the transfer to the Member State in charge) when the Dublin country has been determined.
For several Dublin countries (France, Germany, Nordic countries, etc.) the lawyers suggest a voluntary return since an appeal would be useless (except in cases of huge physical or psychic vulnerability with a certificate. See below).
For other countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Eastern countries, etc.), appeals are sometimes possible.
Information to submit to the lawyer, by order of importance:
– Name of the person as registered in the centre (most often it is the name on the OTL, if the person already got some).
– 7 digits identification number (Foreigners Office/IBZ/SP), indicated on the badge they got when arriving at the centre
– Family in Europe or in the United Kingdom, single/married
– Phone number or co-retainee’s phone number
DUBLIN
Almost all transit exiles in Belgium depend on another Schengen country (their ‘Dublin’ country) for their asylum request. The Foreigners Office systematically apply these Dublin returns.
Currently, most of them have Germany as designated Dublin country. In that case, a request for voluntary return is adivsed. They will be released in Germany and able to resume their migratory journey from there.
A few figures based on notifications on gettingthevoiceout
Number of retentions notified in December 2019 : 23
All declared and Dublin returns executed (voluntary returns or deportations) Germany: 12, Italy 3, France 2, Norway 1, Switzerland 3, the Netherlands 1
One Italy Dublin was released following an appeal.
Number of retentions notified in January: 50
Number of Dublin: 39, others non communicated: Switzerland 4, Sweden 2, Germany 15, Italy 7, Greece 4, France 2, Norway 1, Malta 2
Releases following appeals: France 1, Italy 1, Malta 1
Obstinacy
Some have been retained sometimes for more than 6 months. The Office are relentless and extend their retention for 2 months every 2 months, sometimes despite releases ordered by Courts of Appeal against which the Office introduce another appeal and win in front of the Indictment Chamber.
It concerns people who firmly oppose their deportation by legal means and/or their own fight actions in the centres and during escape attempts.
Amongst them(non-exhaustive list):
– exiles who firmly refuse their deportation to their country of origin;
-undocumented who have been living in Belgium for several years, who fell in love and went to their commune for a request of marriage or cohabitation, considered as ‘white marriage’ by the Office, http://amoureuxvospapiers.be/
-undocumented who wish to have their children registered at the commune and arrested following that request;
Important for the people who are regularly in contact with some retainees: before their departure (try to) collect all the information (see above) which could help us find them back in case of arrests and be able to intervene rapidly.
Message by the lawyers :
« In the framework of future arrests or retention records, several lessons are to be drawn:
1) If the person has psychological problems, it is essential that they mention it while being questioned by the police or the Foreigners Office;
2) If the person has a psychological or medical certificate, it is essential that they give a copy of it to the police or the FO (if they do not carry it with them, they should mention it during their hearing);
3) If the person, during the questioning, do not fluently speak the language, they should say it and refuse to communicate in the absence of an interpreter (valid for all the records!);
4) As far as possible, medical and psychological certificates should precise the degree of seriousness of the medical troubles and the absolute necessity of a follow-up or medical treatment in the short/medium/long term.
These advice are applicable to all the persons having medical and/or psychological problems. Thank you in advance to forward this message to the persons in contact with vulnerable people. It will increase their chances to be released in case of retention and prevent their deportation.
It would be good that the exile who already consulted Médecins du Monde, Médecins sans Frontières or any other practitioner or expert has a certificate or proof in the most serious cases. The latter should describe the physical and psychic state of the exile.
Remind the exiles that they should never sign a document if they do not understand it. The pressure is too strong, they should write on top of their signature and in their native language “I do not understand.”
We continue asking the retainees and their relatives to testify about these retentions and deportations, please send your written and/or oral testimonies to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
Update 11/03/2020: They stopped their action this afternoon: The direction told them they were going to take care of their problems; We’re waiting for their release?
On 8 March 2020, at a time of mobilisation for women’s rights, activists visited the women detained in the Holsbeek detention centre. Through the gates, they exchanged with those detained and made invisible by the politics of borders.
“We are about 20 women in the Holsbeek detention centre. Some of them are pregnant. Many of us are there after a marriage proposal, a marriage that the administration considers to be a white marriage. Others are separated from their children who live in Belgium. Everyone suffers here, the food is disgusting. Some of us don’t eat.We are all very stressed and can’t sleep.Some of us have been here for several months, one 7 months.Where are our RIGHTS? “We’re not criminals, we’re treated worse than criminals.”
After this visit, a group of women joined the resistance the next day and started a hunger strike. They protest against their imprisonment and the conditions of detention. “Nobody ate today. They “want good food”, they want their freedom. For the guards they don’t care if someone dies or gets sick. They say they’re going to stop eating all week. »”They don’t want us to have contact.” “We need help, no one’s talking to us.” No info for 16 pm, and for some of them their phones are turned off!Probably under pressure, none of them have answered our calls.
Women in battle, women in resistance, the strike will take the form of a hunger strike if we reach the bottom of humanity.
Hello all. Seeing weather conditions crossings have not been many in the past month or so. Yet, this also means more people waiting for crossing this way adding up and potentially bigger wave of crossings in a week or two, when meteo forecast shows nicer (yet not nice) conditions. So here we share once more this flyers about sea safety that were made by Alarm Phone activists back in winter 2018-2019. As far as it was observed rescuers do come when called, but sometimes it takes longer as people leave from places where it is almost physically impossible they’ll ever reach the UK and/ or can’t provide an exact GPS position. We strongly not recommend attempt crossing in small boats, yet , because these crossings are taking place, we invite associations on the ground to share security informations as attached and reach back to us if any issue comes up. calais_solidarity@riseup.net
The sailing vessel “Lovis” will pass the Belgian coast in June 2020. Her journey along the German, Dutch, Belgian and French coasts brings the campaign “Coasts in Solidarity” with her.
With this e-mail we would like to invite motivated people, collectives and organizations to come together in Brussels on Friday evening 6 March at 6.30 pm (Barastraat 142, close to the south station), to further shape the 4 days that the Lovis will pass the Belgian coast. Feel free to forward this mail to potential interested parties.
What is the campaign about?
Our motive for taking action is the attack – in all its forms – on the dignity of (trans) migrants. Rather than the quotidian aggression and apathy, we place understanding and solidarity at the center of our relationship with people on the move, regardless of the reasons that led them to leave their home base.
Various themes will be addressed during the campaign, under which “right to freedom of movement”, “security at sea”, “criminalization of migration, rescue at sea and solidarity”, “European border policy”, “refugee policy”, “climate & migration “,” people not papers “,” European arms exports vs. migration policy ”, discrimination against transmigrants, etc.
A central slogan of the campaign, which connects all these themes, is
“Open borders, Open eyes
Solidary coasts on the rise“
Who is driving this campaign?
An open group of activists from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England work together on a voluntary basis to set up this campaign. You’re hereby invited to participate, if this wasn’t the case already.
The initiative comes from the LOVIS crew, the 30-person crew of the sailing vessel Lovis. You can find detailed background information about their operation here: https://lovis.de/en/
The voyage and the international campaign
The ship will depart from Hamburg (Germany) on the first of June, arriving in Brest (France) mid-July. During 6 weeks the ship will throw out the anchor in differnt ports, where it will dock for 1 or a few days. The actions and activities that are organized at every location take place in cooperation with people, collectives and organizations that are active in and around that location in solidarity work with (trans) migrants.
The campaign is therefore not only a perfect excuse for all those actors who are active in the same region to meet (again). The various movements along that long coastline are also connected under the name “Coasts in Solidarity on the rise”.
And Belgium?
The Lovis can be expected to be in Belgium from 17 to 20 June. The preliminary proposal is to stop in Zeebrugge and Ostend. In Ostend we will moor in the Visserijdok, in front of O.666, a temporary occupation project in the buildings of a former fishermen’s cooperative. Klein Verhaal makes this socio-artistic hotbed available for the campaign (thanks!), which offers us a wonderful base for setting up activities.
Saturday, June 20 is also the international refugee day. The beach and dike in Ostend will attract a crowd of people on that summer weekend for the actions & activities that we want to set up.
Meeting on 6 March in Brussels
Although several people are already involved in Belgium, and there are already a number of proposals on the table about how we want to shape the Belgian chapter of the Lovis-campaing, the concrete planning is still in its infancy. The perfect moment for a broad invitation, and to see who wants to contribute to the Belgian etape of this campaign.
Consider yourself invited on March 6, 6:30 pm in Barabara (Barastraat 142, near Brussels South).
The purpose of the meeting is:
– getting to know the people who are in
– discussing the possibilities that the ship, the place and the moment give us
– round of concrete proposals for activities & actions + drafting the working version of the 4-day planning
– setting up working groups per f.e. location / action / focus, and sharing responsibilities
We provide dinner (vegan, free contribution). Please confirm your participation, so there’ll be enough food for everybody.
Do you want to be involved in the organization, but are you unable to attend this meeting? Let us know. If you send proposals for activities in advance, they will certainly be discussed. We will then keep you informed of the further course of the preparations.
“Fuck them and their law” : Libérons Anton, Vrijheid voor Anton posté le 09/02/20 mercredi 12 février 2020 12:00 lieu : Ambassade des Pays Bas adresse : Kortenberglaan, 4-10, 1040 Bruxelles
Appel à rassemblement Ambassade Pays bas à Bruxelles ce
12/02/2020, 12 heures pour exiger sa libération du centre de rétention à
Rotterdam
Samenkomst voor de Nederlandse ambassade op 12/02/2020 om 12 uur om zijn vrijheid te eisen uit het retentiecentrum in Rotterdam
Kortenberglaan 4-10- avenue de Kortenberg (Schuman)
1040 Brussels
Belgique
Hij heeft een lachend gezicht, tedere ogen, en in stilte hoor ik hem nog schreeuwen Fuck them and their law.
Hij bevindt zich nu in een gesloten centrum in Rotterdam.
Hij vertelt ons hoe hij aangehouden werd. Hoe hij gewoon naar
vrienden wou gaan, en politie zag voorbijlopen. Geen geluk, ze volgen
hem. Misbruik van identiteitscontrole. De arrestatie veranderde snel in
een achtervolging, vernedering en extreem geweld. Hij was het eerste
slachtoffer van de toenemende repressie in de wijk. 22 januari
tweeduizendtwintig. 13u12.
Hij laat ons zien hoe de politieman hem in zijn maag kniet. Hij is in elkaar geslagen.
En ondanks de fracturen veroorzaakt door zijn gewelddadige arrestatie,
ontving hij geen medische behandeling. Hij krijgt pijnstillers zonder
psychologische hulp. Onmenselijke realiteit van deze gesloten plaatsen.
Ze weigerden hem vrij te laten voordat zijn oordeel word uitgesproken. Hij zal dus alleen achter tralies moeten wachten.
Maar we gaan hem niet in stilte laten gaan.
Hij denkt terug aan Wit-Rusland, de gevangenis, de politieke
vervolging ; aan de gruwelijkheid waarnaar hij terug zal worden
gestuurd.
Ik denk terug aan hoe onze wegen op een hoopvol kruispund waren gekomen. Hoe we binnekort gescheiden zullen zijn.
Op 12 februari 2020 wordt het asiel aanvraag van Anton gehoord. Zes dagen om te beslissen over iemands leven of dood.
Anton schreef zijn asielaanvraag alleen, zonder advocaten, overwonnen
door de emotie van zijn vlucht en de onderdrukking van zijn dromen. Ze
zal daarom zeker worden geweigerd, omdat ze niet in staat zijn de
waarheid te horen die hij in zijn eigen woorden uitdrukt.
Anton loopt daarom het risico deze laatste rechtzaak te verliezen en zal
waarschijnlijk op 12 februarie, in de avond in een vliegtuig worden
gegooid.
Anton zal dan naar Polen worden gestuurd, waar hij gedublineerd is, maar
de fascistische drift van de regering zal hem snel de lucht in nemen
naar Wit-Rusland.
Anton heeft geen kracht meer en riskeert zijn lot voor een laatste keer in eigen handen te nemen.
Anton riskeert de dood hier of elders.
Voor Anton, omdat niemand zo’n behandeling zou moeten ondergaan,
verzamelen we ons deze 12 februari voor de rechtbank van Rotterdam
(Wilhelminanplein 100-125) of voor de dichtsijzijnde Nederlandse
Ambassade !
Laat Anton vrij !
Meer info : squat-vestia@riseup.net
================ Libérons Anton !
Il a le visage souriant, le yeux remplis de douceur et dans le silence, je l’entends encore crier Fuck them and their law.
Il est maintenant en centre fermé à Rotterdam.
Il nous raconte comment il s’est fait arrêter. Comment il voulait
juste aller voir des amis, a vu des flics passer. Manque de bol, ils le
suivent. Contrôle d’identité abusif. L’arrestation tourne vite en course
poursuite, humiliation et extrême violence. Il aura été la première
victime de la montée de la répression dans le quartier, ce 22 janvier
deux mille vingt. 13h12.
Il nous montre comment le policier lui donne un coup de genou dans le ventre. Il s’est fait tabasser.
Et malgré les fractures provoquées par son arrestation violente, il n’a
pas reçu de soins médicaux. On lui donne des analgésiques sans avoir eu
recours à une aide psychologique. L’infame réalité de ces lieux fermés.
Ils ont refusé de le libérer le temps du rendu de son jugement. L’attente se fera donc seul derrière les barreaux.
Mais nous n’allons pas le laisser partir dans le silence.
Il repense à la Biélorussie, à la prison, à la persécution politique ; à l’horreur vers laquelle il sera renvoyé.
Je repense à comment nos chemins perdus se sont croisés. Comment bientôt nous serons séparés.
Ce 12 février 2020, la demande d’asile d’Anton sera jugée. Six jours pour décider de la vie ou de la mort de quelqu’un.
Anton a rédigé sa demande d’asile seul, sans avocats, abattu par la
déchirure de sa fuite, l’oppression de son souffle et l’étouffement de
ses rêves. Elle sera donc surement refusée, car ils sont incapables
d’entendre la vérité qu’il exprime avec ses propres mots.
Anton risque donc de perdre ce dernier procès et sera probablement jeté dans un avion ce 12 février au soir.
Anton fera alors escale en Pologne, ou il est dubliné, mais la dérive
fasciste du gouvernement le portera vite dans les airs jusqu’en
Biélorussie.
Anton n’a plus la force et risque de prendre pour la dernière fois son destin en main.
Anton risque la mort ici ou ailleurs.
Pour Anton, car nul ne devrait subir pareil traitement, RDV ce 12
février au tribunal de Rotterdam (Wilhelminanplein 100-125) ou devant
l’ambassade hollandaise la plus proche de chez vous !
Libérons Anton !
Plus d’infos : squat-vestia@riseup.net
================ Free Anton !
He has a smiling face, his eyes are filled with sweetness and in the
midst of silence, I can still hear him shouting Fuck them and their law.
He recounts how he got arrested. How he just wanted to go back to see
some friends, saw cops passing. And no luck, they started following
him. Abusive identity check. The arrest quickly turned into a
humiliating and violent chase. He was the first victim of the
heightening repression in the neighbourhood. January the 22nd two
thousand and twenty. 1:12 p.m.
He shows us how the policeman kneed him in the stomach. They beat him.
And despite the fractures caused by his violent arrest, he has not
received medical treatment. He is simply given painkillers without any
psychological assistance. Inhumane reality of these closed places.
They refuse to release him before his hearing. He will therefore have to wait alone behind bars.
But we are not going to let him go in silence.
He remembers Belarus, prison, political persecution ; the horror to which they want to send him back.
I recall how our lost paths crossed in Tweebosbuurt. How soon we will be separated.
On February 12th, 2020, Anton’s demand for asylum will be heard. Six days to decide on someone’s life or death.
Anton wrote his asylum request alone, without a lawyer, beaten by the
heartbreak of his flight and the suffocation of his dreams. It will
surely be refused. They’re incapable of hearing the truth which he
expresses in his own words.
Anton is thus at risk of losing his last trial and will probably be thrown on a plane on the evening of February the 12th.
Anton will then arrive in Poland, where he is dublinized, but the
fascist drift of the government will quickly take him up in the air to
Belarus.
Anton has no strength left and risks taking his destiny in his own hands for one the last time.
Anton risks death here or elsewhere.
For Anton, because no one should undergo such treatment, let’s come
together this February 12th at the court of Rotterdam (Wilhelminanplein
100-125) or in front of the Dutch embassy closest to you !
It is more and more frequent that social assistants, spokespersons of the Foreigners Office in closed centres (the Office call them ‘return assistants’) advise to opt for a ‘voluntary return’, sometimes under the threat of a ‘forced return with the police and the prohibition to come back before several years (from 2 to 5 years)’. For info: a deportation that follows an Order to Leave the Territory goes together with a Schengen ban from 2 to 5 years.
For ‘transit’ exiles, this proposal is almost systematic: a voluntary return to their country of origin or to their Dublin country. For some Dublin countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Nordic countries, etc.) lawyers generally advise to sign for a voluntary return, save in exceptional cases. This voluntary return will prevent the intervention of lawyers, it will considerably reduce the retention period and amount to a release in their Dublin countries. There they will be able to re-submit or continue their asylum request or resume their migratory journey. In other Dublin countries (Italy, Switzerland, Eastern countries, Spain, etc.), appeals are possible and advised according to the situations.
Certain retainees refuse these deportations and resist; which does not please the staff of the centres:
Here is a testimony among others:
“ The guy was beaten by 5 guards and placed in isolation for 3 days because he refuses to go back to Italy. He would be OK to go to France where his asylum request is ongoing.”
Others, i.e. asylum seekers, regularisation seekers or transit exiles who are being threatened with a deportation to their countries of origin hold up, resist during the deportation attempt, testify or act. Others go on hunger strikes in the centre, others refuse to meet the embassy which would enable the Foreigners Office to get a let pass necessary for their repatriation, others find other means.
Testimony by a host :
“ Today we were able to grasp A’s situation who understands perfectly well the options that are proposed to him. Personally, I can but admire the dignity with which he told us: “I’m in Europe, not in Africa, I have rights, I’m not a criminal, if I ask asylum in Belgium it is outside, not here”. He understands the zigzag but he doesn’t want to zigzag, in the end he came to Europe because he believed in human rights; rights that were violated because of his retention. Humble and proud. He doesn’t have many things to loose anymore, having no family left… Of course we tried to argue for another hour, we will see… But today I was able to understand him fully.”
Very often these actions bear their fruit. For example, hunger strikers are released after 20, 30 or 40 days because they became « Not Fit to Fly » seen their health status.
It is simply inconceivable that after using all the legal ways to obtain a release, some people have to risk their lives. These actions are often supported by the co-detainees and/or outside people, but almost never by NGOs or the associative sector who abstain from taking a stand.
Words by a detainee after a demonstration in front of the 127bis :
“ I am voiceless, you are admirable. You struggled against the rain, the wind and the police to cry for our freedom. It made me cry, you are wonderful people whom I’d like to meet. Thank you everybody, I am deeply moved. I felt that if you had the power we would all be free. It gave me joy and hope. From the bottom of my heart, thank you !”
But very often these naysayers will be repatriated unexpectedly, without respecting the rules of the procedure.
For example, for a woman who had related the violence she went through during a deportation attempt:
“ Five men came to fetch her this morning at the centre to drive her to the airport in her pyjamas.”
And for a man retained in Vottem:
“ They just gave me my ticket at 6 p.m for tomorrow morning at 10.30 a.m. A man stopped me at the canteen to give it to me, it is a joke! I haven’t seen my assistant for at least a week and now they are giving me a ticket on the Saturday evening, as if they didn’t know before. They don’t want to leave us the time to realise, they always do things unexpectedly,to prevent us from reacting, it is terrible”, “ when I get there in Congo, I will need money, how will I manage?”
He is totally lost, he is shared between the aversion for the system and still hopes to have a dialogue with the staff members to avoid the deportation, I am not convinced he still wants to resist.
In Vottem too, the repatriation attempt implies lies:
“ In a devious way, they tried to make him sign a request for voluntary return instead of the confirmation receipt of a parcel. They pretended the call of a doctor to take him away from the group and placed him in confinement with no means of communication before his repatriation.”
For asylum seekers and undocumented in closed centres whose requests are rejected by the Foreigners Office or the CGRA, this proposal of voluntary return is done. After a retained several months they break down and accept.
Testimony by a support person to a woman retained for several months:
“ Madam E, that I have been supporting for two weeks, decided to sign a ‘voluntary’ return and will be repatriated. She has been living in Belgium for 9 years, has family here and mainly her daughter who is 19. She had different jobs, including voluntary jobs for public institutions (!) that could not give her a contract since she was undocumented. The Court ordered her release (on several occasions, if I got it well). The Foreigners Office however insisted and systematically brought the case to another court in appeal that proved them right. Madam E also tells me that her regularisation request was ongoing but that the time was too short for it to succeed. She cannot stand the retention anymore and she asked her lawyer to arrange her voluntary return. She doesn’t know anyone in her country anymore and so far she was not able to reach anyone who could welcome her on arrival. Nevertheless what makes her panic the most is to leave her daughter alone since to her she still is a child. The latter also knows some administrative problems with her EU residence permit and also has personal problems. She is organising everything for her daughter to have several people to turn to after she is gone. Really ridiculous and shameful.”
F, 21, Moroccan, 5 months in a closed centre. Her family is living in Belgium legally.
“ The social assistant is threatening her: “Soon you will get a ticket, if you go to the airport and let them deport you, I will talk to the police so that they do not forbid you Schengen entry for three years, you’d better think twice, it is better for you”. Under pressure, she signed a paper to accept her return and avoid a Schengen ban. She did not get a copy and could not read to me what was written on the paper – it seems that she signed a voluntary return.”
Under threat, these people would sign anything after a terribly exhausting stay in a closed centre to put an end to these daily tortures and to escape forced deportations.
They call these practices “Firm and humane“.
Lies, intimidations, violences, fake promises are their practices.
The prison for foreigners in Oissel (near Rouen) is known for its violent and racist practices, its administration suppressing all resistance movements. In this prison, solitary confinement is regularly used to beat up prisoners.
This prison was partially burned down by prisoners at the end of April after a violently repressed hunger strike.
Last Saturday some policemen beat up a prisoner and took him to solitary confinement (he came out on Wednesday 22 January) because he wanted to show his solidarity with another prisoner. In the evening policemen with dogs entered the centre to put pressure on the prisoners. Since then, the violence, the racist insults, have not stopped.
On the evening of Wednesday 22 January, the 42 prisoners from the Cra men’s ward in Oissel went on hunger strike. Their communiqués were passed on:
Au centre de rétention de Oissel (près de Rouen) la police est violente et nous humilie tous les jours. Toujours ils provoquent, ils disent “Baisse les yeux !”. La nourriture est froide et n’est pas halal, alorsqu’il y a une majorité de prisonniers qui sont musulmans.
Même la prison c’est mieux qu’ici. Y en a ils ont 10 ou 20 ans ici et onles mets en centre de rétention.
Depuis samedi c’est encore pire. La police à encore voulu mettre unprisonnier à l’isolement. Son ami s’y est opposéet ils l’ont amené violemment aussi à l’isolement. Le soir y avait la police avec des chiens et des cagoules dans le centre pour nous faire peur.
Le prisonnier qui était à l’isolement il vient d’en sortir. Ils l’ont
tabassé, il peut pls parler, il a des bleus partout. Les yeux et les
oreilles sont gonflées.
Hier ils ont cassés le pied d’un autre prisonnier.
Tout ça va pas du tout. Tout le monde se plaint. Nous sommes plus de 42 prisonniers enfermés ici. Donc là on fait la grève commune. Ce soir personne ne mange.
On va essayer d’occuper le couloir parce que ce qui c’est passé depuissamedi dernier c’est encore pire que d’habitude.
Ici y a pas d’hygiène. Les chambres sont pas nettoyés tous les jours.
On revendique
-La fin des violences policières, de la xénophobie des policiers et de leurs racisme
-Un minimum d’hygiène et de dignité
-De la nourriture correcte
-Des soins corrects
Les prisonniers en grève de la faim de Oissel, le 22 janvier
We learnt that Guineans were taken away from the Vottem closed centre and transferred to the isolation cell of the 127bis centre. They were promised a forced military flight in the evening. Then we heard that they would be driven to Cologne to be deported on a Frontex flight with other compatriots on 21 January 2020.
‘Forced return remains the absolute key of our asylum and migration policy’, declared Mrs De Block within that context. According to the Minister, in 2020, the Foreigners Office continue to target the forced return of illegal criminals, rejected asylum seekers and transmigrants. They will continue to increase their actions. This week, forty places have been reopened in closed centres to retain priority target groups, such as illegal criminals, recidivists causing troubles and illegals in transit through Belgium. Their deportations continue to be planned in closed centres.’
“Fabrice Leggeri also pointed out the agency’s role in the organisation of repatriation operations. Last year, 15 850 persons were repatriated, compared to 13 700 in 2018.”
“Frontex remains a partner for EU countries in organising charter flights. In 2019, the agency also expanded its role in coordinating returns on commercial flights.Frontex is building the European Union’s capacity in returns by integrating various information systems that allow countries to coordinate and have an overview of return operations at the European level.”
List of the known exiles who passed through Belgium and were killed by borders since July 2017
TRIBUTE TO:
2017 :
-Omar, 18, Sudanese, died under a bus in Brussels on 23 July 2017
-Dejen, 16, Ethiopian, died in Aalter after falling from a truck on 4 November 2017
-M, Sudanese, found dead in the canal in Brussels on 17 November 2017
2018
-Mohammed, 39, Ethiopian, died in Jabbeke chased by the police on 29 January 2018
-M, 22, Algerian, died in Zeebruges on 22 March 2018
-Mawda, 2, Kurdish, killed in Mons during a police chase on 16 May 2018
-Amalou Ourez, 20, Guinean, crushed by a bus in Berchem-Ste-Agathe (Brussels) on 19 June 2018
-X,19, Vietnamese, run over by a car in Jabbeke on 17 August 2018
-Imran Ullah, Afghan, run over by a car in Ramskapelle on the E40 on 9 September 2018
-Kebede, 25, Erythrean, killed on a parking in Wetteren on the E40 on 12 September 2018
-Gebre, 36, Erythrean, committed suicide in the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018
2019
-Adam usman Kiyar, 20, Ethiopian, very well-known in Brussels, died in a truck in Calais on 8 March 2019
-Amaneal, born in 1986, Ethiopian, his body was found dead on the railway in Silly (Tournay) on 17 April 2019
-Mahammat Abdullah Moussa, 25, Chadian, most likely dead on 17 April 2019 hung under a bus at the North Station in Brussels and his torn body found at the arrival in FolkstoC
-Géri, 25, Erythrean, died after falling from a truck on the A29 near Rotterdam on 6 July 2019
– Nicknam Massoud fund in the Northsea in Zeebrugge on 25/08/2019, drowned at his crossing of the Channel to GB, Iraqi, 48 years….
– Nixon, suicide in the open centre in Lanaken on 23/10/2019, SriLankais, 34 years old
– 39 from vietnam , women and men found dead on 23/10/2019 in a truck in Essex /GB after a drive past Zeebrugge
Pham Thi Tra My, 26, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Huy Phong, 35, from Ha Tinh
Vo Nhan Du, 19, from Ha Tinh
Tran Manh Hung, 37, from Ha Tinh
Tran Khanh Tho, 18, from Ha Tinh
Vo Van Linh, 25, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Van Nhan, 33, from Ha Tinh
Bui Phan Thang, 37, from Ha Tinh
Nguyen Huy Hung, 15, from Ha Tinh
Tran Thi Tho, 21, from Nghe An
Bui Thi Nhung, 19, from Nghe An
Vo Ngoc Nam, 28, from Nghe An
Nguyen Dinh Tu, 26, from Nghe An
Le Van Ha, 30, from Nghe An
Tran Thi Ngoc, 19, from Nghe An
Nguyen Van Hung, 33, from Nghe An
Hoang Van Tiep, 18, from Nghe An
Cao Tien Dung, 37, from Nghe An
Cao Huy Thanh, 33, from Nghe An
Tran Thi Mai Nhung, 18, from Nghe An
Nguyen Minh Quang, 20, from Nghe An
Le Trong Thanh, 44, from Dien Chau
Pham Thi Ngoc Oanh, 28, from Nghe An
Hoang Van Hoi, 24, from Nghe An
Nguyen Tho Tuan, 25, from Nghe An
Dang Huu Tuyen, 22, from Nghe An
Nguyen Trong Thai, 26, from Nghe An
Nguyen Van Hiep, 24, from Nghe An
Nguyen Thi Van, 35, from Nghe An
Tran Hai Loc, 35, from Nghe An
Duong Minh Tuan, 27, from Quang Binh
Nguyen Ngoc Ha, 32, from Quang Binh
Nguyen Tien Dung, 33, from Quang, Binh
Phan Thi Thanh, 41, from Hai Phong
Nguyen Ba Vu Hung, 34, from Thua Tien Hue
Dinh Dinh Thai Quyen, 18, from Hai Phong
Tran Ngoc Hieu, 17, from Hai Duong
Dinh Dinh Binh, 15, from Hai Phong
– Ermiyas Ungessa, Éthiopie, 28 , death in Tournai ( Belgium) on 20/12/2019
Hostels are calling for a gathering at closed center 127 bis, against the imprisonment and repeated attempts to expel their “friends” and in solidarity with all the prisoners. Any initiative of refusal in front of the closed centres is to be welcomed and
to support. SOLIDARITY!
Let’s gather in front of the 127bis Closed centre this Sunday 22 décembre 2019 at 3.30 p.m
We are calling for a gathering in front of the 127 bis closed centre this Saturday 21 December at 3.30 p.m to support the prisoners who claim their release, to show them our solidarity and send a strong signal to the political leaders so that they stop these illegal retentions and deportations.
Mr A, 19, Somali, has been retained in a closed centre for 10 months. He went through 4 deportation attempts, one of them extremely violent against which he lodged a complaint, and another one in deepest secrecy without being allowed to warn anyone (his mobile phone was confiscated in disregard of the right to ongoing legal assistance!) and others cancelled at the very last moment for technical reasons.
Calls for help and acts of despair in closed centres are countless
Resistance to deportations
A lot of migrants are deported to their Dublin country, before coming back or resuming their migratory route.
Others doomed to be sent back to their ‘country of origin’ strongly refuse and are violently beaten by their escort during the deportation attempt.
Each week we get testimonies about extremely violent deportation attempts.
The latest was on 9 December 2019: ‘She was fetched by force in the beginning of the afternoon, placed in a cell by 6 police officers, 4 men and 2 women. The women remained in the cell. They undressed and tied her. Before boarding the plane they beat her. Once in the plane, she shouted and cried and some passengers reacted. She finally disembarked and was again violently beaten, notably on one hand that was already painful.
The police told her that there was not enough space in Belgium, that it is a small country and that she had to leave.
Small groups of hosts and activitists gather to go to the airport and warn the passengers of the presence of a person who will be deported by force on their flight, when they are aware of it. Some passengers oppose these deportations with determination.
Escape attempts
14 October 2019, Vottem
Around 2 p.m this Tuesday, two retainees tried to escape by scaling the fences. The first one was prevented from doing so by the guards and the second one climbed but fell from 5 metres. He was taken to the hospital, severly wounded.
22 November 2019, 127 bis
A man tried to scale the fences. He got caught and transferred. We lost his trace.
Testimony by a visitor : ‘Mamma mia, my little heart is torn with stress and pain… Sitting in the waiting room, sympathising with the two visitors of our nice Brazilian student (who saw his student visa refused while being in his second year of architecture, living in Belgium for 17 years, speaking 4 languages… and who finally decided to sign the papers for a voluntary return), more than 20 guards in a panic, running shouting to the outside, worried gazes, in radio contact… The guys (and girls) are running to the passage around the backyard, to the corner of the prison (yes indeed, it is a closed centre not a prison, we are fully aware of that!) that gives out to the street. The retainee tried to jump over the high fences (imagine the despair? there is no way to escape from there). He found himself in the passageway, did not manage to cross the second fence and got caught. I saw them all come back, the guy surrounded by two big men, direction confinement cell undoubtedly. I wanted to meet his gaze, to put my hand on the window to tell him that I was with him, but he did not see me. It really broke my heart to see that the guy was ready to try the impossible despite the risks of repression, a punishment even more severe than deprivation of liberty and the promise to be sent backto a country where he no longer wants to be…’.
Suicide attempt:
Vottem 28 November 2019
A man cut his wrists this morning after hearing he would be deported the day after. They took him away and we lost his trace.
Vottem 11 November 2919
A man going to be deported swallowed all the sleeping pills he had for the last 15 days at one go. He fainted. He was brought to the hospital then got released.
Holsbeek 25/10/2019
A woman, desperate because she would be separated from her children in case of deportation cut her wrists. She was taken to the hospital and brought back to the centre after being cured.
127bis 1 December
Message by a co-retainee:
– Two or three weeks ago, an Afghan got a ticket to Poland. He knew that if he returned to Poland he would go to jail for 2 years to then be expelled to Afghanistan. Desperate, he cut his wrists 3 or 4 times with a razor blade. He was sent to the hospital but never came back. His co-retainees ignore what happened to him.
Hunger strike
Many women and men started hunger or thirst strikes, sometimes the only way left to have their claims heard.
Some are maintining their action in spite of the difficulties and the dangers for their health.
After ten days or so they are sometimes placed in confinement cells, but most often a real cell without any medical check. A few disappear or are deported, others end up being released after several weeks.
These cases are only the ones we are being notified of, but we are convinced that, seen the administration pressure of the different closed centres not to reveal this information, these acts of despair unfortunately are far more numerous, so as the forced deportations with escort that happen in complete anonimity at least twice a day!
Appalling stories are ongoing (voir http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org). Today we learnt that the authorities of the Foreigners Office want to deport Mr. A at all costs. Mr. A is from Somalia. He already went through inhuman and degrading treatments from police officers escorting him previously. Let’s remind though that cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments are forbidden by Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the same way as torture. The European Court of Human Rights reminds that there is no exception to that prohibition. Besides, every State shall forbid (…) acts constituting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments that are not acts of ‘torture’ when such acts are being perpetrated by a civil servant or any other person.
Therefore it should be the State responsible to pursue the wrongdoers from the police, and a complaint of the victims, such as the one that was lodged, should not even be necessary. Here it is the opposite, everything must be repressed, both literally and figuratively. Is it out of fear of what would be discovered during the instruction, just as it happened with Mrs T recently, that the Foreigners Office is in such a hurry to repeat this man’s plight?
Under the leadership of Maggie De Block, the Foreigners Office once again seems allowed to act at its discretion in violation of humanity and all the rules.
We read in the media, probably as an attempt to reassure us, that civil servants of the AIG were on board. This general inspection of the police is under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs, and from the latter spring the undignified migration policies we know in Belgium. Have they ensured that everything was done according to the rules, like for Semira? or, as said regarding the treatment inflicted to MrsT, the use of force was necessary because madam was too ‘strong’? Were they only present to warrant anything that would have happened next?
We thank all the persons who opposed this ignominy and encourage each witness of such acts to do the same even though the criminalisation of solidarity might imply that you are in turn also violently expelled from the plane, as had also been the “6 heroes”.
Expulsions are always violent because they are part of a racist system that isolates and criminalises migrants. The so-called use of force in a situation of deportation is itself disproportionate, therefore it is high time to consider all these practices as illegal and to denounce this logic consisting in sorting human beings.
FREE MOVEMENT FOR ALL STOP TO DEPORTATIONS AND NO TO CLOSED CENTRES
Mr. A was released from the centre and left Belgium to try his luck elsewhere, after several attempts at violent evictions and a hard struggle in the centre against these evictions.
He was released after a long and harrowing hunger strike, supported by his hosts and several of his co-detainees. Finding themselves in a legal void set to music by the Office, the only thing left for the detainees is their struggles inside the centres to obtain their release, sometimes endangering their lives!
About the Foreigners’ Office obstinacy
Somalian, 19 years old, 9 months in a closed centre, 4 deportation attempts and still returnable
When he arrived in Belgium in 2015, A., born in 2000, was in a deep post-traumatic stress, attested by a psychiatrist.
Two asylum requests were refused in 2015 and 2017 respectively: the CGRA and the CCE (Aliens Litigation Council) doubting about the reliability of his story.
A. was arrested and retained in the 127bis closed centre on 16/02/2019
First deportation attempt on 01/04/2019, which he refuses
Second deportation attempt on 17/07/2019 Turkish Airlines TK 1944 to Istanbul http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/let-us-prevent-a-second-deportationattempt-to-somalia-on-17072019/
In Istanbul, the passengers of the flight to Djibouti refuse this forced deportation on that flight for 2 consecutive days. The escort spends two nights at the hotel in Istanbul, with A. kept tied to a radiator in the bathroom.
Mr A testified on 19/07/2019 upon his return to 127 bis :
He was in a room at Brussels’ airport, with 3 policemen and a social assistant. The social assistant asked him if he wanted to leave. “You will have to go with the police and stay calm.” They beat him. He said he did not want to go. He shouted and the policemen started to beat him. Since he did not calm down, they hold him, had him swallow a liquid tranquilizer by force. They brought him to the plane with his hands tied and started to beat him again. On the plane they also tied his feet. They hold him by the neck and beat his head. In the plane the social assistant told the passengers not to move, that the man had to return to Somalia.
It seems that the police in Istambul noted that his ‘travel documents’ were not in order. The escort would have answered “never mind, he will leave anyway”.
Still in Istanbul, while waiting for the flight to Djibouti, he managed to escape but the Belgian police caught him and brutalised him. Short of breath, he fainted in the airport.
It had been planned that he would take, always under escort, a connecting flight to Djibouti. The passengers refused that he went on the plane, the police took a new ticket for the day after. One night at the hotel and on the road again to the airport. The passengers of that new flight reacted and refused to leave with that plane if A. had to go through this forced return.
After this missed deportation, the 3 persons of the escort spent a second night at the hotel in Istanbul. A, spent these two nights sitting in the bathroom, his hands tied. He was again beaten in the hotel, far away from the cameras of the airport.
27/09/2019: New deportation attempt planned by the Foreigners Office cancelled because the Somalian embassy did not deliver a let pass.
07/10/2019: The Foreigners Office contact Somalia and share the information
17/10/2019 A. is transfered from the 127bis centre to the closed centre in Bruges
04/11/2019: New deportation planned with escort: cancelled because of ‘issues’ with the airline, according to the Foreigners Office
15/11/2019: New ticket valid until 18 December 2019 because “it is possible that the man is deported within a reasonable deadline”: Belgium would have delivered a European let pass.
As far as we know, several exiles are being threatened with new deportation attempts with an escort.
Besides the two exiles whom we know have been the subject of violence and were mentioned in a release by RTBF, here:
Testimony of T here
Testimony of S here
There is G., Ethiopian, retained for six months in a closed centre, placed in confinement in the closed centre of Bruges on 15 November 2019, in hunger strike for ten days or so, is very weak. A new deportation attempt would be planned for this Sunday 17 November 2019. G. who always strongly opposed these deportations, will not have the strength to resist anymore seen his state.
There is A., Somalian, in a closed centre for 9 months, for whom the Foreigners Office delivered a new arrest order because of the ‘possibility that the interested was deported within a reasonable deadline.’
About the Foreigners’ Office obstinacy
Somalian, 19 years old, 9 months in a closed centre, 4 deportation attempts and still returnable
When he arrived in Belgium in 2015, A., born in 2000, was in a deep post-traumatic stress, attested by a psychiatrist.
Two asylum requests were refused in 2015 and 2017 respectively: the CGRA and the CCE (Aliens Litigation Council) doubting about the reliability of his story.
A. was arrested and retained in the 127bis closed centre on 16/02/2019
First deportation attempt on 01/04/2019, which he refuses
Second deportation attempt on 17/07/2019 Turkish Airlines TK 1944 to Istanbul http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/let-us-prevent-a-second-deportationattempt-to-somalia-on-17072019/
In Istanbul, the passengers of the flight to Djibouti refuse this forced deportation on that flight for 2 consecutive days. The escort spends two nights at the hotel in Istanbul, with A. kept tied to a radiator in the bathroom.
Mr A testified on 19/07/2019 upon his return to 127 bis :
He was in a room at Brussels’ airport, with 3 policemen and a social assistant. The social assistant asked him if he wanted to leave. “You will have to go with the police and stay calm.” They beat him. He said he did not want to go. He shouted and the policemen started to beat him. Since he did not calm down, they hold him, had him swallow a liquid tranquilizer by force. They brought him to the plane with his hands tied and started to beat him again. On the plane they also tied his feet. They hold him by the neck and beat his head. In the plane the social assistant told the passengers not to move, that the man had to return to Somalia.
It seems that the police in Istambul noted that his ‘travel documents’ were not in order. The escort would have answered “never mind, he will leave anyway”.
Still in Istanbul, while waiting for the flight to Djibouti, he managed to escape but the Belgian police caught him and brutalised him. Short of breath, he fainted in the airport.
It had been planned that he would take, always under escort, a connecting flight to Djibouti. The passengers refused that he went on the plane, the police took a new ticket for the day after. One night at the hotel and on the road again to the airport. The passengers of that new flight reacted and refused to leave with that plane if A. had to go through this forced return.
After this missed deportation, the 3 persons of the escort spent a second night at the hotel in Istanbul. A, spent these two nights sitting in the bathroom, his hands tied. He was again beaten in the hotel, far away from the cameras of the airport.
27/09/2019: New deportation attempt planned by the Foreigners Office cancelled because the Somalian embassy did not deliver a let pass.
07/10/2019: The Foreigners Office contact Somalia and share the information
17/10/2019 A. is transfered from the 127bis centre to the closed centre in Bruges
04/11/2019: New deportation planned with escort: cancelled because of ‘issues’ with the airline, according to the Foreigners Office
15/11/2019: New ticket valid until 18 December 2019 because “it is possible that the man is deported within a reasonable deadline”: Belgium would have delivered a European let pass.
The Foreigners Office at the political service of the decision-lakers and their allies do not hesitate to use all the means including illegal means to deport, preferably on the quiet and with intimidation, similar here to hostage taking and torture, at the request of CGRA and CCE : they will tell us that they apply the rules and obey decisions taken by the ‘competent’ institutions. And the CGRA obeys the guidelines of HCR that tells us that the city of Modagiscio is “safe”… Everybody obeys, no matter the order, this can only lead to historical reminiscences of which we are currently all witnesses.
All this under the guise of ‘human rights’ and the ‘humane but strict’ policy of Maggy De Block.
A bunch of racist criminals for whom the “foreigner” is no longer part of the humans!
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, the national day of mobilization against
violence against women, women activists gather in front of the Holsbeek
detention centre to support detained women.
At the intersection of several struggles, this “surprise” rally
denounces violence against migrant women, border violence and, more
generally, violence in the prison system.
Inaugurated on May 7, the Holsbeek detention centre was set up to hold
58 women whose papers were not the right ones. This former low-cost
hotel located at the end of an industrial zone currently houses about
thirty women. Women snatched from their families, from their lives. Many
of these migrant women have fled their country as a result of
gender-based violence: forced marriage, sexual mutilation, lesbophobia,
biphobia, transphobia, modern slavery, sexual exploitation, etc.
Deprived of their freedom for sometimes several months, they resist
institutional violence and state racism day after day, in total
invisibility. In endless waiting and under threat of deportation, they
live to the rhythm of the prison world. Uncertainty is gnawing away, the
distance from friends and families undermines morale, news is lacking,
health is failing, nerves are failing, hopes are finally disappearing.
Faced with this context of oppression, women prisoners are in solidarity
and organize themselves. It is to support their resistance that we are
gathering today in front of the centre.
The memory of Semira Adamu, a 20-year-old Nigerian girl murdered in 1998
by police officers on a plane is in everyone’s mind this Sunday morning.
History repeats itself: in November 2019 a woman was subjected to three
violent eviction attempts and despite a complaint, she was evicted on
18/11/2019.
She testifies after one of her eviction attempts: “They want to inject
me. Because they told me I was very strong, they promised me that next
week they would put me on a flight and give me an injection to make me
weak and sleep. That’s what they do to everyone at the center. And
they’re taking you to the airport. The first time they bring you back.
They take you the second time and bring you back. The third time they
have to inject you. And I’m so scared. Since then, no news of this young
woman has been communicated.
Closed centres and deportations dehumanize and endanger every day.
Borders kill. Women, men and children are subjected to this multiple
violence on a daily basis.
This system of confinement reinforces the criminalization of migrants.
Women activists on the ground are calling for an end to evictions,
closed centres and all violence against migrant women.
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, the national day of mobilization against
violence against women, women activists gather in front of the Holsbeek
detention centre to support detained women.
At the intersection of several struggles, this “surprise” rally
denounces violence against migrant women, border violence and, more
generally, violence in the prison system.
Inaugurated on May 7, the Holsbeek detention centre was set up to hold
58 women whose papers were not the right ones. This former low-cost
hotel located at the end of an industrial zone currently houses about
thirty women. Women snatched from their families, from their lives. Many
of these migrant women have fled their country as a result of
gender-based violence: forced marriage, sexual mutilation, lesbophobia,
biphobia, transphobia, modern slavery, sexual exploitation, etc.
Deprived of their freedom for sometimes several months, they resist
institutional violence and state racism day after day, in total
invisibility. In endless waiting and under threat of deportation, they
live to the rhythm of the prison world. Uncertainty is gnawing away, the
distance from friends and families undermines morale, news is lacking,
health is failing, nerves are failing, hopes are finally disappearing.
Faced with this context of oppression, women prisoners are in solidarity
and organize themselves. It is to support their resistance that we are
gathering today in front of the centre.
The memory of Semira Adamu, a 20-year-old Nigerian girl murdered in 1998
by police officers on a plane is in everyone’s mind this Sunday morning.
History repeats itself: in November 2019 a woman was subjected to three
violent eviction attempts and despite a complaint, she was evicted on
18/11/2019.
She testifies after one of her eviction attempts: “They want to inject
me. Because they told me I was very strong, they promised me that next
week they would put me on a flight and give me an injection to make me
weak and sleep. That’s what they do to everyone at the center. And
they’re taking you to the airport. The first time they bring you back.
They take you the second time and bring you back. The third time they
have to inject you. And I’m so scared. Since then, no news of this young
woman has been communicated.
Closed centres and deportations dehumanize and endanger every day.
Borders kill. Women, men and children are subjected to this multiple
violence on a daily basis.
This system of confinement reinforces the criminalization of migrants.
Women activists on the ground are calling for an end to evictions,
closed centres and all violence against migrant women.
October 25 2019 ALL THAT’S MISSING IS THE CUSHION !
NO MORE STATE MURDERS!
Different sources told us about brutal and inhuman treatment inflicted on at least two women by airport police during attempted deportations.
We visited the Holsbeek detention centre for migrant women, opened in July 2019 in a former low-cost hotel within an industrial park. At present 28 women are detained in the centre, which is expected to hold up to 58.
In the centre, we met a woman detained since 1 October, who explained that she had been arrested by the police at home at 6.00 am. Unsettled, she gave the police her passport and her “orange card” which was still valid for 4 months. She was taken away without receiving an arrrest warrant or any explanation for her arrest, despite being the mother of a 6 year-old child. She was not given access to an interpreter or a lawyer. Since 1 october, she has not seen her son.
As she spoke to us, she often stopped and cried. She told us about the violence inflicted on her during the deportation attempt at Charleroi airport on 18 October 2019. She was taken to the airport police station in handcuffs. The police told her that “she had to go back” but she dif not want to be deported and crief. She felt weak and fell to the floor, “maroccan theatrics” say the police, and began to kick her. Crying, she explained that she had a child, but they continued to kick her and told her “you are a big baby”. Three policemen kept her handcuffed but left suddenly when they realised there was a camera in the room. She was left on the floor. Through the door they kept mocking and laughing at her. The detention centre driver witnessed the scene.
We saw marks on her body. She told us that she was also slapped and kicked in the face. Since this happened, she has not been able to eat. She kept breaking down in tears, especially when speaking about her son. She was afraid the police might arrest him at school. We think her psychological state is alarming.
Her story illustrates the way the police use extreme brutality against a vulnerable person, apparently without consequence. Physical violence is accompanied by verbal insults and humiliation. This can only be described as torture (1).
We met a second woman, an African, who testified about her own horrific experience.
Acts of violence were committed against her at the Brussels National Airport where she was held in a room without windows “like a prison”, with just a toilet and a camera. She was confronted by 5 policemen and one police woman, all in uniform. She was stripped so roughly that her clothes were torn and her necklace was ripped from her neck. They asked her why she was in Belgium and whenshe answerd that she was going to get married and did not want to be deported, they responded “you must go”. Handcuffed, seized firmly by the back of the neck, her feet were tied, and her hands strappeto her torso. She was carried to the plane like a human sausage, one policeman on each side carrying her by the arme, and one carrying her feet. She could see that they were worried somebody would see them. They were ready to hide what they were doing
She was seated right at the back of the plane in the last row with one policeman on her left, and one on her right, her body still completely tied. One of the policemen violently seized her neck and folded her body forwards, sticking her head between the legs of the policeman seated on the other side of her. He kept pushing down on her head. When she tried to call out for help a policeman put his hand over her mouth and squeezed her neck. Choking, panicking and coughing, she struggled for air. She was in considerable pain. The policemen kept the pressure on her and especially on her throat – for about anhour, she thinks. When she tried to scream “God help me” they hit her mouth and nose.
The three other police were standing close by in order to keep the passengers away from the scene but the stewardesses could see what was happening. They did not say anything “but they saw everything”, she told us. Finally, the pilot arrived and told the police to stop the deportation. They left the plane with her and she was untied.
Once again she found herself in the same room and still with the same 5 police officers. She asked “is it because I don’t have papers that you want to kill me?” The answer was “yes, go back to Africa” and they slapped her face and hit her all over.
By then, it was 12.00 midday. She was held in the same room until about 6.00 pm. She had left the centre at 7.00 am and had not received anything to eat or drink since the previous evening. We sawthe marks of her beating, marks left by the handcuffs. The back of her neck was veru sore and swolen.
We denounce all such violent, shameless, horrible acts, committed by officials, public employees, paid to exercise violence against vulnerable people, behind closed doors, without any control. Such acts cannot take place without the knowledge and approval of the institutions and authorities responsible for those who perpetrate them.
We denounce this institutional racism, violence and torture (1) and demand the end of these practices.
NO MORE STATE MURDERS! These are the same practices that killed Semira Adamu 21 years ago!
No deportation !
1”The term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionnally inflicted on a person for such purpose as (…) punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person (…) or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind , when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity (…) “. Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against torture and other cruel inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.
Signatories:
CRACPE
CRER
Migrants libres
Campagne Brussels Airlines Stop Deportations
SINAC (Solidarity is not a crime)
Agir pour la Paix
Bruxelles Panthères
SOS Migrants
Campagne stop Répression, Les JOC
(Jeunes organisé.e.s et Combatifs) et la Nouvelle Voie Anticoloniale
souhaitons co-signer
Campagne “Stop Répression”
I was tortured yesterday by the Belgian police on a SN Brussels (Airlines) plane at 11. They kept my head on the seat. It was 4 policemen with one policelady. Whenever I shouted for help they squeezed my mouth and clapped on my mouth and gave more torture. I was really tortured, they hold my nose. I was treated like an animal, they beat me very well, they hold my neck and my throat. I could not shout. It was the pilot and the pilot team that came to me and rescue. I have too much pain in my body, I have too much pain I could not sleep last night.
They tore my underwear they tore my pants, I was tortured and I was beaten. And they told me that next week, they’re going to take me with a Maroccan flight and they will torture me. That’s the way it is. So I’m so afraid, I need help and I want you people to help me.
They want to inject me. Next week they promised because they told me I’m very strong next week they’ll put me in a flight and give me injection to get weak and sleep. That is what they do to everybody in the center. And they take you to the airport the first time they bring you back. They take you the second time and bring you back. The third time they have to inject you. And I’m so afraid. I have there my friend she’s from Morocco and maybe you can talk to her she speaks arabic.
What happened in the airport before they put you on the plane ?
The policeman came to me and he asked me : “Do you know why you are going back to Africa ? You don’t know ?” I said I was about to get married and the police took me from my house and brought me to the closed center. Then he told me “Oh I’m sending you back to Africa. If you don’t want to go we will beat you and put you in the plane for you to go by force”. That is what the police told me. And they really beat me, they handcuffed me and they tied my foot on my stomach, I couldn’t breath. I was tortured, I was really tortured.
They tied me, they were 3 police officers. One hold my right hand, one hold my left hand, one hold my foot and they told me they take me to the plane and they hold my mouth very tight. When I want to shout they squeezed my mouth, they squeezed my nose. They put claps in my mouth. That is how they treated me, just like an animal !
And so they were men who did that ?
Yes four men and one lady. The lady fought me on the plane.
List of the known exiles who passed through Belgium and were killed by borders since July 2017
TRIBUTE TO:
2017 :
-Omar, 18, Sudanese, died under a bus in Brussels on 23 July 2017
-Dejen, 16, Ethiopian, died in Aalter after falling from a truck on 4 November 2017
-M, Sudanese, found dead in the canal in Brussels on 17 November 2017
2018
-Mohammed, 39, Ethiopian, died in Jabbeke chased by the police on 29 January 2018
-M, 22, Algerian, died in Zeebruges on 22 March 2018
-Mawda, 2, Kurdish, killed in Mons during a police chase on 16 May 2018
-Amalou Ourez, 20, Guinean, crushed by a bus in Berchem-Ste-Agathe (Brussels) on 19 June 2018
-X,19, Vietnamese, run over by a car in Jabbeke on 17 August 2018
-Imran Ullah, Afghan, run over by a car in Ramskapelle on the E40 on 9 September 2018
-Kebede, 25, Erythrean, killed on a parking in Wetteren on the E40 on 12 September 2018
-Gebre, 36, Erythrean, committed suicide in the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018
2019
-Adam usman Kiyar, 20, Ethiopian, very well-known in Brussels, died in a truck in Calais on 8 March 2019
-Amaneal, born in 1986, Ethiopian, his body was found dead on the railway in Silly (Tournay) on 17 April 2019
-Mahammat Abdullah Moussa, 25, Chadian, most likely dead on 17 April 2019 hung under a bus at the North Station in Brussels and his torn body found at the arrival in FolkstoC
-Géri, 25, Erythrean, died after falling from a truck on the A29 near Rotterdam on 6 July 2019
– Nicknam Massoud fund in the Northsea in Zeebrugge on 25/08/2019, drowned at his crossing of the Channel to GB, Iraqi, 48 years….
– Nixon, suicide in the open centre in Lanaken on 23/10/2019, SriLankais, 34 years old
– 39 chineses, women and men found dead on 23/10/2019 in a truck in Essex /GB after a drive past Zeebrugge
Update 22/10/2019: She was tied up, hit, and the captain was alerted by a passenger who gave the order to get her out of the plane. She came back to the centre, bruised and revolted.
Thank you to all those who wrote, phone the company and THANK YOU to those present at the airport
——————————————————————————————————————————–
T. asked for asylum in 2015 but it was rejected on the ground that there was no proof of what she said.
Tomorrow, on Monday Oktober21 Belgium with the help of Brussels Airlines, wants to deport T with “escort” . Her crime : to be in love and wanting to get married!!.
T has known her parter for 4 years and they have lived together for 2 years in Flanders. A declaration of marriage was on the go in the commune but, even if all the documents were not completed the police was sent to theirappartement to arrest her and detain her in the Holsbeek closed centre. In her country of origine, she has no family. They have all emigrated. She will have to live in the street without resources. She does nt want to go and asks for help. She wants to get married with her boyfriend HERE.
Let’s go to the airport to speak to passengers at 9am !
Flight SN 245 for Monrovia /Liberia with a atopover in Freetown
and alert, demand explanations to the airline SN, collaborator in the deportations to Africa.
They had reserved seats for an Ethiopian and his escort on the flight Ethiopian Airlines 19:25 this Monday 14/10/2019 for a deportation to Addis Ababa. According to a reliable source, we know that 3 Ethiopians were targeted.
T, at the Vottem closed center was unexpectedly placed in isolation the day before at 4 pm. He could not warn anyone but his fellow inmates alerted us. On Monday morning, a lawyer filed a motion in court and at 2 pm we learned that his deportation had been canceled. It would have been illegal under the procedure currently underway.
So, they went to search for G. the second of the list, at 127bis, almost at the time of boarding. He was handcuffed and strapped “as appropriate” and carried onto the plane. As soon as the passengers started boarding the plane, G shouted that he did not want to leave. He was immediately taken off the plane and brought back calmly to his 127bis closed center room.
It was too late to bring the third one. The plane took off without a deportee and the escort was deprived of its trip to Ethiopia.
Who is this third person slated for a return? He himself has no idea and neither does his defence.
We are very surprised by this very unusual lack of persistence on the part of the escort party.
Other Ethiopians are being targeted; this type of surprise deportations without any official passes (authorization) nor ticket, without warning to lawyers and families is illegal but may still occur.
By issuing passes, the Embassy provides support to the illegal practices of the Foreign Office.
Let’s continue to broadcast. Sign the petition addressed to the embassy.
02/10/2019:
He has been in Belgium for several years, he served a sentence of 6 years in different prisons. At the end of these 6 years he was transferred to a closed centre in view of his deportation to his “country of origin” (double sentence). He was effectively deported but his country of origin refused him because he had no let pass, hence he was rejected to Belgium and retained again in a closed centre. He has been retained for 6 months and he currently is in the “secured wing” in Vottem, which he calls the ‘dungeon’. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/a-prison-in-the-prison-in-vottem-the-secured-wing-of-vottem/
He is on a hunger strike and is asking to testify.
Here I am in the centre of Vottem, I haven’t eaten for 17 days, I’m on a hunger strike.
The first day I started, I asked to see the director and I still haven’t seen him.
My reason for going on a hunger strike is just to ask for a job or a transfer because I have been detained in the centre for six months now. So six months without a job, we don’t know how to buy tobacco or a lot of things.
Living conditions in this centre are difficult. The way they wash clothes is incorrect. They put the clothes in very tight balls and they put all the balls in the machine and the clothes come back as dirty as before, and wet as well.
I’m in Belgium in a way that’s not very legal. I took a prison sentence because of injustice, because of my name and not because of my fact, it was clear in the file. And during the six years I did, I had some prison leaves. I have been out on leave more than fifty times, I have always respected the conditions. I was going back to prison and then I was sent back to Morocco.
In Morocco they didn’t accept my repatriation without a pass and they sent me back to Belgium directly.
It was in the centre of Bruges, I stayed there. There it’s a little better than here, but work is the same, there was no work.
So after four months of staying in Bruges, I went on a hunger strike and for ten days of a hunger strike, they transferred me to this centre.
When they arrived here, they told me “here we are fine, there is work here”.
So when I joined the section, I stopped and ate there, but they put me directly in solitary confinement in a cell as if it was a disciplinary transfer when I didn’t even have a disciplinary report. I ate and when I returned to the section I understood that living conditions are worse than in Bruges. There is no work, everything is badly done, everything is wrong. Just to see the social worker you have to wait 5 or 6 days. To see the director, you should never dream when in Bruges the director and the social workers ate in the same room as us. They could be seen overnight.
There are many factors now that make me lose my life, I want to kill myself and it lasts. If I want to die now, it’s for a good cause. So that everyone knows what’s going on in the centres. Because already, keeping someone for 6 or 8 months and without giving them the slightest job to earn a little money to buy everything they need is inhuman.
We say “yes we have human rights”, where are they? Where are my rights? If I’d have been kept here for 6 months and given 1 euro every three days, that’s okay because I can buy with 1 euro. I am a smoker, I have to wait 15 days to buy a pack of tobacco that I smoke in two days. I have a lot of things to buy.
Here, as I told you, the people who pass through here are not staying for long. Every day some are coming, every day some are going. There are some who stay a week, three days, four days, a month! They are people who don’t care even if they don’t work, they know they won’t stay long. That’s the problem for someone who stays a long time.
I asked to see the director and he didn’t even try to see me. I haven’t eaten in 17 days. I get checked every day. They know very well that I don’t eat, but it’s their way of saying “starve” to me.
We call on you to urgently stop repatriations which are contrary to the values and human rights usually in force in a democratic country such as ours.
Several young people are being threatened with a violent deportation to Ethiopia.
The situation in Ethiopia is explosive. The population is amongst the poorest of the world. Nothing to do with the population the current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is showing to Europe. Since his election in 2018, inter-communal violences have happened daily, making loads of victims and more than 2 millions displaced. In several regions, justice is being dealt with kinds of militias. For the moment, on top of ethnic conflicts there are religious conflicts; more than 50 churches have been burnt down this year. Our governments and the Foreigners Office must not ignore that! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48803815
Tesfay’s father disappeared in circumstances linked to the political situation of the country. He himself was arrested and imprisoned for political divergences. He is not dangereous, however like many others, he spent several months in our closed centres where the stories of personal lives are not acknowledged beacause the asylum requests in closed centres can not be done under conditions that would guarantee the fair and necessary preparation of their files. Would have he been able to stand these seven months retention and beating if he did not fear his return?
Mister the ambassador, we call on you to stop delivering let passes to people whose protection request could not be properly heard or taken care of.
We ask you to cancel the let passes of those people for whom the deportation is upcoming in order to assess their case outside of the context of closed centres.
We therefore also ask you to refuse that your countrymen be beaten in the shadow of our airports.
For several weeks, the referents of the Citizens’ Platform and Gettingthevoiceout have received far less notifications of imprisonment.
However, we still hear about regular raids in ports, cities and train stations.
The situation in the centres:
Very few retainees still have a host family and they totally ignore their rights in case they are arrested/imprisoned. The only information they get comes from the staff of the centres recruited by the Foreigners Office o in order to organise their return (‘return officers’), who rarely mention their rights to defend themselves or, even worse, who dissuade them to use this right and exert pressure on them so that they sign their voluntary return at all costs (for e.g a retainee who had refused to sign the request of voluntary return was woken up by guards one morning with a pen and the document to be signed).
For the moment, the Dublin returns are the most common and one rarely see their release (even though a Dublin return is often felt as a release from the ignominious centres/prisons) following the change in law and the impossibility for the lawyers to file an emergency application (see below).
To be noted also, many other ‘non-Dublinisable’ retainees have been imprisoned for months, sometimes a year, while waiting to be deported to their country of origin, a country sometimes totally imaginary, since the agreements with that country are far from being clear.
Why are there less notifications and support from the platform’s hosts?
The hosts used to be our very first source of notification for an arrest/retention.
The number of hosts has dramatically decreased over the last months and more and more transmigrants are left with no family and no contacts in Belgium, they are only transiting through Belgium and ignore everything of the legal possibilities and of their rights in closed centres.
It seems that not enough information is given to migrants in case of arrest .
Change in the legislation:
In the past, the release after an emergency application towards the CCE within 5 to 10 days to contest the retention was relatively easy.
However, the law has been changed, and now the Foreigners Office are entitled to sign the retention arrest. A first “X1” decision is taken: it is the decision on the initial retention which requests the retention of the individual in order to determine which State is responsible. Then comes a decision “X2” which is the decision to transfer the individual to the country responsible and the decision to retain that person while waiting for the transfer (it is article 51/5/1 that transposes Dublin III (in effect since 19 July 2019).
As soon as decision X1 has been taken, the lawyers may act in front of the Court of Appeal attesting that:
1. the transmigrants were not informed, in a language they understand, of the reasons of their retention, in violation of article 5 § 2 of the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), (most of the time they are being questioned by the police without any interpreter).
2. the Foreigners Office did not study the possibility to apply an alternative to the retention. Unfortunately there is a real systemic problem in the sense that no judge accepts to question the decisions of the Foreigners Office during the appeal towards the court.
Once X2 has been determined, other appeals towards the ECHR are possible for some nationalities to some Dublin countries.
What to do:
Before a retention: have medical evidence attesting an increased vulnerability, a failure of care by the so-called Dublin country. These elements significantly help the lawyers to obtain a release. Hence do not hesitate to ask for a medical follow-up and collect elements in that sense during the hosting, before the arrest.
Advise the persons who are arrested to say that they do not understand, simply that. Tell them not to sign the documents they are given and/or to write in their native language “I do not understand what is written” instead of the signature or next to it. It will enable the lawyers in front of the court to prove the lack of information given to the retainees during their arrest.
Advise the retainees to refuse the lawyer the closed centre want to assign them and contact the people who know competent lawyers. If a lawyer has already been assigned (which is often the case), they should ask for a change of lawyer.
Advise them not to listen to the social assistants and the staff of the centre and to speak to the lawyer (possibly via the hosts). According to the file, the lawyers will advise them to introduce appeals, to sign a voluntary return, to question the X2 in front of the CCE for some Dublin countries. Specifically for Germany for e.g. it is more interesting to sign a voluntary return than to introduce appeals that last and extend the retention.
If the deportation is effective, advise the retainee to sign the appeal towards the ECHR that will be introduced by the lawyer to attest the illegality of these arrests and in the long term oblige Belgium to modify this new law.
Spread this information widely.
Try to have contacts through friends in closed centres of the retainees who don’t have lawyers nor family, to try and inform them on their rights.
It is clear that the Office does its best to deport so as to continue improving their deportation figures (despite knowing that a deportation to a neighbour Dublin country will not stop the migrants in their quest for a ‘welcoming’ country), changing laws to avoid appeals, making life in the centres the most repressive possible so that their ‘residents’ sign and accept their return, criminalising the migrants, putting pressure on the States through their embassies to get the let-passes that are needed to enable a deportation to a third country, using extremely violent escorts to deport the rebellious at all costs.
Spread the word.
In case of retention or deportation/release, send all the information to the closed centres’ referents via gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net. We are collecting all the information available to understand these policies and find tricks to bypass retentions and deprtations, be it on the legal level or through actions.
Let’s resist by all means and on all levels to prevent deportations! Let’s be solidary with the exiles’ revolts and their refusal to embark. No to migrants’ containment of any kind.
We were several to react about the publication of the RTBF which, without journalistic analysing nor scruple, made a propagandist portrait of Frontex, our European army which protects “our” borders against migrations! as such Frontex kills, locks up, deports.
(see RTBF art below)
The way this kind of article becomes common practice is just unacceptable and reactions were numerous!
A open letter (Carte blanche) written by a ” collective of Belgian citizens” has suffered refusals of publication by all Belgian media contacted! would it be sacrilege to attack the rtbf? Public service?
It is finally Médiapart who published the Carte blanche and the RTBF hastened to reproduce it under its initial article as if it had been sent to them …!
À la lecture de l’article paru sur le site de la RTBF du 21 septembre dernier[1], initialement titré “Ces héros du quotidien : les hommes et les femmes de Frontex” et rebaptisé quelques heures plus tard “Une journée avec les hommes et les femmes de Frontex”, nous aurions pu croire qu’il s’agissait d’une campagne de recrutement pour cet organisme européen. “Travailler pour Frontex, c’est agir pour la collectivité” ; “travailler pour Frontex, c’est se réaliser” ; “travailler pour Frontex, c’est faire partie de la grande Europe” semble affirmer ce papier. Mais sous des faux-semblants d’objectivité, cet article nous apparaît clairement partial étant donné l’omission de nombreuses informations.
Melting-pot nauséabond
Non, Frontex n’a pas un rôle émancipateur mais est un outil de répression et de blocage des arrivant.e.s et migrant.e.s avant qu’ils.elles ne touchent le sol de l’Union européenne ou de l’Espace Schengen.
Or, les raisons d’être de Frontex – en réalité, celles que l’autrice a choisi de présenter – s’égrènent tout au long de l’article sous un jour positif. Nous y apprenons que les employé.e.s se dévouent pour nous protéger de la drogue, de la criminalité, des trafics en tout genre… mais aussi de l’immigration “illégale”. Il s’agirait donc de nuisances multiples agrégeables en un tout homogène. Autrement dit, les Européen.ne.s, honnêtes citoyen.ne.s, seraient menacé.e.s et l’objet du malheur viendrait, forcément, de l’extérieur. Cette idée prend appui sur une sémantique très orientée : “sécurité”, “protection”, “affrontement”, “terrain de chasse” (l’Europe serait-elle un terrain de chasse ?!)…
Paresse intellectuelle et alimentation des peurs constituent donc le ton de cet article. À l’heure où l’extrême droite, véritable menace, gangrène toute l’Europe, nous ne pouvons nous y résoudre. Dès lors, nous formulons une série d’interrogations.
Quels sont les effets possibles de ce type d’article ? A titre d’illustration, de la perception de menaces à l’armement des agents[2], il n’y a qu’un pas… que la Commission européenne a déjà franchi… et que l’article de la RTBF ne mentionne pas.
Faut-il, une fois de plus, assimiler l’immigration à une menace ? Faut-il associer l’immigration au trafic de drogue ? À la criminalité ? Faut-il rappeler que les migrant.e.s sont en danger et que les politiques migratoires européennes tuent ? L’Europe, érigée en terre isolée, a déjà laissé périr 30 000 personnes depuis l’année 2000, rien qu’en Méditerranée (selon The Migrants files). Pourtant elles tentaient seulement de fuir des guerres, des traitements iniques et des conditions de vie indignes. Leurs espoirs se heurtent aux murs d’une Europe érigée en forteresse. Cela, l’article ne le mentionne pas non plus. Ne nous y trompons pas : ce ne sont pas “seulement” des personnes qui nous sont étrangères qui décèdent. Nous affirmons que chaque corps qui se noie, chaque vie arrachée s’accompagne de l’amenuisement de notre conscience et de nos valeurs. Voilà bien une menace réelle.
Angles-morts de l’article
Le fait que Frontex soit très fort critiqué par des associations ne figure pas non plus dans l’article. Les actions de ces “héros” (comme le titrait au départ la journaliste rédactrice) sont dénoncées par de nombreuses associations (Agir pour la Paix, CNCD, Migreurop, à titre d’illustrations). Beaucoup de critiques venant du monde journalistique ont été faites concernant le manque de transparence de l’agence de contrôle des frontières. Le Guardian, notamment, avait déclaré que Frontex se rendait coupable de violations des droits fondamentaux. Par ailleurs, le journaliste allemand Arne Semsrott et l’espagnole Luisa Izuzquiza, une militante du droit à l’information avaient déposé plainte contre Frontex pour manque de transparence. Nous aurions aimé a minima une solidarité journalistique de la part de la RTBF[3]
L’article omet également de mentionner ce que Frontex nous coûte. Cette agence, garante de l’Europe forteresse, a investi, depuis l’an 2000… 15 milliards d’euros pour barricader ses frontières qui n’ont pour effet que de garder les personnes migrantes prisonnières à l’intérieur de nos murs physiques et numériques (fichages et contrôles) en complément d’une politique de l’externalisation (Turquie, Maghreb, Libye, collaborant ainsi avec des régimes autoritaires sinon des dictatures) qui représentent un marché lucratif, impossible à mener sans des politiques sécuritaires (et corollaires, racistes).
Frontex et ses dérives
Ce sont bien les mesures de nos gouvernements démocratiques qui ont préféré investir des milliards d’euros dans des moyens issus de la haute technologie sécuritaire prônée par Frontex, distillant le principe de la libre circulation des capitaux, au détriment de la sécurité des personnes qui sont forcées de fuir la misère, les changements climatiques ou les dictatures.
Ainsi, durant la récente période des “vacances”, des centaines de personnes sont mortes en mer, contraintes de fuir dans des embarcations de fortune, faute d’obtenir des moyens légaux de quitter des terres hostiles. Les avions et bateaux de Frontex ont empêché les missions de sauvetage des ONG en criminalisant leurs actions, en les poursuivant pour délit de solidarité ou en les accusant de trafic d’êtres humains. Notons que cette épée de Damoclès poursuit également les hébergeur.se.s aujourd’hui.
Questionner la déontologie journalistique
Cet article s’avère donc problématique, et ce, à bien des égards. En plus des questions soulevées précédemment, nous questionnons l’aspect déontologique. La mission du journalisme est d’informer et non de faire du publi-reportage. Faut-il le rappeler ?
Certes, protéger un territoire des trafics en tout genre, comme la criminalité, est indispensable. Néanmoins, Frontex, comme nous l’avons démontré, c’est avant tout le rempart de l’Europe forteresse.
Ce reportage unilatéral, partiel et partial est-il digne de l’ambition de la RTBF qui est d’offrir à ses auditeur.trice.s une information de qualité et de référence ? On attend mieux du service public.
Aucun des médias principaux de la presse écrite de Belgique francophone n’a accepté positivement notre carte blanche selon nos conditions, à savoir qu’elle soit l’objet d’un article à part entière.
Conclusion
Le contrôle des murs aux frontières de l’Europe est le problème et non la solution. La hiérarchisation entre les personnes, la catégorisation entre celles et ceux qui ont le droit d’avoir des droits ou non sur le sol européen doit cesser. Les personnes qui risquent leur vie aux frontières doivent être sauvées et accueillies dignement. La solidarité est la seule solution pour faire face aux défis climatiques, démocratiques et économiques à venir.
The Foreign Offive persists and tried to deport him again on September 17, 2019. He was tied up from head to toes at the Federal Police Station at the airport and was carried on the plane by six police officers. He shouted on the plane that he did not want to leave. Passengers, warned at the check by solidarity hosts, stood up in opposition to this expulsion and he was removed from the plane by his escort on the orders of the captain. On the way back, in the van, he was beaten by the unhappy policemen who assured him that they have another plan for him next time
Here the audio at his return to the closed center.
“Yesterday night they put me in the airport and I said I don’t want to go, “me no like go” because I have problems in my country. I Said “no like go” because I have political problems in my country.
They arrested me and handcuffed me. After in the plane I speaked too much to say I don’t want to go. After six of them beat me. I don’t know that could happen like this. All of them beat me (=Nobody no beat me). After in the plane so many voices and they said to me “quiet ! Quiet !” and I said “no quiet” because me I’m not a criminal. If you let me I’ll go by myself, leave me here and I’ll go to another country if it’s not possible for me to stay in belgium.
In the care those six guys beat me! No one of them did not beat me. My mouth also, they beat me here. I’m not dying now but it’s very difficult, now I’m in the closed center for almost seven months and I already had negative answers. Maybe this country is better than Africa or better than any country. If it’s a democratic country why do they make this to me ? Why do they make this to me ?
Because I made to much noise and said “no like go” like this, many people in the plane stood up. After that they beat me and put me in the car. In the car they took time.
They said “you’re an animal, you’re a monkey ! Why do you make like this you monkey!” This is not a problem, this is ok.
Now I don’t sleep during the night because I’ve a problem at my head and all my body have problem now. I’m happy I can to speak like this today.”
18/09/2019: Whilst thousands of exiles are struggling to resist Fortress Europe and are being parked in camps, hotspots, ‘open’ or closed centres with the obvious aim to send them back to their country, whilst others are dying or are being killed at our borders, Belgium is chasing and deporting.
Several civil flights are taking off from Brussels and Charleroi airports every day to return exiles to European countries or their country of origin.
For the ‘Dublin’ ones: the Foreigners’ Office persist and thrive
According to our surveys, between 2 and 5 Dublin returns are registered per day and per flight towards the European country where they were forced to leave their fingerprints, only a few kilometers away from Belgium: Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia, France, etc.
Several laws have changed and, during arrests, Orders to leave the territory, against which appeals to the CCE used to be possible are only rarely being delivered today.
Since July 2019, it is generally ‘retention decisions in order to determine which State is responsible for the asylum request’ that are delivered by the Office. Appeals to the criminal court are still possible, but emergency remedies no longer are. Consequently, the exiles are faced with judges, most of whom refuse to question these decisions, who are unaware of foreigners’ rights, for them they do not have rights and the request to be released from a closed centre is totally meaningless.
After having spent several weeks in prisons called ‘closed centres’, disgusted having to interrupt their journey and being treated like animals in the centres, they sign a voluntary return under the pressure from the staff of the centre , and if they refuse, are being forcibly deported.
For asylum seekers and unsuccessful undocumented, the Foreigners Office do everything possible to send them back to their country at all costs.
This day only (17 Setember 2019), we’ve heard about 2 forced deportations with escort:
A. from Senegal, in Belgium since 2015, who told us before his departure: “If they really want to deport me, it is my corpse that they will deport because I am really ready for anything.’
He fled his country, Senegal, in 2012 (he was 15) after rebels attacked his village and murdered his parents and sister. He migrated to Mauritania to then reach Morocco, Spain and Belgium where he arrived in 2015. He introduced an asylum request as soon as he got here, and a regularisation request in 2018.
He was deported under escort this 17 September 2019, with violentce, after being retained for 5 months in the closed centre of Merksplas.
T. who was subject to a deportation attempt to Ethiopia after 6 months retention in the closed centre of Vottem: “If they send me back to my country, my life is over. I am not a criminal and they lock me in, in this place where everybody gets mad.’ Audio http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/audio-three-asylum-requests-refused-if-belgium-send-me-back-to-ethiopie-my-live-is-finished/
They didn’t believe the evidence of T. The passengers of the flight informed by militants/hosts at the check-in at the airport refused to sit in the aircraft and demanded that T. and his escort be taken out of the plane. T. was badly treated by the policemen and imprisoned when back in the closed centre in Vottem .https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_des-passagers-au-depart-de-bruxelles-empechent-l-expulsion-d-un-ethiopien?id=10318640
Two years in the closed centre!
If after appeals or administrative difficulties the Foreigners Office are not able to put the exile on a plane, they do not hesitate to continue to put pressure on them, maintaining them imprisoned without any trial. We know of a man who has been retained in a closed centre for two years and of a woman for almost a year.
AND THE REPRESSIVE WHEEL CONTINUES TO TURN
The lawyers adopt their strategy against these villainous laws, the imprisoned fight and testify, the militants and hosts go to the airport to inform the passengers and encourage them to refuse these deportations, passengers refuse to travel with handcuffed and sometimes hooded people, pilots make retainees leave their plane, judging their presence in the aircraft dangerous, activists are rally, etc.
The Foreigners Office and the Federal police apply the needed means: special escorts of the federal police are formed to deport the naysayers with vicious impediments and illegal medicine to calm them down, ‘body guards’ are trained by some airlines, police officers are hired to ‘persuade’ the passengers of the merit of these deportations making them believe that they are criminals, public dangers.
Soon, at the back end of each plane leaving Brussels or Charleroi there will be an exile, accompanied or not by plainclothes policemen; exiles thrown away from our country like vulgar waste. Who are the criminals, the State or the exiles?
All this under the guise of ‘human rights’ and the ‘human but strong’ policy of the Foreigners Office, a State within the State, in the complete silence of NGOs, jugdes and courts, human rights fighters and civil society.
Let’s resist by all means and at all levels to prevent any deportation! Let’s support the revolts of the exiles and their refusal to embark.
Major raffle operation this 09/09/2019 in West Vlaanderen!
From a trustworthy source we learn that a raffle operation with drone, dogs, cavalry, and all the holy tremor, is being organized for this coming 09/09/2019 in the province West Vlaanderen with a focus on and around Zeebrugge with an aim to put an end to migrations ……
The press is invited to come to Zeebrugge to witness and testify this beautiful operation this 09/09 in Zeebrugge at 17 h 30
Warn everyone everywhere … News to be largely spread ……… ..
This information is coming in addition to the information providing from Calais: “Massive expulsion planned in Calais on Monday. Ordinary cruelty in the “country of human rights”. CRS (police) reinforcements, placing posters on the migrants’ places of survival, places made free in detention centres: the prefect of Calais is preparing to make the exiles suffer the horror of a massive expulsion of the “Migrants’ Hostel”
Also soon coming up the expulsion of the Grande-Synthe camp where a thousand migrants are sheltered … .At Grande-Synthe: the justice orders the evacuation of the camp of a thousand migrants
-Des assistants sociaux qui mettent la pression pour que les nouveaux arrivés ne préviennent pas et ne prennent pas d’avocats, pour qu’ils signent leurs retours “volontaires”
-Menaces d’expulsion vers le pays d’origine
Avis à tou.te.s :
Essayez de savoir.
Si vous avez un contact avec un ami au centre,
demandez leur de faire passer le mot : prévenir leur hébergeur,
ne pas écoutez les conseils des assistants sociaux,
Ne rien singner sans l’accord d’un avocat,
prendre note des noms et num OE des nouveaux arrivés, nous l’envoyer sur gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net ou tel au 0465242430
Il en va de leur droit de défense et de leur liberté !!!!!!!!!
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Nederlands:
HELP*
-Veel arrestaties vandaag tijdens razzia’s….
-Grote aankomsten in het gesloten centrum 127 bis.
-Maatschappelijk werkers die druk uitoefenen op nieuwkomers om niemand te verwittigen en geen advokaat te nemen.
-Bedreigingen van uitzetting naar het land van herkomst
Bericht aan iedereen:
Als je een contact hebt met een vriend in het centrum, vraag hen dan om de boodschap te verspreiden:
informeer de gastheer,
luister niet naar het advies van maatschappelijk werkers om geen advokaat te nemen, om hun “vrijwillige” terugkeer te tekenen…. ,
neem nota van de namen en OV-nummers van nieuwkomers, stuur het ons op via gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net of bel 046524242430.
Hun rechten op verdediging en vrijheid staan op spel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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English
Helping about arrestations, information from Getting The Voice and Belgian Families
If you are in closed center (jail, prison) or if you have a friend in closed center, spread this information :
contact your family,
do not listen to advices of social assistant in jail who recommand to not taking lawyer and to sign their “voluntary” returns
take names and OE Numbers and name of jail of new arrivals and sent to your family or to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or to +32465242430
Your Freedom and your right to be defended are concerned !
Update 27/08/2019: He again resisted and was brought back and put in isolation in the secure wing of the closed center of Vottem.It is still his co-detainees in Bruges who informed us and the information has been confirmed. We are looking for a contact with him to know more but do not dare to imagine in what state he is.The CRACPE in Liège and his lawyer are warned.
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Prevent a third deportation attempt with escort to Romania
Mr. A is an Iraqi Kurdish. He is in the closed centre of Bruges since 4 months.
The Office wants to send him back to Romania
He has already suffered 2 deportation attempts , the second of which was very violent and of which he still has traces.
It’s the co-prisoners who warn us: “It’s not possible, it’s torture, ma’am”
He will undergo his third deprtationattempt on Monday 26/08/2019 to Romania, a country not very welcoming as we all know or he will probably find himself in a closed centre in an extremely precarious situation
He asks for our help to prevent his expulsion…
Airport meeting this Monday 26/08/2019 at 08h20 to talk to passengers about his situation…….
He will be put on Flight RO 372 10:20 to Bukarest (stopover)
ATTENTION the expulsion could be cancelled at the last minute due to legal proceedings… Before going to the airport check the website which will be updated!
S arrives in Italy and is sent to Switzerland as part of the European resettlement plan.
His asylum application in Switzerland has been rejected. He continues his way to Belgium.
On his way to inquire about a possible asylum application in Belgium: he was arrested at Brussels-Midi station and brought to a closed centre. Fifteen days later he is sent back to Switzerland without being able to warn anyone and then deported to Italy.
He returns to Belgium, and goes to the Office des étrangers on 28/06/19 to register. He is told to come back in a month.
On the 22/07/19 he goes back to the Office des étrangers. rom the moment he set foot there, no more news … ..disappeared!
Appeal to find him has been made but unsuccessful in all centres.
On 27/07/2019, 5 days later, he tells us that he has been released from a prison in Rome!
An other S:
Application for asylum in Switzerland refused. Requests in Germany: expelled back to Switzerland; comes to Belgium.
July 18th 19. S is again deported to Switzerland. He returns to Belgium and is preparing to apply for asylum here. However, in a stroke of madness, he embarks with 3 friends in a truck to Calais. He is arrested in Calais and finds himself at the CRA (administrative detention centre) of Coquelles.
We went to see him in Calais. He is sorry for his stupidity and wants to return to Belgium to live there. It was explained that the road to Belgium was opposite to that to the GB … we laughed!
France has asked for the application of the so-called “Dublin” law, that is to say a return, to Belgium, Germany or Switzerland.
To be continued…
Hundreds of people are like this living in Europe. In our closed detention centres the majority are currently threatened with expulsion to their Dublin country … They are many who accept to escape from life in a closed centre which is according to their testimony, completely unbearable. The majority is arrested on arrival in their country Dublin, sometimes maintained for a few hours or days, then released. Then they can resume their journey ….. to? …
It happens that some of them are released without this intervention and the rumor runs, supported by the social workers of the closed centers, that release will be faster without the intervention of a lawyer.
It’s wrong!
In the vast majority of cases, this intervention must be carried out within 5 days of the decision of confinement.
In one year (May 2018-2019), Getting The Voice Out and Citizen’s Platform referents recorded more than 1,000 migrant people locked up. But they are certainly much more numerous and we know that there are
more and more people ‘without family’ who have no help.
Desperate and panicked calls come from people whose expulsion is imminent, against which we can do almost nothing.
Insist on migrants who trust us to call very quickly in case of their detention but also THAT THEY SHOW SOLIDARITY with any person whose confinement they learn about.
That in the center, they announce VERY FAST newcomers through their family, Getting The voice Out or referents. Phone numbers are circulating.
That they tell you the name under which they are known and when they have, the number under which they are known in the base of the Eurodac. This number is composed of 7 digits, and can be found on all the official papers concerning them: request for asylum (whatever the country), OQT (Order To Leave The Territory), …
That they contact us before accepting the lawyers proposed by the centers, so they can trust the lawyers for telling them the truth
Lately we have seen an increase in evictions in a muscular or even violent mode.
Recent destinations: Somalia, Ethiopia, Vietnam.
Finally, when you are relieved to hear a person has been released, warn gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net and the lawyers, because they are not always informed.
NECESSARY INFORMATION FOR LEGAL AID: to send to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
– Name of the person under which he/she is registered in the center (most often the one on his/her OQTs, if he or she has already received these)
– 7-digit identification number (Foreigner’s Office / IBZ / SP), noted on their badge received at the arrival at the center
– Center: 127bis, Caricola, Vottem, Bruges, Merksplas, Holsbeek
– Block / room / bed number
– Nationality as registered by the Office
– Real nationality if known
– Date and place of birth
– Date of arrest
– Place of arrest (important)
– Number of OQT’s
– Fingerprints in which country? (Dublin, possible asylum application)
– Vulnerability (sick, psychological problems, pregnant woman, …)
– Family in Europe or UK, single / married
– His or her telephone number, or a telephone number of a co-detainee
– The telephone number and the e-mail address of the visiting person / host.
ADVICE OF A LAWYER:
1- Taking a lawyer CAN NOT in any way delay the process of releasing your friends. This is a false rumour circulating. Social workers sometimes promise release if a person doesn’t take a lawyer, but meanwhile the appeal period runs. In my opinion, this is a real obstacle to access the justice. I often introduce an appeal and shortly before the hearing the person is released. Now, I can fully understand the fear of your friends in view of the false information circulating.
2- Sometimes friends think that this is the first OQT they received (the deadline for appeal is 10 days in this case). But I often see after consulting the administrative file (to which I have access shortly before the hearing), that this is not the case. As you probably know, from a second OQT, the appeal period is 5 days. Which is extremely short.
3- Once we ask the center to send us a copy of the OQT, we must count more or less 1-2 day(s) in order to get it. In order to speed up the process, I also ask friends to apply for it with the social worker so that he / she sends us the decision as quickly as possible.
(*): Thank you to any competent person for giving me his remarks.
August 3, 2019
Michèle De Myttenaere
ALERT: A Frontex deportation flight from Frankfurt to Lagos ( Nigeria) on 19/08/2019
Nigerians from other European countries can be brought to Franfurt to place them on this flight;
Inform your Nigerian friends!
Frontex : « Unknown to most Europeans a deportation machine has grown up in Europe in the last decade. The EU coast and border agency, Frontex, is set to be supercharged with €11.3bn in the coming years to match the political appetite for forced returns. »
Video: Evolutie van het aantal geforceerde deportaties georganisserd door Frontex : https://vimeo.com/351673775
« Next Saturday there will be a protest action and solidarity demonstration of Refugees in Gotha. The Nigerian Community there is threatened with deportations. The German and the Nigerian government have strengthened their cooperation since some years. One consequence of this are nightly deportations from the refugee camp in Gotha. Therefore, there will be an art installation from Refugee Black Box starting at 10 AM in Gotha and a rally plus demonstration in the afternoon. You can find the call here (English)
The organizers – Nigerians, Refugees from Gotha and activists from The VOICE Refugee Forum – call on all progressive activists, friends and sympathizers, refugees and non-refugees to join the campaign against deportation of Nigerians and to protest against the deportations and against isolation of refugees. They demand an end of the deportations and freedom of movement.
That’s why we want to come to Gotha with as many people as possible next Saturday to support the protest. Join us! Meeting point for the journey by train is 9:45 AM on platform 1 of train station Jena-West, where we will buy group tickets together and get on the train that leaves at 10:06. After changing in Weimar we will be in Gotha at 11:25. The joint way back will take place after the demonstration.
Spread the word! See you on Saturday at 9:45 at Jena-West.
Send your solidarity message. If you are not able to come to make your own Black Box you can send a photo of your Refugee Black Box to the Facebook page of the Refugee Black Box. »
03/08/2019: Many migrants from Ethiopia and Erithrea, trapped in our detention centers, are threatened with deportation to Ethiopia;
T is one of them
T has been in a detention center since February 2019. He made 3 asylum requests from the various centres where he was confined, all refused by the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA°)and the De Raad voor Vreemdelingenbetwistingen (CCE)
They didn’t believe his story…..
T is questioning these procedures: dubious translator, documents in Dutch and nobody to explain them, impossibility of gathering the arguments for his defence from a closed center, impossibility of having the originals of the documents from the center……..
Can you give me your name and your nationality ?
My name is T. , nationality éthiopian
Wich languages do you speek ?
Amharique
And ?
Arabic also but I try trigrinia.
I hear that you speek english. Can you explain ?
Yes I speek english because I speek english in close center
Today is the 31th of july 2019, when, were and why you arrested in Belgium ?
Police arrested me on the 25 of february, in Ottignies train station, because I had no ticket.
You asked asylum in close center, why ?
I ask asylum in close center because I was afraid to go back Ethiopia
What do you fear if you go back to Ethiopia ?
I have political problems in Ethiopia. I fear that if I go back to Ethiopia, it will be very difficult for me. I had problem (as member) in the Welkait-Tegede asmelash-comity group. I came out of prison (prison escape).
And if you go back ?
If I go back in Ethiopia, I go all my life in prison.
The immigration office rejected almost everything about your case. Because of three main reasons : 1st the story, 2d the situation in your countryside, 3de about the evidences. We will begin with the story : The story of the first and big interviews were rejected. Do you know why ? How could you prepare it ?
I dont’n understand by what it was rejected. I don’t know, … translator … Nobody explain to me my rejects also. I cannot read, I cannot write. I don’t know, but I have political problem in Ethiopia. Maybe there is problem with the translator. I don’t know
Why do you suspect that there is problems with the translation ?
I said everything right, but I don’t know. I don’t read , I don’t write. Nobody explained me why I was rejected, by this or by this ….
Could read your story after interview ?
No I cannot read, I cannot write, but I could see a wrong number. Police arrested me in Ethiopia in 25/11/2008, but police wrote 28/11/2008. But I see only this. If this is wrong maybe many other things are wrong like this.
About the decisions, did you get them on paper ? If you recieved them witch is the language used.
The decisions that I recieved are in flamish. I don’t know flamish. But nobody explain to me.
About the situation in you region. As I can read on the decision, most of the actual problem are related in the Gondar-Welkait district. But you come from the Tigray region and you are amhara. Can you explain, in two words, very short ?
Ok, I am part ot the Welkait-Tegede asmelash-comity group. Because Welkaid region was for a very long time an amharique ethnical region. Now, from the arrival of this new government, by force, the Welkaid region is intergrate in the tigray ethnical region. Now amhara are for to live in tigray ethnical region. Now because of that government ahmara people have big problem in that welkaid region. .
The third point : Most of the evidences were refused because they seemed to be sollicited and because they are not original papers. What can you say about that ?
Yes, I have evidence from the Welkaid Tegede group, and I also have proof from the region where I had problem.
Ok, and specicaly about the fact that you don’t have original papers and that you don’t have a lot of evidences. What can you say abourt that ?
I am in close in center. In close I no acccess to facebook, no Internet. In close center , it is very difficult to get papers for evidence. Before I had nobody to help me here.
What is your feeling now ?
I feel, that if the Belgian governement send me back in Ethiopia, my life is finished.
Do you want to add something else ?
If possible, I want to be released from this close center.
[ACTION] Starting tonight, help us denounce racist and killing deportations organised by Brussels Airlines. Share #BrusselsAirlinesStopDeportations messages on the company’s social networks!
[ACTION] À partir de ce soir, dénoncez les expulsions racistes et meurtrières organisées par Brussels Airlines en relayant les messages de la campagne #BrusselsAirlinesStopDeportations sur les réseaux sociaux de la compagnie aérienne!
[ACTIE] Vanaf vanavond, zeg neen tegen de racistische en moorddadige uitzettingen georganiseerd door Brussels Airlines. Verspreid de boodschappen van de #BrusselsAirlinesStopDeportations op de sociale netwerken van de luchtvaartmaatschappij !
Update 21/07/2019: A has returned on 19/07/2019 and is currently isolated (cachot) in the closed centre 127 bis. He was mistreated by his escort and the passengers in Istambul of the Turkish Airlines flight to Djibouti have resisted his deportation. He was flown back to Brussels with his escort. Further information will follow….They promise a new flight…
Mobilisation on 17/07/2019 at 3.20 pm to talk to passengers at the airport and ask them to contact the flight commander to order the police to suspend this deportation.Flight 17/07/2019 Turkish Airlines TK 1944 to Istambul 3.20 pm…..
Mr. A is from Somalia. He arrived in Belgium in 2015. He was 17 years old, lived on the street and already had severe post-traumatic stress, certified by a psychiatrist. He submitted an asylum application in 2015 and 2017, which was rejected.CGRS and the RVV (Council for Foreigners’ Disputes) had questioned the credibility of his story;
He was arrested and placed in a detention centre on 16/02/2019.
He made two new asylum applications from the detention centre, one for medical reasons. Mogadishu is considered a safe city by the CGRS and the RVV Conseil du contentieux (Council for Foreigners’ Disputes).
During the past five months, he has suffered all the setbacks to which everyone in the detention centres are subjected. The Immigration Department continued to harass him, despite his very worrying physical and psychological condition. His requests for release, made by his successive lawyers, were rejected by the judge.
Mr. A has no one more in Somalia. His father was murdered in Somalia in 2013, his brother is a recognized refugee in Germany and his mother lives in a refugee camp outside Somalia.
He underwent a first deportation attempt on 01/04/2019, which he refused. A second deportation attempt was planned for 25/06/2019, which was cancelled at the last minute because, according to the Immigration Office, a member of his escort was ill.
On 12/07/2019, a detention order was extended to enable a new deportation.
The Office has planed to forcibly deport him with a European pass on 17/07/2019. Mr A will not have the physical strenght (“He is as fat as a shrimp” says his host) to resist this expulsion. He will be handcuffed by federal police officers restreined by links and kept by an escort.
He urged us to inform the passengers about his presence on the plane and to address the staff and the flight commander, who is the only authority whp can finally decide whether or not to deport him on his flight. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/how-to-stop-a-deportation/
Mobilisation on 17/07/2019 at 1.20 pm to talk to passengers at the airport and ask them to contact the flight commander to order the police to suspend this deportation.Flight 17/07/2019 Turkish Airlines TK 1944 to Istambul 15h20…..
Update 28/07 2019:”They want to break me and my family in pieces”, “My children will suffer the consequences”. M. is at his wit’s end, certain that the Immigration Office is persecuting him while his 2 children and his young partner are waiting for him at home. Last Friday evening he snapped again and was taken to the hospital, wounded (by whom?), having ingested batteries. He had told the director of the detention centre that 8 months of administrative detention (4 in 2018 and 4 in 2019) was enough, especially as the Immigration Office is not able to deport him since his country refuses to give him a consular pass.
Mr X. is exhausted, he spent a few months in different closed centres in 2018 after a long stay in prison and he has been retained again for more than 4 months now. He went nuts this morning.
“I can not stand it anymore, I have enough of this retention… Everybody knows. The system is made to break down people. I served an 8 years sentence, I accepted because of stupid things I did. But after 4 months of closed centre last year and more than 4 months this year, my children are going to wonder where their dad is! Why are they after me all the time? I saw people with a huge criminal record who have children and who were released. Me, I don’t have blood on my hands. My country has refused to give a let pass for more than a year.
Here at the centre you keep waiting that they open a first door, you close that door and you have to wait in front of another door, just to go and eat. We always stand between two doors, it is a real piggery,… 40 people, it smells feet, ass… all those smells! I am the slave of the Belgian State… I am isolated from my children who are going to grow up far away from me. They will grow with hate…they will be the ones with blood on their hands.
Here it is supposedly a ‘democratic society’ but where the hell is democracy? If I stay here it is because I have a family…
I will put an end to my life by myself, they will not decide for me”.
No to the double penalty… X served his sentence, he started a new life and has now 2 children… Why this second sentence, which entails retention, deportation and the break-up of a family?
Death at the border of an exile based in Belgium- 8 July 2019
They were eight people, 4 women and 4 men, of Erythrean origin, in a truck driving through Bruges to go to Rotterdam this Saturday 6 July 2019.
They wanted to try their luck. As soon as they realised that the truck was taking the direction of Rotterdam, on the A29, a route that was not originally planned, they took out their tissues and scarves to wave at the driver to make him stop.
They knew the driver could see them in his rear-view mirror.
In spite of that, he continued driving and according to them he was switching between acceleration and braking to try and make them fall.
Many drivers around were honking their horns to warn the truck driver, apparently in vain!
Finally, still according to the testimonies of the exiles, it is the police who blocked the truck and arrested the driver after a speed chase.
According to some, Géri jumped out of the truck when he saw the police. According to others, he would have fallen because of the truck braking. He died instantly.
The 7 people were taken to the police station and then released. They are now staying at their hosts and are extremely traumatised. Some are crying, others are shouting, praying or are prostrated. The girls are all minor and are particularly traumatised.
Each and everyone of them are trying, as usual, to identify the party responsible for this tragedy.
To us, the only responsible are the States and their borders.
Géri was Erythrean, he was around 25. He had arrived to Belgium several weeks ago from Israel. One dead more, One dead too much
Words by a host: ‘We all are very sad. He was one of my hosts. On Friday I told him to be extremely careful. He laughed…’.
For his road companions: ‘For some he was very discreet, for others very present. Anyway, for his great friends it is absolutely awful’.
BORDERS KILL
List of the known exiles who passed through Belgium and were killed by borders since July 2017
TRIBUTE TO:
2017 :
-Omar, 18, Sudanese, died under a bus in Brussels on 23 July 2017
-Dejen, 16, Ethiopian, died in Aalter after falling from a truck on 4 November 2017
-M, Sudanese, found dead in the canal in Brussels on 17 November 2017
2018
-Mohammed, 39, Ethiopian, died in Jabbeke chased by the police on 29 January 2018
-M, 22, Algerian, died in Zeebruges on 22 March 2018
-Mawda, 2, Kurdish, killed in Mons during a police chase on 16 May 2018
-Amalou Ourez, 20, Guinean, crushed by a bus in Berchem-Ste-Agathe (Brussels) on 19 June 2018
-X,19, Vietnamese, run over by a car in Jabbeke on 17 August 2018
-Imran Ullah, Afghan, run over by a car in Ramskapelle on the E40 on 9 September 2018
-Kebede, 25, Erythrean, killed on a parking in Wetteren on the E40 on 12 September 2018
-Gebre, 36, Erythrean, committed suicide in the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018
2019
-Adam usman Kiyar, 20, Ethiopian, very well-known in Brussels, died in a truck in Calais on 8 March 2019
-Amaneal, born in 1986, Ethiopian, his body was found dead on the railway in Silly (Tournay) on 17 April 2019
-Mahammat Abdullah Moussa, 25, Chadian, most likely dead on 17 April 2019 hung under a bus at the North Station in Brussels and his torn body found at the arrival in FolkstoC
-Géri, 25, Erythrean, died after falling from a truck on the A29 near Rotterdam on 6 July 2019
03/07/2019 CHILDREN ARE NOT TO BE LOCKED THAT’S ALL. REALLY???
For several weeks, young people, sometimes very young, are being arrested on their migratory road in Belgium and retained in closed centres.
‘He has no hair on his chin, Madam’, says one co-retainee.
They have to go through a bone test in the week following their retention. Some are diagnosed as being major and reamin in closed centres (even though bone tests have an error margin of 18 months), others are diagnosed as minors, released and left on the loose or transferred to a MENA centre, sometimes after one month of retention.
As an example:
-Two young people of 17 were diagnosed majors and retained in closed centres for 48 days to then be deported to their Dublin country.
-One young man was retained for 15 days and released without explanation, without document, not even the result of his bone test.
-Another one, 16, has been retained in the 127bis centre since 21 June 2019.
Other similar situations of young people are communicated to us by hosts of the citizens’ platform.
How many others are being retained in closed centres despite their minority, in total secrecy?
What are these young people experiencing in these prisons (let’s call them that way), confined with adults who are as traumatised as they are, and with guardians who are rarely friendly and sometimes even deeply racist?
The campaign “On n’enferme pas un enfant. Point” (http://www.onnenfermepasunenfant.be/ ) and #NotInMyName supported by a lot of associations and citizens enabled the closing of the family units in the 127bis closed centre.
Overview of some of the actions of “On n’enferme pas un enfant. Point” in 2018
Let’s also recall that the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989 includes an article specifically devoted to migrant and refugee children (art. 22). It says: States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure that a child who is seeking refugee status or who is considered a refugee in accordance with applicable international or domestic law and procedures shall, whether unaccompanied or accompanied by his or her parents or by any other person, receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance …
The medical test includes a triple radiography of the teeth, clavicle and wrist. The test result generally indicates an average age, with a range of one to two years. The law foresees that it is the lowest age that should be taken into consideration.
Article 28 of the Code of international private law, the certificates establishing the birth date have a conclusive force unless consistent evidence enable to reverse them. To question the age of a person on the basis of their sole physical appearance therefore clearly raises the issue of the legality of expressing such a doubt.
The Foreigners Office seems to be totally outside of the norms and recommendations with the only will to retain as many children as possible! Is someone checking their deeds? In the meantime, they do not hesitate to continue retaining other children in total secrecy, at least they believe it!
Call to migrants and undocumented, to hosts and staff of the different centres: warn us about these horrific retentions!
Call to the associations and collectives: protest against these intentional abuses on children! Direction générale – M. F. Roosemont, T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR)
F 02 274 66 40 Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
ONLY ONE SOLUTION: stop imprisonments just because they do not have the right document and it will avoid any mistake, manipulation, lie, doubt, mistreatment, suicide, trauma, fear, etc.
Bruges closed centre: 14 people placed in confinement cells on 14 June 2019
Last Friday, 14 June 2019, around 11 p.m., a wind of disobedience led a group of retained to organise a small but heroic riot in the wings B and C of the closed centre in Bruges.
That night, around 20 retained were watching a football match and had been allowed to watch it until the end by the director. However, the guards of that day decided to prevent them from doing so. The detained found it unfair and said it. There were arguments… The director decided to call the police and 20 police officers arrived. First, 4 retained were indicated as ‘leaders’ by the director and they were placed into confinement cells.
Two of those ‘leaders’ were transferred into the secured wing of the closed centre in Vottem this Sunday, after 36 hours of confinement already.
Other sources speak of 14 people being placed in confinement cells that night. The co-retained seem not to be willing or able to tell us what happened over the phone and are most probably under pressure by the management.
Once again censorship rules and makes it impossible to know what is happening in these no-go areas.
We are worried for the retained who are still being kept into confinement and we haven’t heard from them since then. Indeed, it is frequent that some are kept illegally in confinement for more than 24 hours. Confinement for ‘disciplinary reasons’ is a measure often used by the managers of the centres during riots. They are not obliged to motivate the decision up to 24 hours of confinement. Passed that deadline, the management is obliged to transfer the motivation to the General Director of the Foreigners Office for approval.
Because the State organises raids on foreigners so as to imprison them, and because any attempt to revolt in order to protest against the dehumanising conditions they suffer is automatically repressed:
Let’s support the fight of retained people in the centres.
Down with closed centres, down with borders, and solidarity will all the prisoners!
Long live the struggles of all the retained persons who suffer repression by the State and their guardians!
It has been one year since we have been collecting the phone calls from hosts about the arrest and imprisonment of their/our guests in closed centres.
An annual overview: (partial) numbers based on data collected through host families and lawyers
During one year, more than 1000 migrants were detained in transit. Their retention period varies from 5 days to sometimes 5-6 months. Some have already been retained several times (up to 6 times).
The vast majority of them are covered by the Dublin Convention. After 2 months of retention, between 150 and 200 of the 1000 persons were deported to their ‘Dublin country’.
Seven persons were voluntarily returned (2) or forced (5) to their country of origin: Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt.
Three persons were granted asylum or subsidiary protection at the centre
About ten persons were transferred to an open centre for the further processing of their asylum applications.
More than 700 were released with an order to leave the territory (OQT), mainly thanks to the intervention of lawyers.
These figures do not include data on arrested undocumented people arrested at home or in the public space, asylum seekers arrested on arrival at the airport, people who want to stay here for a while, but who were arrested at the airport and rejected because their visas were “non-regulated” (here is a recent testimony http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/about-the-abomination-of-closed-centres-audiotestimony-from-the-caricole-closed-centre-03052019/ , retainees who are subject to a double sentence and who, after serving their sentence, are taken from prison to a detention centre to prepare for their deportation.
Trapped victims, a substantial budget, an enormous psychological damage…. . A policy aimed at criminalising those who are primary victims. In short, a policy that is costly both from a human and a financial point of view, a policy that does not solve problems and does not offer effective or humane solutions!
News 28/05/2019 :
– The hunt for people on the run in stations, camps and car parks continues, followed by arrests and imprisonment for some of them.
– We regularly hear testimonies of serious violence in closed centres: ill-treatment, imprisonment, racist verbal disputes, transfer from centre to centre, etc. Retained victims, who want to remain anonymous, tell us about real torture.
– We also receive regular reports of attempted suicides.
-Some of them are often in a very bad physical or psychological condition and are sometimes retained in the centres for weeks and even months. They are often prosecuted in an incomprehensible way (isolation, transfer, etc.) as if they were being punished for their vulnerability.
-The criminalisation of refugees has also taken a new direction: under the name “Detection of criminal networks of trafficking in human beings”, targeted raids have taken place in recent months, and several dozen refugees suspected of being traffickers in human beings have been imprisoned in our prisons for months while awaiting trial. Last conviction: 10 months imprisonment for 4 illegal burglaries in the port of Zeebrugge. After the prison, he was transferred to a detention centre and opted for a voluntary return to Italy.
Against closed centres For Freedom of movement and establishment for all!
Gettingthevoiceout and the references of the closed centres of the citizens’ platform
10/05/2019: Many arrests this week: Willebroek, Zeebrugge, Tournai, Kortrijk, Gare du Nord in Brussels …
Some are released after identification and issuance of an « order to leave the territory » (OQT), others are maintained in closed centers.
The undisclosed aim of these arrests and short-detentions is :
· to track and identify migrants on our territory,
· to prepare their files for a future expulsion by finding in the Eurodac file the country where they have their fingerprints, the country responsible for a possible asylum application,
· to apply the Dublin procedure in further arrests.
Before, Maggie De Block has already strictly applied the Dublin procedure and is playing the same part now. The only significant difference being an increasing number of Dublin returns in the last 2 months.
Social workers in some centers are now increasingly telling refugees that if they do not take a lawyer, they will be freed sooner. This is obviously not true.
Indeed if some may be freed without the help of a lawyer, others are maintained because their file is ready to organize their deportation.
We strongly recommend that arrested people ask for the intervention of a lawyer who will appeal to their arrest and confinement. The intervention of a lawyer will not change the duration of their detention and may for the most of them allow their release.
Encourage your friend to seek the assistance of a lawyer, while ultimately respecting their choice.
We also remind you the necessary information that we need in case of arrest of one of your guests : http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/liberty-for-all-to-the-hosts-or-persons-whose-friendsguests-have-been-arrested/
The information (to be sent to gettinthevoiceout@riseup.net) will allow us to refer you to a lawyer and update our files to cross the information and finally help the hosts.
Finally do not forget to tell us if your friend is free!
STOP DUBLIN
Our MARCH and APRIL figures based on information from hosts and lawyers
MARCH 2019
Arrested and released after a few days of confinement: Without lawyers 4, after recourse to the CCE by lawyers 38
APRIL 2019
Arrested and released after a few days of imprisonment: Without lawyers: 12, after recourse to the CCE by lawyers 70
Return DUBLIN MARCH and APRIL: 24: Italy, France, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France
Still in detention this 12/05/2019:
Arrested in January 2019: 2
Arrested in February 2019: 4
Arrested in March 2019: 2
Arrested in April 2019: 20
The referents of the Citizen Platform and gettinthevoiceout@riseup.net
As an operator of forced expulsions of migrants, Brussels Airlines collaborates with migration policies that violate the fundamental rights of the affected people, without any law requiring it to do so.
Deported persons are sent back to countries where they do not want to go. Physical and psychological violence is used against them. Expelling them is tantamount to acting in complete contradiction with the values stated by the company, which also claims to be an “specialist of Africa”.
The ” Brussels Airlines, stop deportations” campaign denounces these inhuman practices and calls on the company to take a stand and stop deporting now.
Ce matin, 50 personnes ont occupé le siège de Brussels Airlines pour appeler la compagnie à cesser les expulsions.
Cette action dénonce la complicité de l’entreprise dans les politiques violentes et inhumaines du gouvernement belge à l’encontre des personnes migrantes, et marque le lancement d’une campagne visant la compagnie.
Les militant.es ont occupé les lieux, produit une émission radio et échangé avec les employé.es de la firme sur les agissements de leur direction. « Brussels Airlines Stop deportations. » peut-on lire sur une grande banderole suspendue sur la façade du bâtiment, et sur une autre : « La Belgique déporte, Brussels Airlines transporte ». Le logo de la compagnie a d’ailleurs été détourné pour l’occasion.
« Nous sommes là pour soutenir toutes les personnes victimes des politiques migratoires européennes et pour rendre leur témoignage visible. A la radio, on entend des personnes témoignant de leur passage par les centres fermés et de leur expulsion. Les personnes déportées sont régulièrement violentées avant d’être déportées. A titre d’exemple, un homme avait avalé des lames de rasoir pour s’opposer à son expulsion et un des policier lui avait alors dit « qu’il n’avait qu’à mourir en chemin ». Les passages à tabac et nombreuses pressions paraissent surréalistes mais c’est pourtant la réalité des expulsions » explique une membre de l’action.
Cette action a pour objectif d’interpeller Brussels Airlines sur son implication et de la pousser à prendre position comme l’ont déjà fait plusieurs compagnies aériennes dont Virgin Atlantic qui annonçait en juin 2018 « mettre fin aux expulsions au sein de [son] réseau ». Participer aux expulsions de la sorte revient à se rendre complice de traitements inhumains et à prendre part à la violation des droits humains.
Parfois attachées, parfois bâillonnées, les victimes luttant pour leur liberté sont emmenées de force dans les avions par des escortes policières. La police et les compagnies aériennes collaborent volontairement à ces politiques dont le coût financier mais surtout humain est désastreux.
Le souvenir de Semira Adamu, jeune nigériane assassinée il y a 20 par des policiers à bord d’un avion de la Sabena (ancêtre de Brussels Airlines), est dans tous les esprits ce lundi matin. Les gouvernements se succèdent mais les expulsions persistent, et la filiale de la Lufthansa se rend complice de ces pratiques.
Le message de « Brussels Airlines Stop deportations » est clair : « Cette campagne cessera lorsque Brussels Airlines cessera les expulsions ».
I’m in Belgium since 18 April 2019, I came here with a short-term visa, 20 days, which was deliverd to me by the Belgian embassy.
About the closed centres, I would like to say that it is an absolute abomination, it is the place where they took me, the Caricole centre in Zaventem, an absolute abomination as I said, where human rights are being violated. It is a machine, a monster that has to be destroyed because here, men are transformed into animals who lost their freedom of expression because here this right is completely denied. From the police station at the airport, you are not given the possibility to express yourself, instead you are being traumatised and violently treated.
Not only men are losing their freedom of expression but they also lose their right to freedom, which is a fundamental right for all human beings. Men are imprisoned because they requested asylum or because they were on a visit with a visa, a visit into the Kindgdom of Belgium.
This is unacceptable. We are not criminals, there are even children here, they are with their parents, we are not criminals. These people are not bandits or terrorists but are caught at the airport and remain imprisoned.
And they treat these people like prisoners. They do everything… they take away your phone, you are given a stupid small phone. Even though we are living in the computer age, the age of high technology etc, you can not be on WhatsApp, you can not communicate with your family. You are in prison, it is a prison. Caricole is not a closed centre, it is a prison.
Concerning the immigration policy, I am convinced -and I truly believe what I say- that it should be revised. We, foreigners, are not welcomed properly, we are mistreated when we arrive. But the foreigners, the Belgian people coming to our country, they don’t receive the same bad treatment/ Human beings should be respected, human beings should be allowed to express themselves.
You are given a visa in our countries and when you reach the airport, the same country denies you the right to enter that country. This means there is a problem between the ambassador who is in that country and who delivers the visa and the immigration office that welcomes you when you enter the country. This is all I have to say.
What is the No Border movement? How do we plan the fight against borders and in favour of the freedom of movement? On Saturday 25 May we organise meetings, exchanges and debates with Belgian and international activists and supporters. If you just want to get informed, or if you would like to do something for a better migratory justice but don’t know what nor how, this is the place to be!
Saturday 25 May 2019
Allée du Kaai (avenue du port, 53, 1000 Brussels)
10 a.m-10.30 a.m : Welcome of the Belgian participants and of the activists of Calais, Paris, Germany, Great Britain, Greece.
10.30 a.m – 12 a.m : Global and local actions, various experiences of activists present around the theme ‘How to organise the fight against borders and for the freedom of movement’.
12 a.m-01.30 p.m : Break
01.30 p.m- 03.30 p.m : How to organise ourselves and what tactics to use? Self-directed places, direct actions, campaigns, etc. How is the No Border movement framed in our struggle? What repression against the activist movements?
03.30 p.m-04.p.m : Break
04.p.m-05.30 p.m : How to create links between the different forms of struggle? What is a No Border Camp?
05.30 p.m-06.30 p.m : conclusions , exchange of opinions, common projects, programme of Sunday 26 May
UPDATE: flight via CASABLANCA and Abidjan , thirsday 2 May 6.30 pm : AT833 et SN 4055 Royal Air Maroc et Brussels Airlines)
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Deportation to Ivory Coast on 02/05/2019: Mobilisation!
Mr O.C, from the Ivory Coast, is currently being retained in the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem. He has been living in Belgium for 12 years and even had a work contract. He had just introduced a regularisation request when he was arrested after being convened at the police station with no specific reason!
His life, ties and friends are all here.
They will deport him this Thursday 2 May on a flight to Abidjan via Ouagadougou at 11.10 a.m – flight SN255/ LH5548/ AC 6334/UA 9979.
To help prevent this deportation, you may be present at the airport this Thursday 2 May at 9.10 a.m at the registration desk and make the passengers aware of the situation.
You can also fax, email, ring, tweet the people in charge of these deportations.
Mais aussi fax, mail, appel, twitter aux responsables de ces déportations
SN Brussels Airlines : customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
Fax= 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 /027232362
Demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au
Commandant de bord
Mr S, Tamil from Sri Lanka, came to Belgium to request asylum. He was arrested at the airport several months ago. His asylum request was refused and he’ll be subject to a third deportation attempt to Ghana (!) this 25th April 2019. We presume Ghana is a stopover but he did not get any information on the continuation of his trip. He is wondering what will happen to him in Ghana and is extremely distressed. He is asking for our help to resist this deportation.
Flight SN 277 at 10.40 a.m to Lomé with a stopover in Accra (Ghana)
Let’s meet at the airport at 08.40 a.m to explain his situation to the passengers.
and fax, email, calls, twitter to the people in charge of these deportations
Update 10/04/2019: The deportation of Reda planned this Tuesday 9 April has been postponed! But we keep fighting! Reda Dhawelbeit, a Darfouri Sudanese, is still under threat from being sent back to Karthoum where he will most probably be arrested and tortured, not to say killed. Others risk the same fate!
No to the deportation of Reda to Sudan, no to deportations in general!
Tomorrow, Tuesday 9 April 2019, Reda Dhawelbeit, a Darfuri Sudanese, will be sent back to Karthoum where he will most probably be arrested and tortured, not to say killed.
Reda is 40, he left everthing and everyone; his pregnant woman, his son whom he never could hold into his arms, a work he really liked, his parents, his friends. Why? To escape a dictatorship that wanted to destroy him. He requested asylum in Belgium but it was refused. Tomorrow 9 April, after retaining him in a closed centre for more than 2 months, Belgium is planning to send him back to his country where he runs the risk to be tortured and killed. This risk is even bigger since Reda is part of the Sudanese people who were identified by the Sudanese delegation that had been invited to Belgium by Theo Francken in September 2017. Following that visit, the Sudanese security had even paid a visit to his wife to threaten her.
Two rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, from 15 January 2015 – A.A. vs. France (n o 18039/11), A.F. vs. France (n o 80086/13) – deemed that the deportation of Sudanese applicants was a violation of article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights regarding the proven risks of inhumane or degrading treatments in case of return to Sudan. The European Court of Human Rights deemed that the dismissal measures taken against Sudanese applicants were contrary to that article.
I also wish to draw your attention to the current deterioration of the security situation in Sudan, as documented by reports and articles by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch over the last months. Indeed, these organisations point the human rights abuses committed in the context of the violent repression against the population and demonstrators since December 2018. This repression caused over sixty deaths, more than a thousand arrests and around 2,000 wounded. Kidnappings and torture are widely used by the Security Services (NISS). The deported Sudanese are arrested and questioned by them when landing in Sudan; loads of testimonies confirm that the families of several deported nationals have remained without news from them since their deportation. They were arrested, disappeared, and have probably been killed by now.
We call on every action possible to prevent Reda Dhawelbeit’s deportation as well as any other deportation to Sudan where the current situation doesn’t guarantee at all the security of the people who live there.
Update 10 April 2019: Hicham was deported despite the presence of people at the airport to warn the passengers. In Madrid, since he refused to introduce an asylum request in Spain, he got an Order to leave the territory within 3 days..
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Update:
Brussels to Madrid
Flight SN3721 is departing on Tuesday April 9 at 09:25
meeting at the airport to speak with the passangers on 07:30
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HELP! Palestinian in hungerstrike for 27 days is threatend of deportation with police escort on 09/04/2019!
A true Palestinians hunt has been set up by Belgian authorities since the beginning of 2019. Dozens of Palestinians have been arrested and detained in closed centres since January.
Most of them had introduced an asylum request and were staying in open centres for refugees. The Office des Etrangers (OE), the Belgian Immigration Office, sent them an interview notice and once there, gave them a “26quater annexe” (decision against a residence permit with an order to leave the territory (OQT). Then the OE immediately arrested and detained them in closed centers in order to deport them. Many of the Palestiniane refuse this decision and started a hunger strike. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/palestinians-hunt-and-group-deportation-to-spain-on-19-march-2019/
One of them is Hicham. The OE wants to send him back by force to Spain on Tuesday 9 April.
Hicham, Palestinian, arrived in Belgium seeking asylum, which means he had to travel through various European countries, including Spain where his finger prints were taken. Because of the Dublin regulation, Spain is supposedly reponsible for his asylum request, but Hicham does not want to return to Spain where he says that refugees’ reception is not good. He wants to stay in Belgium where he has ties.
With his Palestinian compatriots, HIcham started a hunger strike on 17 March 2019, since the hunger strike is almost the only means of expression in closed centres. But the closed centre is trying to silence him. They took his phone and put him in isolation, without any human contact, no visit is allowed. The OE has decided to organise a deportation with police escort this coming Tuesday 9 April 2019, on his 27th day of hungerstrike. Hicham is very weak.
Belgium is not obliged to apply the Dublin regulation and can decide to process the asylum request.
Let’s support Hicham and all those who are subject to this procedure.
We do not know yet the flight number in order to go to the airport and speak with passengers, explain Hicham’s situation et inform them that they can oppose this deportation on the flight. We will give you more information on the web www.gettingthevoiceout.be as soon as we have more information.
In the meantime your can write and email to the people responsible for this decision:
Status of the badly named ‘transmigrants’ in closed centres [05/04/2019]
We were again informed that several social assistants in closed centres use their influence to dissuade retainees to sign the handling by lawyers, promising them a rapid release if they do not get a lawyer’.
This prevents an ’emergency application’ which in most cases enables their release.
Remark by a lawyer: ‘the fact of getting a lawyer may in no way delay the release process of your friends. It is a wrong rumour that is being spread. The social assistants sometimes promise a release to avoid retainees getting a lawyer, but the appeal is running in the meantime. To me, it is a real obstacle to the access to justice.’
The aim of this step by the Foreigners office is to keep them in retention in order to deport them. After this period of 5 or 10 days when an emergency application is possible, the lawyers and retainees find themselves in hopeless situations where very few things are still possible on the juridical level, and it then becomes a real obstacle course to release them! The retainees risk staying in the closed centre for weeks, even for months, before being in most of the cases sent back to their Dublin country or to their country of origin.
The last months, particular pressure with threats of deportation has been put on certain nationalities:
– Around 20 Palestinians were arrested at the Foreigners office or in their open centre, and threatened with a deportation to their Dublin country, in that case Spain.
– Several Sudanese have been retained in closed centres for several weeks, with a threat to be deported to Sudan.
And the Foreigners Office dared: one Erythrean went through a first deportation attempt to Asmara in Erythrea following a negative answer to his asylum request! He followed the advice of his host and refused the deportation once at the airport (see also our advice here: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/how-to-stop-a-deportation/ ). He was very badly defended by a ghost lawyer. A new lawyer is now in charge of his record.
The situation as of 5 April 2019 based on the information received by lawyers and hosts:
February : 82 arrests
11 were released without the assistance of a lawyer in the days following their arrest
47 were released following the introduction of an emergency application by a lawyer
17 are still being retained in centres, a majority of which had refused the emergency application
7 were deported to their Dublin country during March
A woman was arrested in December and deported to Ghana in February
March : 85 arrests
7 were released without the intervention of a lawyer in the days following their arrest
47 were released following the introduction of an emergency application by a lawyer
31 arrested in March are still being retained, among whom 11 refused the assistance of a lawyer for an emergency application
Considering these figures, we may only advise our retained friends to very quickly get (within 5 or 10 days according to their record) a GOOD lawyer (!! several social assistants sometimes try to impose ‘ghost lawyers’!!). We may advise you some(gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net).
Mr. P. is a young man who just turned 26 two weeks ago. He is from Sri Lanka, a country he doesn’t want to go to anymore.
“In Sri Lanka, my life is in danger. I don’t want to go back, big risks. ”
He received a ticket announcing that he will undergo his third attempt of expulsion this Monday at Zaventem airport. We could hear his fear when he said : “Please sir help me. Going to my country is big problem. Sir please help. ”
He will be expelled tomorrow morning aboard a Brussels Airlines plane to Accra in Ghana, before being deported to Sril Lanka.
His flight from Zaventem airport : Brussels Airlines SN277.
Time of take-off : 10:40
We can go to the airport to alert passengers who will be in the same plane and who can oppose this expulsion only by refusing to attach and getting up.
You must be at the airport at 9:40 am, if you can be present, thank you to communicate it on www.gettingthevoiceout.org and to testify thereafter.
To say our opposition, let’s all write to Brussels Airlines !
Grouped deportation flight to Guinea, DRC and Senegal this Tuesday 26 March 2019
Several people retained in the different closed centres are warning us that they will be put on a ‘special flight’ to be deported to their countries of origin, for some the Democratic Republic of Congo, for others Guinea and others Senegal.
It might be a FRONTEX flight (http://frontex.europa.eu/operations/return/), and other people coming from Schengen countries will be on that flight too and will be driven to 127bis or directly to the airport.
According to the information we got, they will be transferred this Monday evening from their closed centres in Vottem, Bruges and Merksplas to the 127bis centre near the airport. The visits to the 127 bis have been cancelled this Sunday and Monday to prepare the plan.
The plane would fly from the military airport of Melsbroek, Chaussée de Haecht 138, Steenokkerzeel, this Tuesday at 10.30.
Mr B, from Congo Brazza has been retained in the closed centre of Vottem for several months. He will be subject to a second deportation attempt this Friday 22 March.
Mr had been condemned and imprisoned and then transferred to the closed centre in view of his deportation. The lawyer introduced all the possible appeals. He himself introduced a second asylum request from the centre.
Mr B is 33 years old and his family lives here (father, brothers and sisters), all his family bounds are here.
Let’s go to the airport to warn the passengers and the airline.
Vol : ET729 Friday 22 at 10.30 p.m. Ethipian airlines to Adis Abeba, and transfer to Brazzaville.
Be at the airport at 8.30 p.m. If you can be there please warn us.
15/03/2019: Since the end of January, Palestinian asylum-seekers and residents in open centre have been arrested in the Foreigners office (during an appointment) and they are bein retained in a closed centre in view of their deportation.
The received the annex 26 quater attesting that they have to return to their Dublin country, where they gave their fingerprints or introduced an asylum request. For most of them, that country is Spain.
The Office arranged a group deportation to Spain on 19 March 2019 that concerns most of these Palestinans arrested end of January/beginning of February.
To my knowledge, it is the first time that a group flight is being organised to a Dublin country. Generally, these group deportations take place through military flights from the military airport in Haren. The deported are escorted by police officers (2 per deported).
New series of arrestations at the Office are currently taking place, always of ‘Dublinised’ Palestinians. According to some information, the Office do not hesitate to go and fetch some of them in their open centre if they did not show up to their appointment.
Please warn your Palestinian friends!
No to « Dublinisation » Freedom of movement and settlement for all !
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Urgent information for Palestinan asylum-seekers in Dublin process
We heard that several dozens of Palestinians have been arrested since January 2019 at their appointment with the Foreigners Office because they were in the Dublin process.
A collective flight to Spain is planned for 19 March 2019 with those who were arrested in January or February, and that could be returned to Spain because of the Dublin process. They should urgently warn their lawyers.
For those who were arrested recently, the Foreigners Office should wait 6 weeks before getting the answer from Spain. They should not be deported on that collective flight. It is nevertheless important to also warn their lawyers!
For those who are still free and/or in open centres and who are under the Dublin regime, ask your lawyer or the HUB/North station before going to an appointment with the Foreigners Office.
Those who are not going to their appointment with the Office: be aware that they may send the police to arrest you in open centre or at home.
February 2019: B., sent to Caricole, directly from the airport in October 2018, stayed 3 months in the centre.
He tells us about the inaction of the social services, “the people” here, they stay 4, 5, 6 months but nothing changes, “if you want to see the director for something, you have to write to her, and she accepts or not…”.
Inside, no solidarity, no humanity is allowed by the agents:
« they brought a blind man, it was the retainees of the centre who helped him move, eat, and then they didn’t even left him the time to ask for a lawyer, they sent him back…”
“We could hear the man shout “help me!!” but the agents prevented us from helping him and 5 men took him away…”
He also underlines the fact that the retainees do not understand the decisions, “after some time they extend your stay, you’ll stay longer at the centre” or they deport you with the “federal police” and nobody knows what happens to the deported people…”
« There was a women, from E., she was deported and we learnt that she was arrested upon her return…” “then you stress out and it brings problems…”.
« We are deported with a very bad image of Belgium, because when I chose to go to Belgium, I thought they would really protect me and defend my rights…” “It is worse than a prison here, this is not normal…”
March 2019: Hello, I’m a young African man, I testify to try and explain what we are living in closed centres, particularly in Belgium. I prefer to stay anonymous for the sake of security.
This testimony also is a call to all the wholehearted people who want to help us, we the retainees who are imprisoned only because we wanted to request asylum or protection.
Deprived of liberty for more than 70 days.
It is sad to realise that everything is fake, people seem to try and help us but it is not the case. Let me explain. Everything has been planned. They give us lawyers but we ignore if they want to help us or not. Those amongst us who have the means to take private lawyers are luckier. It is difficult when you don’t have money.
It is sad to know that in two months, only two Africans got a positive answer (i.e the refugee status) and a few were released. Only 20% are released, the rest are deported.
A girl who had spent seven months here was deported and imprisoned when she arrived to her final destination. Some are exiled in other African countries.
I never committed any crime but they handcuff me at the court, just like a criminal, only because I ask them to release me to be able to go on with the procedure. Handcuffed, locked in a cell.
We are six in our room, we do not speak the same language. There are times assigned to shave, to comb your hair, eat and go to the courtyard, always with guards to watch us, to prevent us from escaping.
Why would we escape? We fled our countries to try and find help here but they refuse to help us. I think that if they really helped us, nobody would think of escaping.
When I arrived to the airport, the police officer who arrested me swore he would make me go back to where I came from.
The Foreigners Office make everthing possible to make us return to our countries. I don’t have a place to say there anymore, my parents died etc. but they want me to return. However, my life there is threatened. I am only asking for one thing, assistance, protection.
So many things happen in the centres. A lot of injustice, I swear! They only thing they respect is the human rights to hide and cover their injustice.
Because when they show to the world that our human rights are respected, people outside will never know what really happens here. How, in the middle of the procedure, they give you a ticket to return home. No liberty at all. They check us before we eat, before we sleep, when we wake up, we are constantly controlled. To tell you the truth, if they were doing everything they could to help us nobody would consider escaping because we would feel in safety. But we are always stressed, always. Each hour, each second, each minute. They can make us return any time. If they don’t want us, they’d better send us to other countries like France, Italy, etc. so that we might continue our quest.
Forgive me for the spelling mistakes, I didn’t study long, but please, don’t ignore this testimony. We really need help. I thank you.
06/03/2019: Call from the Voix des Sans-Papiers (VSP) in Brussels:
One of our friends, Diallo Ahmad Bilo, was arrested on 25 December close to the North Station and transferred to Vottem. Since 11 February he had stomach pains and asked to see a doctor. The only solution they proposed was to place him in confinement, saying he was simulating it (although he had had a surgery in November).
In this loneliness, this lack of justice, this individual and structural ill treatment, despite the alerts launched to his lawyer, nothing has changed. Therefore he decided to fight another battle: He started a hunger strike on 15 February to draw the attention on this robotised prison administration (Vottem has been existing for 20 years) as a response to the Belgian governement. A governement who doesn’t care at all for his person, this tireless fighter, always there to defend social justice, equality, dignity, liberty.
We don’t have the right anymore to claim our rights and to be considered as human beings. Will we undergo and accept this injustice which is the modernised continuation of slave trade? We have seen enough, it is time to change that.
“My name is Diallo Ahmad Bailo. I have been in a closed centre since 25 December 2018, in the Vottem closed centre in Liège. I have been in Belgium since January 2014, I have been undocumented since January 2014. Since I am undocumented, they called me ‘illegal’.
I was born in Mauritania but my parents are from Guinea Conakry. I had information from my lawyer yesterday, the Foreigners Office wanted to contact the embassy of Guinea to deport me there, but I don’t know anything, almost nothing of Guinea. I wanted them to deport me to Mauritania. And concerning my health too, I have been sick for a very long time. I did everything not to be deported but I can see there are no other solutions. I stopped the hunger strike because of my health, I have liver problems so I can not do a hunger strike for a long time. Since they didn’t release me I decided to stop doing it.
Here in the closed centre it is not like outside. The medical services only give you paracetamol when you have a headache. It’s only that, there is no proper medical service here, unlike outside when you are free.
Inside, I have been in confinement for 2 weeks. I am alone in my room. I can go outside during 30-40 minutes per day and I have one shower per day. There are 3 meals per day, there is television but I have been in confinement for 2 weeks.
I haven’t slept for two weeks, I am really stressed and I have a lot of nightmares.
Only the guards come to see me, I don’t see anyone else. I do not communicate with anyone else. And the other workers, they are not really open, they only say ‘hello’, ‘hello’ and that’s it. To me it’s like if they were racists. They don’t speak to anyone, not even a ‘hello’, some of them say hello but others pass you by as if they couldn’t see you.
Manifestation de solidarité aux Soudanais(es) détenu(e)s en centres fermés et de soutien aux manifestations au Soudan contre le régime en place organisée par des Soudanais en Belgique.
Pour exprimer notre solidarité avec les manifestation actuelles au Soudan et de dénoncer la crise et la situation des migrant(e)s soudanais(es) en Belgique, les organisateurs et organisatrices vous invitent à manifester devant l’ambassade du Soudan le samedi 09/03/2019 à Bruxelles à 14h00 (134 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 1050 Ixelles).
Ces dernières semaines, de nombreux Soudanais(es) ont été arrêté(e)s puis détenu(e)s dans des centres fermés en Belgique. Certain(e)s ont entamé une grève de la faim, notamment pour protester contre la violence utilisée pour les forcer à donner leurs empreintes digitales. Comme toujours dans cet espace carcéral, s’en est suivi une importante répression (isolement, transfert vers d’autres centres,…).
Tant en Belgique qu’au Soudan, les Soudanais(es) résistent et luttent pour leurs droits, contre la dictature de plus en plus violente là-bas, contre la répression des migrant(e)s et leur détention arbitraire en centres fermés ici…
Allons leur témoigner notre solidarité, les supporter dans leur lutte !
Liberté de circulation pour toutes et tous !
Non aux centres fermés! Non à la répression des migrants! Non à la dictature! Soutien à la résistance organisée au Soudan et en Belgique!
**************************************************************************** Release from initiative of solidarity of Sudanese asylum seekers in close centers in Belgium
We invite you for demonstration in front of Sudanese embassy Saturday 09 / 03 / 2019 in Brussels at 14h00 o’clock in order to express your solidarity with the current Sudanese uprising and shed light of Sudanese refugees crisis in Belgium and also shed light for the worst situation of Sudanese refugees in close center in Belgium.
In fact, these past weeks, many Sudanese have been arrested and detained in closed centers in Belgium. They went on hunger strike to protest against violence used to force some of them to give their fingerprints. This strike was then highly repressed (deportation to other center, isolation,…).
Both in Belgium and in Sudan, Sudanese resist and fight for their rights, against the increasingly violent dictatorship, against the repression of migrants.
No to closed centres! No to repression of migrants! No to dictatorship! Support for the resistance that is organised in Sudan and in Belgium! **************************************************************************** بيان من مبادرة دعم طالبي اللجوء السودانيين المحتجزين بالمراكز المغلقة ببلجيكا
في الأسابيع الأخيرة تم اعتقال العديد من السودانيين ووضعهم في مراكز مغلقة في بلجيكا. وهم الان ينفذون إضراب عن الطعام مع معتقلين آخرين للاحتجاج على العنف الذي تعرضوا له ووضعهم في مراكز مغلقة بدون مراعاة حقوقهم الأساسية بوضعهم في ظروف صعبه دون الاتصال بالمحامين ودون معرفة الرأي العام عن أوضاعهم العامة والصحية سواء في السودان أو بلجيكا. لذا فهم يواجهون وضعاً مشابها للقمع والديكتاتورية ببلجيكا كما في السودان ، كما أن قمع طالبي اللجوء السودانيين داخل المراكز المغلقة ببلجيكا يعتبر أقوى لذلك يدعوكم عدد من نشطاء حقوق الإنسان البلجيك والسودانيين لدعم المبادرة بالحضور والتضامن مع الشعب السوداني وقضية طالبي اللجوء السودانيين ببلجيكا والمشاركة في المظاهرة المقرر لها أمام السفارة السودانية ببروكسل يوم السبت الموافق 9 مارس 2019 في تمام الساعة الثانية بعد الظهر ولنقلها معا لا للمراكز المغلقة لا لقمع المهاجرين وطالبين اللجؤ والمواطنين السودانيين ببلجيكا أو السودان. هذا بالإضافة لدعم المقاومة والانتفاضة السلمية القائمة حاليا بالسودان التي ترفع شعار حرية سلام وعدالة والثورة خيار الشعب التي من أجلها حتى الآن قتل عشرات المحتجين السلميين في الخرطوم وبقية المدن السودانية من بين هولاء القتلى عدد من الأطفال ويقدر عدد المعتقلين حتى الآن بالمئات في كل أنحاء السودان .
We are calling you from the Coquelles centre in Calais. We are being retained here in Coquelles.
An Erythrean committed suicide, we ignore if he is dead or not. It is the third time someone has committed suicide within a week.
Thank you sir,
From the Coquelles centre in Calais. Please, this is an SOS, please!”
Second deportation attempt to Ghana on Mrs T, this Freiday 15 February 2019
Flight SN277 Zaventem 15/02/2019 11:10 to Accra 15/02/2019 16:55
Mrs T. has been retained in the Bruges closed centre since 30 December 2018. She wanted to catch a Eurostar train to spend the end of the year at friends in Great-Britain and was arrested at the station. She had been living in the Netherlands for more than a year without regularising her situation. She doesn’t want to go back to Ghana where she was living in precariousness.
Let’s meet at Zaventem airport on 15 February at 9.10 a.m to speak to the passengers of that flight and help Mrs T resist her deportation.
Flight information : flight SN277 Zaventem 15/02/2019 11:10 to Accra 15/02/2019 16:55
and mail, fax, email to SN airlines, the huge deportations’ airline to African countries.
07/02/2019:’I was waiting to see a doctor. The latter and two nurses were busy examining a Sudanese man for a strong pain in one arm (probably broken). The man in pain was with another Sudanese who was translating from Arabic to English. I was waiting for my turn.I was in the room next door and the door was open. When the doctor asked him to move his arm, the Sudanese answered that he couldn’t and I heard the sound of a slap in the face. That’s when 4 or 5 guards came running, thinking that the doctor had been kicked. When noticing that the doctor was not the victim but the perpetrator, the guards burst into laughters before getting back to their occupations.’
The facts:
Thursday 31 January: while they were trying to oblige A. to leave his fingerprints and he refused, he was violently shaken by 5 guards who wanted to carry him away by force; One of them broke/sprained his arm and he could not move his hand after that. He was placed in confinement cell until the end of the following day. The altercation happened in front of everybody in wing B. Two other Sudanese were taken by force to leave their fingerprints, threatened with being beaten like the first one if they refused.
– About the situation in Bruges, they told me the following :
The hunger strike started on 5 February 2019. It is a general one, not only followed by the Sudanese.
They protest against:
– arbitrary releases (one was released immediately after he arrived although he already had been arrested 5 times – the other imprisoned for months)
– the racism by the private security staff: no respect for black people, they speak to them with aggressivity (shouting)
– the living conditions (for e.g only one shower per week)
One man was retained in confinement for 5 days after he had asked medicine to the management…
— M: In Bruges he refused to go upstairs to sleep. He was arrested with violence, by lots of guards (he says they were around 20 of them), his faced squeezed on the floor, one guard put a foot on his head (his left eye was still a bit swollen), his hands tied behind his back and his feet tied too. Confinement cell for 2 days.
Action by Sudanese in the Bruges closed centre:Update
Friday 1 February, several Sudanese were called by the social assistant who informed them that they should give their fingerprints and request asylum. Some refused and were beaten and placed in confinement cells. A few coretainees who witnessed the facts are in a state of shock!
In the weekend of 2 February, new Sudanese arrived at the centre. They are more and more.
On Tuesday 5 February we heard that they refused to eat in order to protest against their arbitrary retention and the violence perpetrated against one of their coretainee. Following that, they all were placed in confinement cells.
This Wednesday 6 February, they are not reachable (still in confinement cells or phones confiscated). We heard from lawyers that some were transferred to the Merksplas closed centre. It seems to be the usual procedure when this kind of ‘movements’ happens in the centres.
Others seem to be out of confinement but the information is really hard to get.
The Director of the centre would have told them that a list of names was or will be sent to the Office and that ‘if some on the list do not remain quiet, they will get into trouble’!
Movements by the exiles/undocumented in the closed centres/retention centres/hotspots are frequent all over Europe and at its borders. Cornered exiles protest against these retentions, against the living conditions in the centres, against the European migration policies, against the borders, etc…
Here too, they very often protest, often after violent actions by the guards on one of them or after massive arrests of a specific nationality.
The Office’s answer to any movement that disturbs ‘their public order’ (hosts, unemployed, activists) is repression, hoping to silence the protesters. It is the criminalisation of any opposition movement.
When acts of rebellion happen in closed centres, everything is done to mute the protests, they prevent them to communicate among themselves or with the outside world: blackmail, confinement, transfers, deportations, etc.
Like for all other protesters taken to courts, acts of resistance in the centres should be supported, helped, encouraged, advertised etc. so that they can be heard one day.
Currently, we very (too) often get messages from hosts who warn us that their guests in closed cenres are not doing well: they are exhausted, depressed, desperate, ill, they do not feed themselves anymore etc. Some complain about the racism shown by the staff and about different pressures.
With no real direct testimonies from the persons concerned, we can not really say much more (we encourage the hosts to send us small articles with the stories of the retainees), but it is not difficult to imagine what it is like for the retainees to be waiting for the fate the Foreigners Office reserve for them.
We also heard that many Sudanese people are currently selected for retention and it seems that some are forced to give their fingerprints and to request asylum against their will; a procedure we already could observe last year when ‘lord’ Francken tried to launch deportations to Sudan. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/illegal-massive-deportation-attempts-to-sudan/
Besides, the carousel of entries and exists goes on:
Here is an overview of the retentions for January 2019 :
131 arrests notified by hosts
84 arrested and released several days later among whom 11 declare themselves minors and 3 who are legally recognised as refugees in a European country
48 still are being retained on 2 February 2019
To be noted too:
*15 are being retained for the second time, 3 for the third time, one for the 5th time!
* the Dublin returns have been very rare this month (3 as far as we know);
* 2 women were deported to Ethiopia by force, tied and gagged by their escort (an old woman and another woman of Erythrean nationality) after being retained for several months in a closed centre.
* a lot of Afghans have been retained in closed centres for several months, and some were deported lastly to Afghanistan.
Let’s continue fighting against closed centres and deportations
Planet Earth belongs to all.
Let’s break borders down!
As a reminder: Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 13. DEveryone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/eng.pdf
As a reminder, we are a very small group of volunteers, therefore your contribution is more than welcome.
Besides, you are many people to frequently resort to different lawyers for the same person; which complicates even more the situation of the retainee and the lawyers.
Lawyers who are already overloaded need clear and precise information on the retained person in order to be able to access their record.
Suggestion of steps to follow:
If your guest has been arrested and you are without news, try to locate him/her by calling the different closed centres. Start with the 127bis closed centre where most migrants firstly transit. Although they are federal centres, the use of Dutch (except for the Vottem centre located in Wallonia) makes it easier to obtain information. It might be that the centre doesn’t want to answer your questions or that they can not find the name of your guest on their lists. Very often, your guest will have given another name or the centre will have written their name the wrong way or registered them under another name. Even worse sometimes, their names might not even have been registered (yes, it happens!). Don’t be disheartened: with our lists of retained persons and the phone numbers of co-retainees, we might be able to find them back. Contact gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net who will check all the information they have and answer you back very rapidly.
If your guest warns you of their retention, try to know under which exact name they were registered and in which centre they are being retained. Even better, try to get the number on their badge (“OV nummer” in Dutch); a 7 digits number, their room number or their wing and place of arrest. Remember the phone number we may use to get in contact with them.
Send all the information you could obtain to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net , even if incomplete. If other hosts already notified their retention, we will be able to put you in contact with them in order to complete the information and ensure the best management of the record by one lawyer. If necessary, we can ring another retainee of the wing where your guest is in order to complete the information.
Once all the information has been compiled, you will be able to communicate it to a lawyer who will then be able to introduce an emergency appeal within 5 to 10 days as of the day following the retention. Gettingthevoiceout will be able to give you the names of pro deo lawyers who are experts in this type of defense. For emergency appeals, the judgement takes place at the Foreigners Litigation Council (Conseil du Contentieux des Etrangers ( CCE)) in Brussels, and all the lawyers are available for this procedure. On the contrary, if your guests are not released after 5 days, it is preferable to find a lawyer of the region where your guest has been arrested, since the procedures take place in front of the Chambre du Conseil of that region.
You may have understood that one thing to absolutely avoid is to communicate incomplete information to lawyers and that you should ensure that other hosts are not doing the same steps for the same guest/friend.
All this is to ease our lives!
Also worth knowing in case of release: warn the lawyer and also gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
Thank you!
The referents of the platform’s closed centres: Michèle (Bruges), Gaële and Franck (127bis and Caricole), Valérie (Merksplas), Sophie (Vottem).
gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
Between 4 and 11 January 2019 (8 days), at least 100 migrants were arrested in Zeebruges, Antwerp, on parking places or in trucks, on trains (even though they had train tickets), mainly on the way to the coast.
Fifty of them are being retained in closed centres. Eighteen have been released thanks to urgent appeals to the CCE (Litigation Council) against their retention and/or order to leave the territory. Other releases will follow.
The staff of the centres continue to do the dirty job at the request of their boss, the Foreigners Office.
Social assistants continue threatening them wih deportation as soon as they arrive to the centre and make them believe that if they resort to a lawyer they might not be released.
Unfortunately, some of them believe what social assistants say. As a result, they remain in the centre with no lawyers and after a few weeks they are deported to their Dublin country, or worse, to their country of origin after several months of retention.
For example, after 8 moinths of retention, a woman and a man already had to go through a forced deportation with escort to Ethiopia. One was deported by force this Monday 7 January 2019. We are 13 January and so far we haven’t got any news from her arrival in Addis-Abeba.
Several others have been threatened with deportation to Ethiopia, a country with which the Foreigners Office seems to have found a secret agreement to ease these deportations. One of them already had to go through two deportation attempts and is in a poor state, the third attempt will happen very soon. Be ready! http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/how-to-stop-a-deportation/
It seems that Ethiopian airlines is the airline that collaborates with these deportations.
Let’s prevent deportations by all means Let’s free them all!
17/12/2018: The merry-go-round of retentions/releases of the exiles caught in train stations and parkings all over the country goes on.
In November only, 73 arrests have been reported by hosts. Sixty were released in the following days, generally thanks to the rapid intervention by lawyers who introduced emergency appeals to the CCE.(Conseil du Contentieux des Etrangers)
Among the exiles in transit in Belgium, we count, basing our figures on the reports by the platform’s hosts:
127bis closed centre: 35 transit exiles retained
Caricole closed centre : 3
Bruges closed centre : 51
Merkplas closed centre: 7
Vottem closed centre : 8
and as far as we know, 12 exiles have been imprisoned
The Foreigners Office at work
-In order to avoid these appeals, one of the Office’s strategies is to have their workers in the centre say that the fact of resorting to a lawyer will prevent their release.
Remark by a lawyer: ‘it is important to warn that some social assistants claim that a release will be possible as long as they do not take any lawyer, which is obviously totally false.’
Words by a host: ‘there are rumours in closed centres that you have less chances to be released if you take a lawyer, hence retainees do not sign the famous discharding paper.’
Practically, the absence of a lawyer will prevent an appeal to their arrest in front of the CCE. The exile will remain retained in view of a deportation in the following weeks.’
– another manoeuvre by the OFfice is to withhold information on the presence of the people retained in the centres. For example, 8 Syrians were retained in the 127bis. The reception of the centre repeatedly confirmed that they were not there. Thanks to the perseverance of hosts and lawyers, we could trace them (and they effectively were being retained in the centre!) and an appeal was introduced on time for most of them.
Testimonies:
A few testimonies from closed centres on the violence ussed during retentions and deportations on undocumented or asylum seekers:
Testimony 1 : a man retained in the Vottem closed centre tells us: ‘they came to fetch him to isolate him for a first deportation attempt. He had not been warned and could therefore warn nobody. He was rather confident since he had been released already three times by the tribunal. The morning after, a dozen policemen came to pick him up in his confinement cell, they tied him and drove him to the airport. He was deported under coercion to his country of origin.’
Testimony 2 :
« I was driven to my embassy to get a let pass in view of my deportation. The embassy refused. After this, the Office made an appointment in three other embassies: Cameroon, Central African Republic and Burkina Faso. They really want to get rid of me!
Testimony 3 :
We received several testimonies by coretainees in the Caricole closed centre regarding the deportation of a woman:
« The social assistant came to tell her she had to take her stuff and leave to the airport’
« It was the first deportation attempt on her and they had not warned her.’
« They isolated her during the night and had her breathe gas during her sleep so that she would not protest during her deportation.’
The lawyer was outraged that they dared deporting her that way. She will introduce an appeal to the ECHR (European Court on Human Rights).
In front of the repression and the deporting machine, let’s organise against the State and the borders! In front of a State doing raids, deporting and repressing: let’s organise!
Today the #Stansted15 were found guilty in Chelmsford Crown Court.
In a statement they said:
“We are guilty of nothing more than intervening to prevent harm. The real crime is the government’s cowardly, inhumane and barely legal deportation flights and the unprecedented use of terror law to crack down on peaceful protest. We must challenge this shocking use of draconian legislation, and continue to demand an immediate end to these secretive deportation charter flights and a full independent public inquiry into the government’s ‘hostile environment’.”
“Justice will not be done until we are exonerated and the Home Office is held to account for the danger it puts people in every single day. It endangers people in dawn raids on their homes, at detention centres and on these brutal flights. The system is out of control. It is unfair, unjust and unlawful and it must be stopped.”
Picture of a retainee once released and remark by his host: “They released him giving him the direction of the train station, without documents’.
He arrived like this, with two numbers around his wrist (one from the police, the other from the centre).
19 people were brought to the federal police in Steenokkerzeel in order to be identified. Almost all of them were released, with or without a lawyer, after 4 days of retention. A last one was released on 21 November 2018 and an ‘unlucky one’ is still being retained. He refuses to be assisted by a lawyer: ‘
M – story of the arrests in Arlon in the night of 13 till 14 November 2018
That night, we got on a truck. Around 6 a.m., the driver woke up. He must have felt our presence because he opened the door and found us. We got down and he called the police.
We are four. We walked deep into the forest, where one can sleep. Two remained a bit aside. Those who were already asleep did not hear us coming. When the other two joined us, they warned us that the police was coming.
Someone said it was useless to run away and try to escape, that the problem would remain the same. Two policemen arrived, then two more, and two more again, etc.The police asked everyone to wear their shoes. They divided us into four vans and three cars and drove us to the police station in Arlon.
There, we were searched and locked by three during three hours. We all got a bracelet with a number to put around our wrist.
When a policeman came, we heard someone banging on their cell’s door. The policeman was told that this person was asking for water because they had kidneys’ problems. The policeman answered that they could go out and drink after 10 minutes.
They drove us till the centre of the airport in a big bus escorted by two police cars. We got a bottle of water and a cheese sandwhich.
At the centre, they searched us again (in knickers), and placed us in cells by four. Someone in plainclothes spoke Arabic. He asked for my name and nationality and made me sign a paper. I ignore if it was written in French or Dutch. I signed without asking what it was. The man speaking Arabic told me it was a mere formality to enter the centre. There again, I got a bracelet with a number to put around my wrist.
After an hour or so, a policeman came for me. In a room, he took my fingerprints and a picture of me. He then did the same with all the others.
The day after, around 11-12 a.m a policeman called us myself and another man. He told us that we were free. He opened the door of the centre and he said: ‘At the end ofthe street, on the left, after 30 minutes walk, you will find the train station…’. We walked and took the train to go back to Brussels. Others were released laterand dropped in front of the Foreigners Office.
Update 27/11/2018: M was deported. We don’t have news from him. Two of the persons present at the airport were arrested by the police as soon as they arrived and kept at the police station for an hour, while the passengers got on board. We will have to be more discreet from now on. At least, we may conclude that authorities are scared of our intervention impact on the passengers!
—————————————————————————————–
M, 21, a Hazara, repressed people in Afghanistan arrived in Belgium in 2015. His father, mother and brother died in Afghanistan. He applied for
asylum at his arrival in Belgium but it was refused by Belgian authorities. The Office des étrangers (office for foreigners) is on its
way to try and deport him on Monday 26/11/2018 to Kabul via Istanbul by
the Turkish company Airline.
Even though this is his first deportation attempt it is very likely that this deportation will be done with an escort. M has done suicide attempt
at the closed center in Merksplas (near Antwerpen) and it seems the Office des étrangers wishes to get rid of him. His lawyer has reintroduced an asylum application this Friday, 23/11/2018, it will probably only at the ariport that he will be informed whether it is
admitted or not.
M does not want and cannot return to Afghanistan where he has no one left.
His social network is in Belgium and he already speaks perfectly Dutch
He is asking for help to prevent this deportation.
Meeting at the airport on Monday 26/11/2018 at 13:35 to explain to passengers the situation of M and explain to them that they can refuse this deportation on their flight! Turkish Airlines flight TK1939 Istanbul 3 pm
Other Afghans are in the same situation as M in our closed centres and
risk deportation.
Open letter to Charles Michel, Prime Minister, and Theo Francken, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration: Stop the deportation of the Afghan asylum seekers to Afghanistan
Like so many Belgian mothers, mentors and accompanying people of Afghan asylum seekers in Belgium, I am very concerned about planned deportation of 2 young Afghans in the next few days.
I hereby wish to share my concerns with you considering the dangers these vulnerable boys face upon their return.
Mr Michel, Mr Francken, I know you have been given information about the security situation in Afghanistan and, frequently, a that a return to Afghanistan would be safe.
The reality unfortunately is different. The Afghan government is not able to ensure the safety of the millions of its people, and it is not possible for it to guarantee the safety of those who are returned to that country. Indeed, this government is losing ground every day to the Talibans and ISIS, see the recent report of the “Special Inspector General for Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR) “” The Afghan government currently controls or influences only 55.5% of the country’s districts, this is the lowest level since SIGAR began monitoring districts in November. 2015 “.
A recent example of the deteriorating security situation was the Taliban attack in Ghazni district, in a region inhabited by Hazaras, that was safe since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
West of Kabul, part of the capital where the Hazaras live, is now the first target of attacks, usually claimed by ISIS. Given the recent number of deadly attacks, it is unrealistic to imagine Kabul as a safe return destination.
Mr Abdul Ghafoor of the Afghanistan Migrants Advice & Support Organization (A.M.A.S.O) has followed the last 5 years hundreds of asylum seekers who have been forced back.
He found that the fear in the Afghan population is greater than ever before. The one who is sent back encounters a impossible mountain. Besides the fear of becoming a victim of one of the many attacks there is also the fact of the inaccessibility of a satisfactory social situation and the lack of economic network in a state on which they cannot rely.
Whatever their desire to integrate, the situation in the country is such that they do not see any chance of survival. Their only option is to re-emigrate, re-undertake this dangerous journey. Whoever does not have the chance to do it ends, drug addict, forced to join the militias or give up life. The boys who are currently contemplating their deportation are Hazaras, without any social or economic network. (Hazaras are a 9% minority ethnic group in Afghanistan that are suffering a great deal because they are Shiites unlike the rest of the people who are Sunni)
Our country is a country respectful of values and rules in which many give high values of solidarity, human rights and the assistance to others. Afghans are the most marginalized refugees in the world, their leaders fail, to protect them and do not defend their rights. It is time for our government, and for Europe, to recognize the reality and declare that Afghanistan is not a safe country.
It is now time for Belgium to stop sending Afghans back to danger. The future will not forget what we have done to a group of young people who had come only hoping to find security and protection.
H calls me … He has been retained in Vottem since 23 August « I am not well…; they gave me another room, I am with another man; we are only allowed one hour outside, we don’t see anybody. We even have to eat in our room.”
Through the talking drum I hear that H supposedly tried to commit suicide and that is the reason why he was placed in confinement; a ‘luxury confinement cell’. I went to visit him the week after, after the All Saints break, and tried to know what happened. “Tell me H…” He is ashamed, he doesn’t dare looking at me in the eyes because he knows I am deeply sad about it.
Then he starts talking, with his head hidden in my shoulder…
« I was told: you will be driven to the Ethiopian embassy to check whether they accept to give you a let pass for your deportation.” I said “All right, I am going to the embassy.” There it took 3 minutes! No one talked to me, no one asked me questions, nobody listened to what I had to say. The woman accompanying me signed the papers and we left. Then I was told “You should request asylum, if not you will go back to Ethiopia”, hence I said “all right, I am requesting asylum”.
The other retainees in the centre told me that if the request was refused I would still be deported. I didn’t want to believe them… Then, an Albanian man who had been there for 6 months, and whose request and appeal were refused was sent back to his country. That’s when I started to believe them… so I found a string which I hid in my bed, for the day when they would also want to deport me. On that day, my life will end in the centre… The educator found the string. They placed me in confinement, with T. We stay the whole day in that room, even to eat, even to go to the bathroom. We are only allowed to go out one hour a day and go take a shower at 7 p.m. They took everything from me, they even took the bracelet you offered me…”
October 2018
Visiting 2 hosts retained in Bruges… “You know, we are not allowed to do anything here, the guards follow us everywhere. The bathroom is the only place they allow us to go alone. If we do not eat, they lock us in a black room in the basement area; the same happens where there are fights, they lock them there too.”
We are all together in the refectory, 3 guards are watching us; I walked through the detector before entering”. However…
One guard enters the room; N’s face freezes, he retreats, with an expression of disgust. « You know, when you leave, he will bring me to my room and I will have to undress totally. They will search me to see if I didn’t hide anything…”
S : « Yes, it is true, they search everything, even our hair, even our anus … ». « The guards are insane here, they are racist; my social assistant too; she never answers my questions, never gives me updated information. I feel very bad when I have to go and see her. We are really super stressed.”
One may witness a real harassment of the exiles who are arrested in public spaces, transports, stations, and parkings. They are driven to the police station or the identification centre in Steenokkerzeel, most of them are retained for a few days and then released.
In October (see the figures below), the hosts indicated 111 arrests, 73 were released a few days or 2 weeks later.
These retentions are accompanied with threats of return to their Dublin or origin coutries, with the obligation to introduce an asylum request, etc. Several people were arrested several times within a month, brought to closed centres or to the federal police,threatened and then released.
To this harassment, one may add serious administrative dysfunctions, either by the police or the Foreigners Office.
Testimonies by hosts:
02/10/2018 :
« Listen, it is such a mess! The documents they gave him after his release have another name, another country and they relate to other facts… He did not understand anything but didn’t ask a thing and returned to his chances, however the person concerned by this document might still be in the 127bis.
27/10/2018 :
« Quite a lot of aberrations on his order to leave the territory after his release.
The birth date indicated, 01/01/1900, is wrong, the way his name is spelled is wrong, he was not even asked to spell it or check it.
He was given an alias on his order to leave the territory: he doesn’t know this name, they even gave him the Eritrean nationality although he is Sudanese.”
October 2018′ figures from gettingthevoiceout and the closed centres’referents of the hosting platform
Number of imprisonments of exiles in closed centres reported for October 2018: 111
Releases from the closed centres in 2018 = 107
73 arrested in October
32 after a retention of more than one month (six months for some) among whom 19 Dublin deported to the country where they recorded their fingerprints, 5 to Switzerland, 6 to Italy, 4 to France, 3 to Germany and a very lucky one to Great-Britain.
Two were brought to open centres following their asylum request.
Still in retention
39 arrested in October 2018 and 54 arrested during the months before, some being retained for more than 6 months.
13 exiles recently imprisoned, suspected of ‘traffic’.
Not forgetting the undocumented, the asylum seekers, the people considered as ‘threats to public order’ retained in these camps for foreigners.
« Mr D has been living in Belgium for 20 years and he got married here. He was convicted three times for public drunkenness. The Foreigners Office heard of these convictions, they withdrew his orange card because they consider him as “a threat to public order’, they gave him an order to leave the territory for 8 years and placed him in closed centre in view of his deportation to his country of origin.”
NOT IN MY NAME FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND ESTABLISHMENT FOR ALL
Mrs K, Rwandese, retained in the Caricole closed centre for more than 3 months, is in great danger in her country because she is accused of complicity in the conflict between Rwanda and Burundi. Why? Because her comapnion, the father of her child, is Burundian and acknowledged as a refugee in Belgium where he is working.
Her lawyer introduced an appeal for her release. Indeed, when someone requests asylum, the Belgian law says that they can not be deprived of liberty if another residence possibility exists. In her case, this possibility would come from her companion. A record for their wedding is almost complete to be introduced at the commune.
After the contestation of several decisions on her deprivation of liberty that were taken illegally, and the two successive actions by the Foreigners Office, the lawyer seems optimistic about the result of the release request that will be judged next Wednesday 31 October.
However, instead of waiting for the result of the request, the Foreigners Office are in a hurry to deport the woman so as to avoid the release which could be pronounced. This way of acting, going beyond all the elementary principles of regularity, has her receiving a ticket for a deportation the day before the judgement, i.e on Tuesday 30 October.
Her deportation is planned on Egyptair flight MS726 at 3 p.m. to Cairo, and then to Nairobi.
Let’s meet at the airport at 1 p.m to warn the passengers of the presence of this woman accompanied by an escort and of their right to refuse this forced deportation on their flight.
Deported with escort to Ethiopia as of the first attempt on 23 October 2018
M., Ethiopian, was arrested on 23 April 2018 and retained in Merksplas closed centre. He had introduced an asylum request but it was refused.
After having been retained for 6 months, they wanted to deport him to Ethiopia for the first time on 23 October. He had no intention to accept it, as foreseen by the usual procedures.
Generally, during the first deportation attempt, the retainees are driven to the airport and allowed to refuse to leave. Practically, the police insist on them leaving, announcing them that the next time it would be with escort and “much less fun”. In case they refuse they are driven back to a centre (not always the one they were coming from, so as to take them away from their friends or acquaintances). (See also http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/how-to-stop-a-deportation/)
Here, the Foreigners Office decided to override the rule: at the airport, as of the first attempt, M. was brought to an isolated room, his arms tied, blindfolded and his mouth gagged until he got into the plane (Ethiopian airlines), with four policemen (3 men and 1 woman). Impossible for him to shout.
After 4-5 hours of flight, the police untied him. Once at Addibs Abeba airport, he fled because he was fearing for his life.
He is asking for help on the spot.
His friends in the centres all know about his story. They are also frightened.
Several other Ethiopians in closed centres got a let pass by the Ethiopian embassy in view of their deportation.
To multiply deportations, impede the lawyers’ work and undermine the morale of retainees, the Foreigners Office doesn’t even respect its own rules any longer.
Let’s act against this new shocking procedure!
– Let’s go to the airport as of the first deportation attempt to explain their rights and duties to the passengers. – Let’s demand an end to these deportations. – Let’s put pressure on the airlines so that they refuse to continue these deadly collaborations. – Let’s put pressure on the Ethiopian embassy to ask them to stop delivering let passes.
On the 21th of October 2018, about twenty people staged a die-in in front of
the building of the Australian Embassy in Brussels.
This action targeted the airline Qantas that participates and benefts from the
expulsions of migrants in Australia.
This symbolic action is part of a day of global action as part of a campaign
targeting the company Qantas so that it ceases to participate in deportations.
Qantas says it promotes diversity and inclusion.
Thus, its CEO, Alan Joyce, has taken a stand against the Australian
government to say “Yes” to marriage for all and has said marriage equality is
about “the fundamental Australian value of justice”.
In a new campaign Qantas recently launched promoting the importance of
diversity and inclusion Qantas calls on Australian to “stand up for a fair go”.
Now it is our turn to ask Qantas to “stand up for a fair go” and to refuse to
participate in deportations of human beings.
Through its ongoing human rights abuses including the unbridled
confnement of adults and children in detention camps, Australia’s migration
policy is extremely violent and unjust.
These abuses of the Australian government are well known and condemned
worldwide, and by its action Qantas condones them and acquire a beneft
from them.
The collective QantasDontDeport-Brussels joins this day of global action to
afrm its opposition to such practices, as lucrative as they are for the airlines.
Campaigns targeting airlines involved in evictions have already been
successful. United, Frontier, Virgin Altantic, today refuse to participate in
deportations.
The group also recalls that in Belgium, companies such as Brussels Airlines
or Ryanair beneft from the lucrative business of deportations.
Other actions are expected …
A reminder to hosts and visitors of the closed centre:
When peopole who are undocumented or in exile disappear or are arrested during one of several raids, it takes 24 to 48 hours to know whether the Immigration office has decided to free them or send them into a closed center.
These days, most of the exiles currently under arrest are brought to the screening center of the federal police in Steenokkerzeel, within the “127bis” closed center. It is legal for the immigration office to keep them there for 24hrs and sometimes up to 48hrs in order to determine their fates: either freeing them or transferring them to one of the closed centers.
We have noticed that this time limit is often exceeded, and that the continued retention is done under disastrous conditions. It is difficult for us to know whether they are placed in detention or continue to wait for a decision.
Filing an appeal is possible within 5 days, starting on the day after they are officially detained, but very few of them are able to warn their hosts, or even learn whether they are actually held in detention. In addition, some social workers have been telling them that they can’t have access to a lawyer before 4 work days have elapsed (sic).
This illegal procedure makes it all but impossible to file an appeal on time, which is precisely the Office’s aim.
We ask that hosts be vigilant and try to understand the exact situation of their guest(s). If they are in a closed center, they should have been given a document confirming that they are detained or a “OQT” (ordre de quitter le territoire, in French; Bevel het Grondgebied te verlaten in Dutch) if ordered to leave the territory. The type of document they are handed is very important for the next steps in the procedure. Try to call the social worker and get him/her to send you the document by email or fax. (Even better, tell your friend to ask the social worker to send it to you). Visitors to the center could also take the document
This has to be completed within 5 days !!!
Send all information available to the following address: gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net , which will forward it to the forum’s referents and to the lawyers.
Here are the elements that we would need at the “Requests” starting point.avocat listedes demandes
Chin up!
And do ask your friends to let you know if a guy or a girl with no family members is detained, so nobody’s forgotten!
The Referents of closed centers for the platform and gettingthevoiceout/CRER.
Testimony by a host
“I hereby confirm that the person we were looking for has been released today.
His story (his and a friend’s) in a few words:
– caught with 9 other people in Zeebrugges on Wednesday 17 October
– retained in a cell in Zeebruges for 2 days (with 19 people and only 9 beds)
– brought to a centre (which one, it is not clear) on Friday 19 October
– It is from there that he could rapidly ring his hosts before having to hand in his personal effects
– at the centre: threatened with having to request asylum, if not he would be sent back to Italy (where his fingerprints were taken)
– released on Monday 22 October mid-day (i.e almost 5 days later) with a bag with his personal effects, an order to leave the territory, and the following oral information: ‘you are being released because it was the first time, but next time, if we get you, you will have to chose between requesting aslyum or 8 months of retention…’
Notes : quite of lot of aberrations on its order to leave the territory
The birth date indicated is 01/01/1900: wrong
his name is not spelled correctly, he was not even asked to spell it or to check it
an alias is given to him on his order to leave the territory: this name is unknown to him, with an Erytrean nationality although he is Sudanese”
Mr Gebre Mariam, who committed suicide at the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018 had obtained asylum in Bulgaria. He had been threatened with an axe there and absolutely didn’t want to go back to that country. He had been through a first deportation attempt to Bulgaria, which he had refused. The Chamber had ordered his release but the Foreigners office had introduced an appeal against that order and he stayed in retention. He feared a new deportation attempt with escort. One of his friends told us that he had said he would kill himself rather than being deported. The lawyer had also contacted the Foreigners Office to notify them of the racist violence in Bulgaria https://www.amnesty.org/fr/countries/europe-and-central-asia/bulgaria/report-bulgaria/ The Foreigners Office are acting without mercy for the future of the individual; they do not consider the physical and psychological state of the individual nor the dangers of returning to a country where he wouldn’t not be in security.
One solution only : No to closed centres, Stopdeportation
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Suicide in closed centre in Vottem: : Gathering on 13/10 2018 At Closed centre in Vottem
09/10/2018
This morning we were informed of the suicide of an Eritrean refugee in the closed centre of Vottem. According to our sources, he committed suicide around 1 a.m. He had been retained in Vottem for almost 4 months. He suffered a lot from his retentin; testimonies describe him as someone very depressive, barely feeding himself. A few hours before his suicide by hanging, he had been transferred from one wing to another for an unknown reason. After that, he had been given a room alone. That’s where he was found hanging by his bed sheet. The other Eritreans are annihilated, they do not understand why he was isolated, deprived of the company he used to enjoy, and left unattended, in such a bad state!
All Vottem retainees are in shock. Many refused to eat today. They tell us how unbearable it is to live in nothing else than a prison, with daily bullying.
We are outraged. Indeed, one may imagine how four months of retention destroyed a man who, like many other ‘transmigrants’, had fled war to try and join his family and friends in Great Britain. That is the result of the manhunt policy led by the State Secretary for Asylum and Migration, Théo Francken, and by Michel’s government. After little Mawda, after this young man hit by a car while crossing a highway to escape the police, after this suicide, who will be the next victim of this policy?
Closed centres are deportation machines. They implement practices aimed at destroying people psychologically and physically, day after day, also during deportation attempts. Nothing is spared; isolation cell, prison within the prison, the secured isolation cell in Vottem, the disciplinary transfers, insults, blows, handcuffs during each travel to the court or the hospital… Here is what the ‘retainees’ tell us about every day, not understanding why they are being treated as ‘criminals’, many of them had never experienced prison nor handcuffs before… and they don’t want that anymore!
It has been the fifth death in Vottem since 2008 : 3 suicides and 2 dead because of inappropriate care.
Citizen resistance must go on to protest again this deadly asylum and migration policy, which replaces welcome by rejection, deportation; which retains children despite the heavy psychological damage it will bring, in disregard of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
NO, not in our name!
We invite you to join our weekly gathering at CRACPE this Saturday 13 October around the Vottem closed centre, as of 3 p.m.
05/10/2018 Following the decision that Francken would deal with ‘serious transmigration phenomena’, a lot of people retained in centres for sometimes a year have been released to leave space to new people arrested.
Those releases were followed by raids in the whole country and by imprisonments.
It seems clear that the authorities and the Foreigners Office want to show the population that important means of repression are being mobilised, with daily raids on all the territory, ‘for our safety’, so they say.
Francken shows us the extent of his power by deploying his watchdogs (the federal police) in all the train stations of the country. Currently, it is mainly in train stations that raids are being operated so as to make them very visible to the population. These busy public places make the operations much more sensational than when they take place in parkings at night. It is a communication message he is trying to spread through this repressive strategy.
Here are the figures collected by the referents of the closed centres for the platform.
99 imprisonments notified to Getting the Voice Out for September 2018, among which 34 were rapidly released.
65 exiles, arrested through raids at the beginning of September are still being retained in closed centres.
Releases and/or deportations
68 exiles released: 34 who had sometimes been retained for several months in closed centres, 34 released very rapidly. We were also informed that 5 were deported in the context of the Dublin rule, that 1 got the asylum, and another one the subsidiary protection.
And last call by coretainees on 3 October 2018 from Merksplas closed centre: two days ago, an Afghan man, 22, arrested at the Belgian coast several months ago, was driven to the airport by the police… The retainees haven’t heard from him since then!
Last minute O5/10/2018; Razzia’s releasing of people arrested end september ….To make place for others?
This repression also heavily affects families, persons with ongoing asylum requests or undocumented in closed centres.
Here are a few ‘anecdotes’ of these criminal deportations!
Update 28/09/2018: The court annulate the deportation and she is free!
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H., Rwandan, will be deported for the third time this Saturday 29/09. She is waiting for decisions by three different courts but the Foreigners Office absolutely want to deport her.
The Rwandan government accuse H., 36, of complicity in the conflict between Rwanda and Burundi. She has been retained in the Caricole closed centre for more than two months and they already tried to deport her twice but she resisted. The third attempt to deport her will happen tomorrow, Saturday 29 September, on the flight Egypt Air MS 726 to Nairobi at 15h55 (with a stop in Cairo).
H. is expecting the end of the process at the Council of State where she complains about problems of procedure. She is also waiting for the answer that will be given to her second asylum request currently reviewed by the Aliens Litigation Council. On the other hand we heard that her two lawyers introduced a request to release her at the Council Chamber of Brussels for family reasons since H has a child with her boyfriend who is a legal Belgian resident as acknowledged refugee.
The third deportation is planned for this Saturday whereas H is waiting for the decisions of three different courts, which is a perfect example of the Foreigners Office contempt for people seeking protection in Belgium. Their only priority is deportation.
We demand that the effectiveness of the appeals introduced by the lawyers is respected.
Freedom for all retainees!
To help Hadija
1) let’s gather at Zaventem airport this Saturday 29/09/2018 at 13H45 to explain the situation to the passengers of flight Egypt Air MS 726 of 15h55.
The passengers have the right to refuse this deportation and address the aircraft captain.
2) Contact Egyptair Airlines Brussels National Airport PO Box 115 1930 Zaventem
Update 27/09/2018 / WORTH READING IF ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS HAS BEEN ARRESTED
Arrests have been happening at a fast pace lately. They are being arrested by dozens, night and day. We count a lot of releases too.
It is the new strategy implemented by the Foreigners Office. They chose to operate loads of raids through the country, to arrest all the migrants present, to bring them to the new sorting centre in Steenokkerzeel, to file them, and after 24 sometimes 48 hours, to retain them in one of our closed centres or release them.
Some of the retainees will be released after 5 days in average for no apparent reason. This strategy allows to file all the exiles present on the territory according to a process used in ecology, i.e in order to know how many they are, it is called the CMR system (capture – mark- recapture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_and_recapture
A climate of terror settles among the exiles. Loads of exiles are being retained without judgement and with no appeal possible against this retention lasting several days sometimes.
It will enable the Foreigners Office to cheat on the figures, citing the number of arrests (knowing that some exiles are arrested several times) and therefore exaggerate the migration phenomenon. The end in itself: show a certain efficiency to the electorate and exaggerate the number of exiles on the territory.
Practically, all these reforms generate waves of panic among the hosts and the exiles; which is one of the aims looked for. Lawyers are overloaded and it is almost impossible to introduce legal appeals against these arrests and retentions within the 5 or 10 legal days.
Gettingthevoiceout and the referents of the platform try to answer all the requests but they are also overloaded.
In all this chaos, the process to report your host remains the same and for the teams of Getting and the referent volunteers who manage the groups of each centre as well. We therefore thank you to hold on to your determination to get news of your friends and to offer them the necessary support, gentleness and patience ?. To deal with 10 or 50 calls a day is not the same, however it is the same persons who are dealing with it. Lawyers are also overloaded. It is therefore very frequent for us not to be able to find one who is available.
And from a host
To sum up
heads up, hearts down and raised fist! Yallah!
Mr S was deported with escort on 22 September 2018. He was arrested in Morocco for illegal migration. He is in jail.
We dare not imagine how he was deported and how are his imprisonment conditions in Morocco!
The Foreigners Office knew that Mr S would have serious problems once in Morocco but they insisted in deporting him!
STOP DEPORTATION
________________________________________
Let’s all meet at Charleroi airport!
Mr S, from Guinea, came to request asylum in Belgium and was arrested at the airport on 28 July. He was brought to the Caricole closed centre.
His asylum request was refused. He went through a first deportation attempt to Morocco on 30 August.
He introduced a second asylum request on 19 September and went through a second deportation attempt with escort from Charleroi airport on 20 September. He was placed on a Ryanair flight, tied. He shouted and struggled. In the end, the captain asked the escort to leave the plane with S.
The lawyer made an appeal against the rejection of the asylum request, and they should go to court this Tuesday 25 August 2018.
However, on 21 September Mr S got a new ticket for a deportation to Agadir with Ryanair on 22 September! This deportation is a refoulement; which is contrary to all the international laws and regularly condemned by international courts.
Mr S does not want to go back to an unknown country where he ignores how he will be welcomed, and he is asking for help to prevent this deportation.
Let’s meet at Charleroi airport on 22 September 2018 at 12.10 a.m to explain the situation to the passengers. They have the right to refuse this deportation by adressing the aircraft captain.
[EN] In May 2018, we were hundreds of people gathered in front of two detention centres near Brussels airport during the Steenrock festival. We all raised our hands in solidarity with the Stansted defendants. It’s time to show our solidarity again ! More info : End Deportations & https://enddeportations.wordpress.com
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[FR] Lors du dernier Steenrock en Mai 2018, nous étions rassemblé.es en face des centres fermés 127 bis et Caricole. Nous avons notamment entendu les témoignages d’activistes anglais et levé nos mains en solidarité avec les « accusé.es de Stansted ». Rappel des faits :
En 2017, 15 personnes ont bloqué un vol charter pendant dix heures pour empêcher l’expulsion de personnes migrantes à l’aéroport de Stansted. Cette action directe non violente est considérée comme un acte terroriste et ils risquent des peines pouvant aller jusqu’à l’emprisonnement à vie. Le procès aura lieu le 1er octobre à Chelmsford Crown Court.
✊ What can we do? Que peut-on faire ?
Participez à l’action de soutien en envoyant des courriers ou courriels à l’ambassade du Royaume-Uni (voir lettre type ci-dessous).
Subject: Trial of 15 activists at Chelmsford Crown Court
To the attention of Alison Rose, Ambassador
Dear Ambassador,
In March 2016 at Stansted airport, 15 people grounded a deportation charter flight for ten hours to prevent it taking off.
On the 1st of October 2018, they will be standing trial, charged with a terrorism-related offence that could result in life imprisonment.
I hereby would like to remind the fact that these people acted legitimately by humanity and compassion and shouldn’t be charged for this, especially with such a disproportionate and mismatching charge.
I’m therefore asking you to take action and question the United Kingdom’s competent authorities in order to express your support for the defendants, and demand the charges to be dropped.
I also demand to put an end to deportation charter flights.
Thanking for your attention to my request I nourish the hope you will give it an appropriate reaction as soon as possible.
Best regards
➡️Email : public.brussels@fco.gov.uk
➡️Phone : +32.2.287.6211
➡️Facebook : UK in Belgium – British Embassy Brussels
➡️Twitter : alisonrosefco
➡️Contact form : https://www.contact-embassy.service.gov.uk/…
➡️Adress : Ambassade du Royaume-Uni à Bruxelles – Avenue d’Auderghem 10, 1040 Brussels
Because seas, mountains and deserts became mass graves right in front of us.
Because safety, militarisation of the borders and confinement are the only answers states give to women, men and children who are trying to guarantee or improve their existence.
Because razzias, confinement and expulsion of migrants has developed industrially.
Because closed centres are part of this inhuman mechanism.
Because humiliation, isolation, insults and beatings are ordinary, confinement itself is untenable.
Because no one is illegal and dehumanization always leads to horror.
Because the state criminalises humanitary help to immigrants.
Because the Belgian governement, unrestrained, every day exceeds all our fears in this area
We will never accept these crimes and want to let it know!
Train and bike: Arrive at the train station of Nossegem and gather at the parking of the train station before departing in a cortege to the closed centre 127bis at 13h45. Departure is possible at 13h00 (Brussels-South), 13h04 (Brussels-Central), 13h10 (Brussels-North).
Car and touringcar: Park at the end of the Namenstraat, then join the cortege which will pass around 13h50.
Touringcars will leave from Liège, Ghent, Antwerp.
Repression, arrests, mistreatments, racketeering, deportations: these are part of the current messages on FB and elsewhere
Forgetting the dead.
Migrants’ hunting, be it by the police forces or by smugglers, the desperate acts of migrants to flee this repression and the harassment they suffer very often lead to ‘accidents’; very seriously wounded but also dead!
This week, already two persons have died in Belgium on their migratory road. The first one was crossing the A40 to get in a truck and was run over by a car, the other was caught in a fight between migrants and supposedly smugglers, the first ones fighting to find a place to travel, the latter to have the monopoly on a parking… The investigations are ongoing according to the prosecutors, but we will never have clarifications… we will never get to know…
We already know of 7 killed for the year 2018, 2 this week.
TRIBUTE TO
2017 :
– Omar, 18, Sudanese, who died under a bus in Brussels on 23rd July 2017
– Dejen, 16, Eritrean, who died in Aalter after falling from a truck on 4th November 2017
– M, Sudanese, found dead in the channel in Brussels on 17th November 2017
2018 :
– Mohammed, 39, Ethiopian, who died in Jabbeke while being chased after by the police on 29th January 2018
– M., 22, Algerian, who died in Zeebruges on 22nd March 2018
– Mawda, 2, Kurdish, who was killed in Mons during a chase on 16th May 2018
– Amalou Ourez,20, Guinean, crushed by a bus in Berchem ste Agathe ( Brussels) on 19th June 2018
– X, 19, Vietnamese, run over by a car on 17th August 2018
– Imran Ullah, Afghan, run over by a car on the E40 in Ramskapelle on 9th September 2018
– SEMERE, 25, Eritrean, killed on a parking of the E40 in Wetteren on 12th September 2018
No women, men or children in closed centres: testimonies and gathering
04/09/201: A mother and her 5 children, arrested the day of the start of school have just been placed in retetntion while another family with 4 children has already been retained for more than 20 days! 9 children are now being retained although we already know the devastating impact of retention on adults. How could we reach that point?!
Testimonies by these families’ relatives
Family 1
30/08/2018: “The youngest of the girls seems ill. She does not eat or drink. She was being breastfed until their arrival at the 127bis and needs to get used to different food. The doctor came and prescribed one cream … and the mother doesn’t understand. She can neither read nor write. The familly has been installed in two rooms but they live in the same one, the children stay near their mother. There is a small backyard, the only possibility for them to get out.
Children are not sleeping until 3 a.m sometimes. The mother is up all nights, struggling with loads of questions and worries about the family’s future. The oldest kids want to go to school.
It is not enough to answer the most basic needs such as sleep, eat and drink. This mother would need a psycho-medical follow-up. She speaks and thinks negatively. It is dehumanizing to live in that place, and she is reaching the verge of despair.
She lost her appetite and the fact of getting pork twice a day, although she clearly said she was a muslim, will not help her recover, she is full of mistrust.
Family 2 :
04/08/2018: ” The oldest kid is 14. They have been in Belgium for 8 years. They’ve all always gone to school here. They have their friends here, their life and future is here. Their schoolbags were ready for the start of school. Seven policemen went to fetch them at their place at 6 a.m. The mother got in the door to see what it was about. The police forced the door to enter… It is disgusting, it is just disgusting to treat people like that…’
Gathering on 14/09/2018
#NotInMyName: One mother and her five children who were arrested on the day of the start of school have just been retained, whereas another family with four children has already been retained for more than 20 days! 9 children are being retained although everybody already knows the devastating impact of retention on adults? How could we reach that point?!
Despite the heavy citizen and associative mobilisation and the positions by the legal world and international authorities, the Belgian government persists in its criminalisation policy of migrants and does not hesitate to retain children. NOTHING CAN JUSTIFY THIS INHUMANE POLICY!
?They do not want to listen to us ✊! Let’s meet for sit-ins and critical masses of pushchairs in one or several places of Brussels and in other cities of the country (we need you!) that will be announced as of next week. Bring pushchairs, prams, signs, dirty nappies or any other mean to express you’ve had enough of all this!
Let’s continue to increase the pressure and assert loud and clear that the discriminatory, repressive and degrading measures taken by the Belgian governement against migrants, refugees and undocumented people or the people supporting them are not taken in our name. #NotInMyName #NoOneIsIllegal #StopCentresFermés
?Let’s meet to invade the public space with peaceful demonstrations to let our message go through and say STOP!
WHEN?
On 14th September. It will be one month (maximum length) that the first family has been retained, and 10 days for the second one. The time will depend on the location. We will inform you in the coming days about the time and the location.
WHERE?
✅ IN BRUSSELS: the location (still secret) will be communicated in a few days.
☑️ ELSEWHERE: we are calling you to organise decentralised sit-ins in front of your communes’ town halls or other symbolic places. Add us (solidary Manneken Pis) as co-organiser or send us the links of your events, we will share them!
A small toolkit to help you organise them will soon be available.
On 23/08/2018 H had an argument with a guardian concerning the food they get at the 127bis closed centre. He was placed in confinement. The day after, several guardians came to his cell. He says they handcuffed him, hands behind the back. They put him a black hood, then a policeman put his knee against his back and beat him for long. Then they took his feet (also tied) to his head and twisted his back . He also says he had the impression to get electrical shocks in his handcuffs. His torturers blamed him for having too many contacts with the outside, notably with the media. H came out of confinement on 26th August to be placed in medical confinement. He could hardly move, he was not able to stand and had burn marks on the wrists. He was confused and panicked. He feared that they would come to pick him up at night to throw him on a plane ‘like a bag’. He was finally transferred to the closed centre of Vottem on 29th August.
Deported because major in Belgium, recognised as minor in Italy
Elsa was deported to Rome with an escort. When she arrived there the Italian authorities declared that they considered her as a minor. Belgium was giving her the age of 21, based on bones tests of which the reliability is denied by many scientists. Many European countries do not practice these unreliable bones tests anymore. In Belgium, the Foreigners Office continues to use these tests systematically, on the principle that all lie about their age, and very proud to be able to declare them major and deport them thanks to these tests of which the margin of error is of 2 years.
Phone reporting by Elsa from Rome :
Her deportation:
– She was searched and then tied (hands to the body)
– Escort of 7 policemen
– She was on the plane well before the passengers, they placed her at the back of the plane and she could not see the other passengers (behind a curtain probably)
– She was crying. The police told her to stay quiet. Passengers asked why she was crying but then the police laughed very hard (to hide the cries and make others believe it was laughters)
– The police told her that she was obliged to go to Italy because there she had the right to asylum.
20/08 : the retainees of 2 wings of the closed centre of Bruges had consulted each other to start a hunger strike in order to protest, some against the retention conditions, others against the existence of these centres and against their deportations.
They had decided to start this protest movement on 21st August. In the morning of that day, at least two of them who were considered as ‘leaders’ were placed in confinement and then transferred to another centre. The protest movement faded away…
23/08 : the retainees in the women’s wing in Bruges refused to have lunch. Three women were placed in confinement during 2 days then transferred to other centres. They were claiming for their release!
Resistance to deportations in the centres
01/08 : call from the 127bis: the retainees didn’t sleep well last night. They heard loud cries by retainees who were resisting their deportation. They were 2 who cried for 2 hours. Finally, the police came and took them away. The other retainees could not see anything, they had been locked in their rooms.
Arrests at the airport
In this time of holidays, many people come to Europe to visit their families.
The airport police take advantage of that to select those who have the right to access the Schengen area and those who don’t.
A few examples among others:
On 9th August, a couple, the man from Morocco and the woman from Poland, go to Poland with a valid visa for Poland. They have a stop in Charleroi. He was arrested and taken to the Caricole closed centre in view of his deportation to Morocco. She continued her journey to Poland.
22/08 : Call at 12 a.m. An Armenian couple and their two children living with valid residence permits in France go to Armenia for holidays. On their return, on 22nd August, they have a stop in Brussels airport at 5 a.m. The woman is arrested and brought to the Caricole closed centre because she has a ‘non-compliant Russian passport’ although she has been travelling with that same passeport for years! Today (3rd September), she is still being retained in the Caricole. She got a ticket for a repatriation to Armenia which her lawyer managed to cancel. She was supposed to resume work in France. Her boss can wait for 1 more week, not longer.
UPDATE 02/09: Phone reporting by Elsa from Rome : Her deportation: – She was searched and then tied (hands to the body) – Escort of 7 policemen – She was on the plane well before the passengers, they placed her at the back of the plane and she could not see the other passengers (behind a curtain probably) – She was crying. The police told her to stay quiet. Passengers asked why she was crying but then the police laughed very hard (to hide the cries and make others believe it was laughters) – The police told her that she was obliged to go to Italy because there she had the right to asylum.
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UPDATE Elsa was deported on 23th of August 2018
Elsa, a 16 years old Eritrean, was deported to Rome this morning. She was escorted against her will and despite an awareness-raising action for the passengers at the airport.
The child protection, which prevents their deportation (including those covered by Dublin II), has been denied for her, on the basis of a bone test considering Elsa older.
However, she was considered as a minor by Italy. She called in tears from the Rome police station, fearing that she might be taken to a centre for minors. Thanks to the efforts of everybody, she managed to escape from the centre and is sleeping tonight in a safe home, where she feels quiet and where she will have a little bit of rest.
It’s only a temporary solution. On one hand, we must find here a secure place where to sleep for the next days (we have some possible solutions already, thanks to all of you), and on the other hand, her wish is still to go back to Belgium and become a “Belgian woman”.
18/08/2018 Since its opening, the Caricole includes several rooms called “family rooms” what others call cells. These rooms have a slightly separate space for sleeping children. Those rooms are separated from the rest of the spaces by locked doors and have a small observation window. The detention of families with children has unfortunately been common for a long time, but the authorities were committed to consider detentions only very short periods. It is said that these detentions are limited to 24 or 48 hours, waiting for a deportation flight already scheduled. However, we are regularly informed that the duration of some of these detentions may nevertheless exceed 48 hours.
The imprisonment of families with children, which undermines their psychological integrity and sometimes traumatizes them seriously is developing, as new testimonies of persons detained in the Caricole for some time confirm us today :
” Since I arrived at the Caricole, I have seen many children come out with their mothers, which disgusts me, including a woman today with a child who is learning to walk. In general, they stay a night or two then are sent elsewhere. I saw a Palestinian girl, a Georgian grandmother, two African ladies, … ”
And another testimony:
“The previous weeks I saw:
– an elderly woman, Russian, I think, with her little girl who was about 5 years old. They stayed on Saturday and Sunday and left on Monday.
– a Moroccan woman with her 11-year-old son who stayed 24 hours (about 10 days ago) before being deported to Morocco.
And this week:
– a woman from Eastern Europe or Russia, about thirty-year-old with her daughter of two and a half or three-year-old. They spent 4 hours there today and
then left.
– a woman from the Middle East, with her 14/15-year-old daughter, they stayed 24 hours.
– an African woman in her thirties, with her 5-year-old daughter. They spent last night at Caricole and then left. ”
This practice may be one day, after another drama or shock report, described as “fading of the norm”. This is not the case, it is simply the will of our government to expel men, women and children regardless of the (Human) price to pay. A renunciation of all ethics, a dehumanization, a Kafkaesque world for its victims that only aim to obtain some beautiful figures to shake proudly in front of the most reactionary electorate. A curtain of smoke for the government Michel and his lieutenant Francken.
In the new 127bis family detention facilities, the difference is in the length of detention, which may be long, or possibly extra-long. “Specially landscaped” these spaces will circumvent the law, form prevailing over substance, the spirit of the law to protect all children going to oblivion. This is what those who govern us do and, in the process, dirty us all. Sad Belgium. This is why we remember once again that no administrative detention in closed centers will ever be legitimate.
Update 18/08/2018:On Sunday Aug 12, 2018 at 10 am, Mr. A was locked up before undergoing a fourth –and this time effective – attempt at expulsion to Algiers on a TUI flight from Charleroi. This was carried out by the Office of shame. We were warned by his co-detainees.
Here is what he told us from Algiers: “Once again they used 6 belts to tie my feet, legs, hands, arms and torso. I couldn’t move. On the plane, I saw that two plainclothes cops spoke to each passenger individually; I don’t know what they said. I tried to resist, but they hit me to prevent me from speaking. Not one of the passengers reacted. They were certainly under pressure. I’m hurting, I’m sore all over. I cry constantly. I had a life in Belgium ; I used to work hard on worksites.
This confirms anew that the Foreigners Office uses every means available to expell people, using intimidation or lying to passengers. Such methods are more than worrisome. Even though we do not know precisely what the authorities claimed and we would appreciate hearing from these passengers what they were told.
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A man detained in the Caricole closed centre called us under stress. On 5th August at 10 AM he was told that he would be deported on the same
day at 4 PM on a TUI flight from Charleroi to Algiers. He was put immediately in isolation.
It is his third deportation attempt and he was promised a police escort,since he has refused to go on 2 previous deportation attempts. He has
been living in Europe for the past 13 years and does not wish to return to Algeria.
As a member of the “criminals” family as Minister Francken likes to call them, he must, at all costs, be deported from Belgium. Indeed, after a 6
months jail sentence for a minor offence, he was directly transferred to a closed centre by the Immigration Service
A call was made for activists to go to the Charleroi Airport in order to inform passengers travelling on the same flight about his situation.
We have chosen not to mention those calls on our website, since it is watched by the Immigration Service and the State which could mean more
security reactions and block the citizens mobilization.
Several people were present at the airport to inform passengers and we received several messages.
One person wrote: “On board, the plane to Algiers has not yet taken off.Passengers are quite irritated. No way to fly with the man from
Caricole!”
“He was brought back to Caricole. They beat him very hard. Some of the passengers refused to travel with him. A woman screamed very loud and
said that you cannot treat people as animals. The captain demanded that he would leave the plane.”
Back at the centre, another detainee tells us: “the police escort beat him very hard. He is black and blue all over. They insulted his religion
and this is what hurts him the most.”
Extracts from the medical report which describes the police violence:
“On Sunday 5 August 2018, Mr A was transferred from the Caricole Centre to the federal police station and then to the Charleroi airport
police station. During this last transfer, he was attached with belts.His description is reminiscent of a straight jacket for aggressive
patients.
He describes his pains because of the belts which were too tightened. In the police station in Charleroi they also attached his legs. He was
transferred on the plane by 6 federal policemen and his hands attached to his waist and then to the armrests.
He tried to scream to alert passengers about his deportation against his will but policemen then compressed his neck and his ribcage to prevent
him from screaming. They also stuck and squeezed his head between 2 seats.
One of the policemen insulted him: “motherfucker” and said his coran should be thrown to the bin. Another policeman with blue eyes and an orange T-shirt, which he identifies as the head of the group, treated him of “maggot” and of “shitface”.
The activists work gives results! On this flight, about 10 passengers were able to stop this deportation. This was possible because they knew
about the presence of this man BEFORE getting on board.
Indeed, to avoid any rebellion or compassion on part of passengers, the “deported person” is forced to get on board before everyone else. The
police escort is dressed in civilian clothes to avoid attracting attention. They sit at the rear of the plane, sometimes behind a curtain. The boarding of passengers is done only through the front door,so that they do not see the “deportee” on baord. At arrival, the police escort is the last one to leave the plane with the detainee. Nobody knows. It’s in the bag… or almost!
Almost… since this time, it was without counting on the work by activists before boarding.
We must go on, to inform passengers so that they can react and refuse to sit or put their luggage in the right place, for instance. To go on to denounce and bypass police plans to keep secrecy.
Over the past few days, we have received accounts of arrests or of calls for help,
Please keep on sending your testimonies on gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
We won’t be able to say that we didn’t know!
6 minors in danger in Antwerp
August 3: a migrant’s call to a host:
There were 6 of them, locked up inside a truck. One of them called us in a panic. We could hear them banging on the vehicle’s doors and calling for help. Assuming they were in danger, we thought we were about to try to locate them.Finally they had the reflex to phone 101. The port police managed to locate them and released them from the truck / container (whose detination was Egypt!). A police officer told the host that they would be released as they were minors.
Arrests testimonys
Friday, Aug 3, in the morning I was present when 4 or 5 young African migrants were arrested. They had probably tried to climb into a truck. It was in the industrial zone of Wauthier-Braine. They were very calm, but surrounded by a totally disproportionate number of policemen (at least 3 vans and more than a dozen armed persons)I don’t know where they were taken to.
Yesterday, around 10pm, at Liège’s Guillemins station. Two undocumented persons from the Sudan were being questioned by 2 conductors –a man and a woman- because their tickets read ‘under-26’, but they had no I.D. to prove how old they were. This was on the IC519 train Ostende-Welkenraedt that had left from Brussels-North. The conductors called Securail: 3 agents that were outside the train searched their belongings and found nothing dangerous. The local police were then called and the 2 migrants were taken to Liège’s central police station.
He was arrested in the area of Bruges. He told me he’d been locked up for 20 hours without food nor anything to drink. This was during an extremely hot week. He was beaten and mistreated by the police; his shoulder still hurts.
Yesterday, around 10pm, A and a friend were arrested by Securail agents. They were taken to a police station. His friend was later released but he’s been taken to a closed center.
Five Afghans were arrested in Blankenberg on 02/08. This 04/08 we no longer have any news. Their télephoons don’t answer anymore. We send a search message to the platforms
The route to Great Britain
These days again many passages to Britain at the risk of their lives
For 10 who go to Great Britain, for 10 who get arrested and retained by the Foreigners Office, 20 others arrive to the North Station. They are communicating vessels! It is the law of supply and demand in this capitalist world we are living in.
North station became the obligatory passage on their migratory road, to find their community, take part in this migratory adventure, find a means of passage, a small job, eat enough, find a shelter for the night etc.
From 15 May till 15 July (2 months) we did better: total retentions reported: 98
This increase is certainly linked to the collaboration of the hosts and gettingthevoiceout, but also to the migrants’ hunting that goes crescendo. Retainees report raids in all the country, mainly on parking places, harbours and train stations.
Non exhaustive list of the different raids:
26/04 Waremme , 03/05 North station , 03/05 Gent , 10/05 North station , 16/05 North station, 16/05 Wetteren, 22/05 Thieu, 22/05 St Ghislain , 23/05 Asse, 27/05 North station , 31/05 Zeebruges 17 arrests , 31/05 Thieu, 04/06 North station, 13/06 North station
The nationalities chosen by the office for the retentions are Sudanese, Erythrean, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Lybian, Syrian, Egyptian…
At least 49 in 98 of these retained people were released in Belgium or in a European country.
23 were released after several weeks of retention (up to 12 weeks).
26 others were deported to their Dublin country. The big majority joined Belgium and their host families or the Maximilien parc in the following days.
Dublin returns : Denmark 1, Romania 1, Switzerland 6, the Netherlands 2, France 4, Germany 7, Italy 4, Norway 1
35 are still being retained, some for more than 3 months, and their hosts are still maintaining the visits.
14 families stopped giving news from their guests, probably because they have been released or deported to a Dublin country.
Not forgetting the undocumented arrested at their home, in public transports, at the Foreigners Office, the travellers arrested in airports for administrative reasons and considered as ‘inadmissible’, and the asylum seekers who are more and more frequently retained in the Caricole closed centre.
Words by a retainee at the 127 bis on 14 July 2018
« Wings reserved to men are overcrowded. A lot of arrivals for the last 2 weeks and many persons arrested during a convocation at the Foreigners Office.
Some were in open centres and did not get any notification on the reasons of their arrest. »
There have been migrations since the world has been turning. The more the obstacles, the barriers and the military forces, the more attractive Europe will be.
25/06/2018 : « On Thursday, in the yellow wing, 4 Albanians broke the tiles to escape. It made a lot of noise and we all rushed to see, we were quite excited, a dozen of Arabs.
One Albanian managed to escape; the other three have been placed in confinement cells. One of them was hurt and was placed in the secured wing. Another one was deported the day after.
« It was heavy: we all wanted to leave.
Then the day after (if I understood well), twelve were placed in confinement cells ‘for having taken part to the escape…’.
Today, our interlocutor ignores how many still are in confinement, since he has no contact with them.
He was told that he would go to the secured wing as soon as there was a place available. He was also told that it was a very good thing that he didn’t have any lawyer, so they could do whatever they wanted with him.
He is calling for help and is on his knees.
27/06/2018 : The friend of a retainee warns us: her friend has been in confinement for 22 days. “This is not normal, he only has the right to one hour backyard in a cage. Where are the human rights in all this?”
28/06/2018 : This morning, one man who ‘was residing’ in Vottem managed to escape during his transfer to court. He is still running…
27/06/2018: Information for the hosts/friends/families in case a migrant friend is missing.
Many foreigners in irregular situation are controlled/arrested on public transport, on parking lots, at train stations or at their homes. They are brought to a police station for investigation by the Immigration Office. At the police station, their personal belongings and phones are confiscated, which means that they cannot contact anyone. Within the next 24 hours, they are either released, often with an order to leave the country (OQT – Ordre de Quitter le Territoire), or they are detained in one of the 5 detention centres for migrants (centre fermé – CF). http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/what-are-the-detention-centres-in-belgium/
What to do…. BEFORE one of your friends is incarcerated:
– If your friend has already received an order to leave the country (OQT) or has a passport, ask their permission and make a copy, scan or take a photo of the order or passport. This will afford you access to the information (name, first name, nationality, date of birth) needed to find your friend.
– If they haven’t received an OQT or they have gotten rid of it, ask them to write down the first and last names, nationality and date of birth that are on record with their fingerprints and/or that they provided when they were caught. These data are essential for you to be able to locate them as soon as possible and to possibly undertake legal action.
In both cases, warn them of the risks of being placed in a detention centre for migrants (CF) if the police catch them and inform them of their rights, if they, unfortunately, get detained: possibility to give a phone call outside (ask them to write down your phone number on a piece of paper or to memorize it and to contact you as soon as possible) and the right to an attorney and to visits.
If you find out that they have been arrested
– If you know in which police station they are, call or go on site. If there are others in the same police station, contact all your friends and go there together to demand their release. This type of pressure has already led to the release of some detainees.
– In principle, they are entitled to make a phone call if they are being transferred to a detention centre for migrants. If they call you to announce their transfer, try to find out the location and the exact name they have provided to the police and the Immigration Office (Office des Etrangers – OE). This will buy you some time!
Detailed procedure in case of a disappearance:
-In the first 24 hours of a disappearance, be patient: they may be prevented from calling for many various reasons. If you haven’t received any news from your undocumented migrant friend/guest for a substantial amount of time, ask their acquaintances, their friends or other hosts in case they had planned to travel or have been in an accident. They might be stuck somewhere without a phone or with no battery and the best thing to do is to wait for them to get in touch with you. The police can detain them for 24 hours before deciding what to do with them.
– Has it been more than 24 hours? Have you learned that your friend has been detained? Has your friend contacted you but without knowing in which centre they are, …?
How to locate your missing friend?
Before starting to call detention centres:
Be aware that the primary role of a detention centre (CF) is not to help you or to collaborate with you but to “maintain undocumented migrants at a specified location close to borders so as to facilitate their removal from the country”. Also, the “social worker” provided to your friend represents the Immigration Office in the detention centre and is therefore not necessarily the kind of social worker you might have in mind.
Two possible scenarios:
-In the best case, you will have had time to talk to your friend before their arrest and you have the name they give to the police (whether actual or fictitious), as well as their nationality (whether actual or fictitious).
Call the “Caricole” detention centre at 02 719 71 09 or 02 719 71 10 as they – in theory – centralise the information and – normally – have a list of all the detainees. Ask them if the person that you are looking for is detained in their centre or in another one. They will ask you for your friend’s LAST NAME + first name + nationality. If they don’t find the information, it does not mean that your friend is not in a detention facility. Don’t give up; start calling all the other facilities:
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Bruges (CIB) Tél 050 45 10 40
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Merksplas (CIM) : 014 63 91 10 mail: cim.info@ibz.fgov.be
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Vottem (CIV) : 04 228 89 00
Centre 127 bis : Tel 02 759 42 99 —-02 755 00 00 mail: onthaalbis@ibz.fgov.be
-Second possibility: If you only know his or her alias, send an email to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net where someone might be able to cross-reference that information with other calls made.
When you know that your missing friend is in a detention facility and you know its location, what else can you do?
(do what you can without any obligation: “Everyone does what they can, the way they can, when they can”)
-Get them a mobile phone without a camera (Note: your friend can request to have their SIM card in the detention facility). If not, try to get the phone number of a fellow detainee who is willing to receive your call. Through the private message (PM) groups you can also coordinate with other visitors to get the mobile phone to your friend.
– Visit him or her at the detention facility and/or bring them their belongings if at all possible (see the practical information provided for each detention facility CF). The PM groups have made it possible for hosts, friends and families to coordinate support (car rides, belongings,…) see below.
– Contact gettingthevoiceout (GVO) by email and give them the name of the detained person, their nationality and the name of the facility. GVO will put you in touch with a visitor or, for the guests of the plateforme d’hébergement citoyen with a designated contact person for that facility (“référents centre” (RC)) (see below).
As soon as you are in contact with your detained friend, try to find out what happened and if they want a lawyer.
If they want to be assisted by a lawyer, contact Gettingthevoiceout and provide them with as many details as possible. In some cases, it is urgent to find a lawyer because certain steps must be taken within 10 days, sometimes even within 5 days.
Send the information to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net, never through Facebook or PM (private message)
This is the information the lawyer will need, in order of importance:
Name under which the person is registered in the detention centre (most often their OQT names if they have already received OQT’s)
-Nationality (as recorded by the Immigration Office)
-Name of the detention centre: 127 bis, Caricole, Vottem, Bruges, Merksplas?
-Identification number (Immigration Office/IBZ/SP) that should, in principle, have been put on their badges upon their arrival at the centre.
-Date of birth
-Date of arrest
-Place of arrest
-Language of the case /
Visits to detention facilities
Each centre has their own rules and procedures for visits (see specific information for each facility in annex). Visits also provide an opportunity to ask the detained persons about other guests/friends who are not accounted for.
CAUTION: The legislations linked to the topics of migration are extremely complex. Don’t try to take on the role of a specialist or a specialised lawyer and don’t ever rely on the advice provided by the social workers in the detention centre as they first and foremost tend to defend the interests of the Immigration Office and not those of the migrants!
The first question to ask oneself: does your friend want the support of a lawyer? The decision is theirs but should they decide to get a lawyer, it is important that they be willing to listen, trust, follow their advice,and follow the legal proceedings to the end. Much too often, a lawyer is found only to be rejected by your friend for various reasons (fear of the unknown, lack of trust in the lawyer, belief that without lawyers they will be rapidly “dublinated” towards their point of entry…from which they’ll easily be able to return, which is often a false assumption!). Giving up on the proceedings benefits the Immigration Office whose aim is to make the life of the detainee so unbearable that they accept to be deported or agree to return voluntarily.
A specialised lawyer can identify flaws in the proceedings (badly formulated arrests and incarcerations documents, lack of interpreters, requests for asylum introduced by the Immigration Office against the will of the detainees, blind application of the Dublin rules…) and the lawyer can make sure your friend’s rights are respected.
Gettingthevoiceout has a list of competent lawyers to defend the rights of the migrants.
In case of release or deportation:
Inform gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net as quickly as you can on the fate of your friend so as to provide us with a global perspective on these deportations/releases.
In case of deportation threats
As soon as they arrive at the centre, the migrants can be threatened with deportation to the country of origin by the social worker, without mention of the existing recourses. They should not let themselves be intimidated.
One day though, if the legal proceedings have not reached a positive outcome, they will be given a “ticket” for a trip towards their country of origin or their “Dublin” country. It is then essential to inform the lawyer very quickly as he or she may, in some cases, still be able to introduce a recourse.
At the first deportation attempt, detainees can refuse boarding: they will be brought to the airport and if they refuse to get on the plane, they will be brought back to the detention centre, generally in a calm manner.
At the second deportation attempt (sometimes the third), they will be told they will be escorted and forcefully deported. If they resist, it can become very violent. If the detainee wants support to prevent their deportation, the CRER and Gettingthevoiceout can call upon people to mobilize, go to the airport and talk to the passengers of the flight in question. They’ll explain to the passengers that they have the right to inform the flight captain that they refuse to travel with a man/woman that is being deported by force. They can refuse to sit down as long as the deportee is on the plane.
For the hosts of the Plateforme hébergement citoyen: Coordination groups via Messenger and Whatsapp
Messenger or Whatsapp groups specific to each detention centre have been created.
They connect together the people/families concerned about the fate of a detainee, who would like to coordinate visits (car pools), drop off packages, get info, help and support one another, …
The Plateforme hébergement citoyen has also appointed contact persons for each detention centre (CF)in order to provide information, facilitate coordination with Gettingthevoiceout and stimulate the MP groups. They are voluntary. They are no legal advisors and they don’t liaise with the lawyers.
The information shared among the referents and GVO concerning the retainees are kept confidential except prior agreement of the retainee and can only be used in the interest of the retainee, individual or collective.
On 20 June 2018, during the whole day, militants blocked the building site of the family units next to the 127bis. In the centre, the retainees expressed their support in favour of this movement in different ways. Some refused to sit and have lunch, others wrote messages of support and solidarity with the militants, etc.
One retainee crossed the corridor shouting ‘we want freedom, we want freedom!‘. The guard came and said ‘enough now, calm down or else…‘, other retainees who had heard the noise joined him rapidly and opposed the guard telling him ‘he has the right, he is doing nothing wrong’. The reaction of the authorities was fast: 4 people were placed in confinement cells! It is automatic for anyone who tries to spread another message than the message of the authorities. Confinement aims at discouraging any form of action, and at breaking any form of growing resistance within the centres.
What happens inside the centre can also be seen outside. When one speaks of the resistance to migration, security and repressive policies, may they come from inside or outside the centres, it is a real dissuasion logic that the authorities are applying. An attempt to cut all support to actions that make the ligth on what is going on inside the closed centres, as shown by the arrest of the RTBF film crew during the occupation of the building site by the militants on 20 June 2018.
21/06/2018 Further escape attempts (to be confirmed); Four other detainees attempted to escape to the Vottem detention centre at 10 a.m. on 21 June. Three have been caught, one of them is still running.
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H had been retained at the 127bis closed centre for more than 2 months. He was supposed to be deported this 20 June 2018. He had sung “Aicha” on the microphone from his cell at the Steenrock and he had impressed the audience.
On 19 June, he escaped when he was in the backyard, climbing the fences. He vanished into thin air. The guards and management “are not happy” according to a retainee,they are having a meeting to ‘change the regulations’, he added.
Another escape attempt happened at the Vottem closed centre on Saturday 16 June, also from the backyard. Unfortunately, the guards could catch him and they beat him and he has been placed in a confinement cell, according to the information we got.
We had received distress messages from prisoners in closed centres and more particularly from 127bis in Steenokkerzeel. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/ramadan-in-closed-centres-hunger-strike/
Following repression, detention and threats from the management for those who tried to have contacts with the outside, with the media, the calls of the detainees were very incomplete, disjointed.
A certified person went to meet some of the migrants
– escape attempt last week: the two persons got intercepted, one was placed in confinement for 48 hours, the other for a week and then deported.
– Muslim retainees don’t have the right to Moroccan bread and pancakes for the breaking of the Ramadan fast, but they are being served pasta 4 times a week…
– they get out of date and moldy bread for meals
– 3 women were arrested in the framework of legal cohabitation procedures. One was released because she was pregnant but with an order to leave the territory after the baby was born. The father is Belgian.
– One retainee has been confined in a cell with no windows for 22 days.
– All the retainees fear the calls of social assistants because they are frigthening (tickets, threats of being sent back to their country of origin, messages of thekind ‘what the hell are you doing here? You don’t have anything to do here!’.
– the guards spend their time annoying and challenging the retainees with verbal racist attacks to be able to place them in confinement if they react.
In heavy pain, on hunger strike, epileptic and DEPORTED
Mimoun had been in Belgium for 3 years. He got a surgical operation due to a several cerebral pathology in 2017. He had to learn how to eat and walk again. He lost all sensations in his hand and can hardly walk. A regular follow-up during a period of 10 years was essential. Due to this pathology he became epileptic and has to take pills every day.
After the surgery, he was working a few hours a week in the pizzeria of a friend.
He got arrested at the end of March 2018 during a control at the pizzeria and he was transferred to the 127bis closed centre.
On May 9 2018 they tried to deport him for the first time. The doctor of the centre had drafted him a ‘not fit on flight’ certificate seen his poor health status. But another external doctor called by the centre made him a ‘fit for flight’ certificate. He refused that deportation and was brought back to the centre.
His lawyer refused to follow hip because he could not afford to pay him anymore and had debts.
He did not receive his medicine anymore and had 4 epileptic crises in the centre.
Message by a co-retainee on May 13 2018: « Good morning Madam, it is 2:17 in the centre. There is a Moroccan man here who suffers from epilepsy. He got a brain surgery here in Belgium and it has been 4 days he hasn’t eaten. Unfortunately, today he had an epileptic crisis. Honestly, I was shocked when I saw him in that state… they didn’t even call an ambulance, nothing! It is totally inhuman, please help us!”
The management was threatening him with confinement cell ‘if he was having other crises’. His co-retainees were supporting and helping him, they were washing him etc and absolutely did not want him to be placed in confinement cell.
On May 15 he was finally transferred to a medical confinement cell and could at last take his antiepileptic medicine again. He was isolated from everything and everyone. He continued his hunger strike, only drinking water and coffee.
We had a last contact with him on May 27 2018. We learnt that he had been deported to Morocco on May 28, without having been allowed to warn his lawyer and his friends.
The Office used all the means possible to deport Mimoun as any foreigner locked in our camps called closed centres for illegals, condemning to death in the short or medium term since Mimoun can neither afford to have a medical follow-up nor to pay for his treatment in a region such as the Rif.
The Office is filling hundreds of places in our camps called closed centres; places that had been made available on the occasion of the raids announced at the North Station and in Parc Maximilien.
After the mobilisation of the platform and following the police interventions, the Foreigners Office chose to organise raids in a more discrete way, on their migratory routes. Several dozens of them have been arrested the last weeks and find themselves in closed centres today, others were released after hours spent in confinement cells, and after being subject to violence not far from torture.
They filled our camps one after the other: on 23 May it was Vottem, on the 24th Merksplas and on the 25th Bruges.
According to our last assessment, 70 of the 85 retainees in our camps had been released, be it in Belgium or in another European country, sometimes after having been retained for several months. After their release, many of them resumed their migratory journey to Great-Britain or another European country. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/the-hosts-their-guests-and-the-decision-makers-10052018/
It will most likely be the case for the newly arrested people.
One may wonder what the use of these raids and retentions is. Is it to discourage all asylum seekers and undocumented, to increase the numbers of ‘illegals’ to deport, to reassert the ‘strict but fair migration policy’ so dear to Theo Francken ?
At the closed centre 127bis, the situation remains explosive, hunger strikes started at the beginning of the May and they seem to be ongoing although we get very few information after the heavy pressure on the retainees not to have contacts with the outside.Some ‘recalcitrant’ retainees have been retained for one month in a confinement cell, others are in medical confinement. An epileptic man is in a worrying state of health. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/epileptic-crisis-and-hunger-strike-at-the-127bis-closed-centre-14052018/
At the Caricole centre, 5 retainees escaped. One of them has been tagged as islamist by Theo Francken…
As a reminder, a man had been retained for several months in Vottem, suspected of being a terrorist. He was finally released… His interview: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/testimony-by-an-extremely-dangerous-terrorist/
The administrative detention of migrants (foreigners without residence permits considered as valid) entered into force in 1988 in Belgium. Since then, the multiplication of this type of space is more than obvious at the border because in 1988 there were 30 places in closed centres whereas today there are approx. 650. In front of this assertion of repressive measures, one may truly speak of an explosion of the detention of this category of persons! A closed centre is in principle not a prison, it is an extra-penitentiary detention where the decision to detain only is of administrative nature. These centres are under the direct management of the Foreigners Office who has sovereign power over them. Practically, despite all the attempts to euphemize the compelling aspects of that mechanism (in closed centres one does not speak of ‘prisoners’ but well of ‘residents’, one does not say ‘incarcerated’ but well ‘retained’), it is truly a prison system. Out of sight, safe from the reactions of civil society, thousands of men and women are retained there, in average 7,000 per year. There are 6 closed centres in Belgium: 5 in Flanders and 1 in Wallonia.
Invisibility and inaccessibility… two terms that perfectly describe closed centres and make camps out of them in the sense that one can see the disappearance of the individual at the advantage of the group, the impossibility to grant respect for fundamental rights and the retention of people who did not commit any offense. Monstruous places in terms of respect of fundamental rights and of procedures but also in terms of human dignity. Multiple security mechanisms, nearly constant surveillance of the retainees, disciplinary sanctions, searches etc; The retainees are submitted to a though regime. Little privacy, locked at night in rooms of 4-6 persons or, such as in Bruges, in dormitories foreseen for up to 20 people.
Thanks to the action of militants (against closed centres), certain situations are sometimes made visible: ill people, pregnant women, parents, very old people, minors, etc. Most of them are being abandoned by their ghostly court-appointed lawyers. Foreigners who did not commit any offense. The Belgian State locks them during days, weeks, officially in order to organise their deportation, either individually thanks to the collaboration of airlines, or on collective flights supervised by soldiers and out of sight.
The unknown factor of detention: its length may in principle not exceed two months, which can be extended once under certain conditions, then once again until up to 8 months maximum. However practically, these legal deadlines, already very long, are not respected. A speciality of Belgian administration: ‘reset the counters’, hence renewing the ground for retention, in case of asylum request or failed escape attempt. Therefore, no limit in time! More than a place where there is no law, it is an exception system that applies in closed centres where everything seems possible for who is controlling them, where any procedure not pleasing the Office may be diverted, modified or used to serve the interests of more and more security migratory policies. In 2015, approx. 300 people remained detained for more than 4 months, and one thousand of them between two to four months. The longest retention in 2015 lasted one year and two months, again witnessing the lack of political will to recognise migrants as rights holders.
Under the pretext of fighting against criminality and terrorism, hence continuing this movement of migrants’ criminalisation, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, announced in May 2017, the construction of three new closed centres by 2021, doubling Belgium’s retention capacity. The retention policy is doing well, void to ‘reassure’ the public opinion and ‘discourage’ people in exile.
The progressive anchoring of a logic of surveillance, monitoring and dissuasion that affects all migrants gets crystalised in the multiplication of closed centres. It is time to denounce it and to stop this juridical, social, symbolic and political alienation!
Only the suppression of these centres, and not their likely ‘humanisation’ will put an end to these racist abuse of power.
Since 11 May 2018, retainees have been on hunger strike at the 127bis closed centre. Muslims gathered in one wing for the Ramadan.
Two external associations had offered to deliver food during the Ramandan that started on 16 May 2018.
They heard that it will be forbidden by the management.
They see this prohibition as an indirect route to ban Ramandan in the centre and a non-respect of their religion’.
They decided to go on hunger strike on 11/05/2018 and demand:
-respect of their religion and of Ramadan
-friends’ association to bring adequate food in the centre
-access to the kitchen in the centre in order to prepare their food!
This day the situation is explosive: one part of the strikers is in confinement cells. Others continue to ring us to denounce the situation in the centre: junk food, insults by the guards, ill-treatments.
A man has been on hunger strike for 15 days has made several epileptic seizures. He is currently in medical isolation. People can not see it and no contact: ‘we’re going to let it go slowly,’ the detenees tell us!
Calling doctors, parliamentarians, NGOs and tu quanti to go see …… ..
We are VERY worried!
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Epileptic crisis
At the 127bis closed centre, a man is in a worrying state and he doesn’t seem to get medical care.
After a brain surgery, he had been revalidated for several months and he had to learn to walk again. After this revalidation time, he had to go through regular check ups and follow an anti-epileptic treatment. He resumed his life as undocumented and worked for several hours at a friend’s pizzeria in order to be self-supporting. He was arrested at work and imprisoned at the 127bis some 80 days ago.
He got through a first deportation attempt on 9 May 2018; which he refused.
Since then he has stopped eating and he doesn’t get his anti-epileptic medicine.
He had 3 crises in the centre. The only reaction of the medical service seems to have been: in case of a new crisis he will be confined. Retainees refuse that he is placed in confinement and left alone unattended.
His coretainees alert us.
13/05 text message : « Good morning Madam, it is 2:17 in the centre. There is a Moroccan man here who suffers from epilepsy. He got a brain surgery here in Belgium and it has been 4 days he hasn’t eaten. Unfortunately, today he had an epileptic crisis. Honestly, I was shocked when I saw him in that state… they didn’t even call an ambulance, nothing! It is totally inhuman, please help us!”
He can not and does not want to go back to his country where he could not afford to pay for his medical monitoring, he needs a lawyer and he asking for our support to stay here in Belgium.
Hunger strike
17 retainees have been on hunger strike since 11 May. Their claims were not heard by the management who remain silent, and the medical service is totally absent. They call for assistance from the outside.
Their claims are:
-respect for their religion and for Ramandan
-allow the friend associations to provide them with suitable food in the centre
-access to the kitchen of the centre to prepare their meals!
127 bis 11/05/2018
30 retainees go on hunger strike at the 127bis closed centre.
External associations had proposed to deliver food during the Ramandan period that starts on 16/05/2018.
They learnt this morning that it would be forbidden by the management.
They see this prohibition as ‘a circuitous route to ban Ramandan in the centre, and as a lack of respect for their religion’.
They decided to go on hunger strike today and demand:
-respect for their religion and for Ramadan
-the authorisation for friend associations to deliver adapted food in the centre
– access to the kitchen in the centre to prepare their meals!
13/05/2018
The retainees decided to wait Monday to ‘discuss with the centre director’. 16 of them still are on hunger strike.
Text message this morning, 13 May, Good morning Madam, 02:17 in the centre. There is a Moroccan who suffers from a disease (epilepsy). He had a head surgery here in Belgium and he hasn’t been eating for 4 days, unfortunately he had an epileptic seizure. Honestly, I was shocked when I saw him that state… They even didn’t call an ambulance, nothing. They took him at the medical service… it is inhuman… Please help us!
Each year, during the Ramadan period, retainees protest against the organisation of Ramadan in closed centres when meals are completely insufficient and only consist of bread at sunrise and sunset. Several years ago, warmed pasta even had provoked health problems. Is it necessary each time that authorities are uncompromising to add another layer of repression? Another irrespectul treatment?
Since the end of December 2017, the hosts of the citizens’ platform regularly call Gettinthevoiceout and Stopdeportations to warn them of the disparition of one of their guest(s). Most are declared Sudanese, Eritreans or Ethiopians.
Since 27/12/2017 and until 09/05/2018, we got 128 missing reports.
Out of them, 40 were finally found back the days after an arrest, a raid, or a control, and released with an order to leave the territory, or found back in Great-Britain.
3 were never found back.
85 of the “missing” were found back in our closed centres.
39 of them were finally released after several weeks/months of imprisonment in our return camps.
As far as we know, 3 were deported to Sudan after a long retention period (up to 8 months).
31 could ‘benefit’ from the Dublin procedure and were brought back to Schengen countries (4 in Switzerland, 4 in the Netherlands, 3 in France, 9 in germany, 9 in Italy, 1 in Norway, 1 in Sweden and 1 in Great Britain (family reunification).
12 still are retained in a closed centre and their record is ongoing.
In brief, 70 of the 85 people retained in our camps are currently free, be it in Belgium or in another European country, after being retained for several months sometimes. Many of them resumed their migratory route to Great Britain or another European country after their release. One of them reached Canada!
These figures that only are our figures reflect the future of people brought to our camps/closed centres in general and they witness the uselessness of closed centres.
In 2017 6,977 persons would have gone through a forced return according to Francken, either to their country of origin, or to a European country (Dublin transfert or bilateral recovery), or rejected at the border for administrative reasons defined by the Foreigners Office (35,45 % of the 6,977).
Statistics of the Foreigners Office for 2016, to be considered cautiously https://dofi.ibz.be/sites/dvzoe/FR/Documents/Rapport%20statistiques%202016%20FR.pdf
New raids are announced, new closed centres, a budget devoted to forced returns which increased from 72.000.000 € in 2016 to 85.000.000 € in 2017.
Our policies follow the European tendency, they want to be a model to follow: the exclusion of any ‘foreigner’, the closing of borders with its dead, its camps, its hunting for migrants in Europe and all the neighbouring countries. All this for the sake ofour economy, our security, our neoliberalism, capitalism, post-colonialism, imperialism, etc. All this because we are white, because we are superior, because we are THE WORLD!
This is not a migratory crisis, this is not a humanitarian crisis, it is a political will throughout the world: exterminate disturbing people and States for the sake of the West!!!
Are we letting them??????
“Act locally, think globally”
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND SETTLMENT FOR ALL STOP RAIDS NON TO TO CLOSED CENTRES AND DEPORTATIONS BORDERS ARE KILLING
Before the Steenrock Festival on 5 May : Repression and Resistance at the Caricole and at the 127 bis closed centres!
Retainees are warning us!
29/04 :
An Iraqi-Kurdish man retained in the 127 bis closed centre started a hunger strike on 29 April 2018. He wrapped himself in white sheets, taped his mouth and is holding a a sign ‘FREEDOM’.
29/04 : ‘They isolated him and check him, we can see him through the windows, sometimes they close the door, so that we may not notice. Since yesterday he is being watched by a policeman.’
30/04 : « they’ve placed him in solitary confinement today’.
Another man is very sick: his basin hurts a lot and he can hardly move. His co-retainees must help him move. He was brought to the hostpial where he went through scanners last week, but he didn’t get the results and he didn’t see a doctor, neither at the hospital nor in the centre.
01/05
15 hunger strikes in wing 1. They all taped their mouths. The federal and criminal police are in the centre.
02/05
The Iraqi could leave confinement cell thanks to the pressure by 15 comrades who refused to feed themselves. Since then they have all been told that it is forbidden to go on hunger strike and that if they do they’ll immediately go to confinement cells.
04/05
« Someone just called me from the 127 bis. The director just warned all the retainees that they will have to stay in their room tomorrow until the end of Steenrock Festival. Someone asked why but she answered :’end of the discussion’ while threatening those who would complain with confinement cell.’
« I went to visit Jiyed and I saw Mounir at the 127bis today.
They plan to go on hunger strike tomorrow in the two wings of the centre to support the manifestation. They are aware that they risk confinement cell, but they can’t stand it anymore…’
« We were told that we would be allowed to go out in the yard etween 9.30 and 11 a.m instead of the afternoon during your manifesttion »
Today a man got a ticket, handwritten, without his name on it, at 3 p.m. : op 06/05 : vertrekuur 11h15 Zaventem Cotonou Aankomst 17 uur SN 285 . The man is Togolese.
Another man got his ticket for the 4th deportation attempt to the DRC on 5 May 2018, the social assistant asked him to sign a paper in Dutch. He refused…
We remind you that if we are able to spread these news it is only thanks to the telephone system that we have set up and that enables retainees to warn us. Whitout this channel, which is already very complicated because the staff of the centre who put the retainees in confinement cells take their phones; which prevents them to communicate with the outside. For what reason police forces are entering the centre and checking a women on hunger strike? What is the threatening message sent to the other retainees?’Shut up, do what you are asked to, if not things will go bad!’
It is clear that very few or no parliamentarians at all go there to see what is going on (apart from the Steenrock in front of the crowd). Don’t they want to devote some time to it, don’t they want to see?
And what to say about the journalists who too rarely take up the issue? However the facts we are spreading are serious violations of fundamental human rights!
NO TO CLOSED CENTRES – let’s all go to the Steenrock this 5 May 2018!
Friday 4 May, 6.30 – 9 p.m – Maison de la Paix (Rue Van Elewyck 35, Ixelles)
Welcome at 6.15 p.m
With the Steenrock festival approaching, let’s meet for a discussion-workshop with activists engaged in those issues or interested in doing so: “Strategy and experience sharing – put an end to deportations and stop collective flights”.
Join us for an interactive discussion on the immigration system in the United Kingdom (and in Belgium) and on deportations, with suggestions of involvement and actions in a strategic perspective. This workshop will mainly be a space to share ideas and experiences.
Register here : https://framaforms.org/atelier-discussion-comment-en-finir-avec-les-expulsions-1524495105
We will explore, among other things:
– Why mass deportations have to stop (from a moral and tactical point of view: how this fight integrates the current political context in the United Kingdom and Belgium).
– Introduction of a concrete case of direct action in a strategy aiming at putting an end to mass deportations.
– The practical steps presenting how the participants can get involved.
The workshop will be facilitated by members of two English collectives ‘End deportations’ and ‘Lesbians and gays support the migrants’.
The short film ‘Violent Borders’, created by one member of End deportations and STRIKE! Magazine will be shown.
Most of the discussions will happen in English but there will be an interpreter if needed.
After a new suprise demonstration in front of the 127bis closed centre this Sunday 22nd April 2018 with a phone number, we have had a dozen of conacts with retainees at the centre.
They describe disastrous situations to us: mistreatments, violence, escape attempts, illnesses, confinement cells, surprise deportations, hunger strikes, racism etc.
‘There are lots of problems here”.
“They are making fun of us”.
“We are in a fish bowl, windows are locked and we are too warm”.
“Thank you very very much”.
“You come to stress people out but you don’t do anything”.
“There are lots of problems with the lawyers whom we do not see and who are asking for money”.
“A Subsaharian man tried to escape two days ago. He climbed the various fences and got caught by the police who drove him back to the confinement cell of the centre, with lots of injuries. He disappeared the day after, probably transferred. Where can he be now?”.
Their main requests are requests for help, for freedom, a lawyer, a visit, a doctor, phone recharges, etc.
We are always astounded when retainees tell us about the awful living conditions of these unacceptable retentions, despite the theoretically possible visits by associations and NGOs!
It has now been 25 days that an Albanian man retained in the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem has started a hunger strike, and for 3 days a thirst strike.
We fear for his life. According to our information, he already lost more than 7 kilos with his hunger strike, and we are aware that a thirst strike may have irremediable consequences.
The Foreigners Office want to deport him to Albania, a country they consider a “safe country”. However, this man fears for his life if he had to be deported, because of the local mafias’ actions.
We ask for a solution to be found for him to be able to stay in Belgium, before it is too late…
According to the information we got yesterday evening, Mr M was placed into confinement cell. We do not think it is the appropriate answer to his extremely worrying health status.
No news from the two persons deported to Sudan on 17th of April 2018. Several activists were at the airport to talk to the passengers. A group was very quickly stopped by the police, had their identities checked and were put away from the checking.
Others managed to warn the passengers of the situation of these two persons.
We are trying to get in contact with the two persons deported to Sudan.
There would still be a dozen of Sudanese people retained for months in these prisons in view of a deportation.
Mr S, recognised as Sudanese by the Sudanese delegation, even though he declares he is Eritrean, will experience his second deportation attempt to Sudan this 17th of April.
He has been retained in a closed centre since September 2017, first in Bruges, then in Merksplas.
He had been subject to a first deportation attempt on the 13th of February, which he had refused.
Mr S is extremely scared to be sent back to Sudan where he would not be recognised as Sudanese and then sent back to Eritrea through Sudan.
We will try to put Mr S on the flight to Cairo (Egypt) to then send him to Sudan.
Hence the Office keeps looking for dirty tricks to deport people!
Update 16/04: Prosper disappeared. The Cracpe have not heard from him 5 days after his deportation; which is extremely worrying.
Pappy introduced a third asylum request with new elements. His deportation was cancelled.
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Another man called PAPPY, retained for more than 3 months at the Caricole closed centre and member of the opposition party in the DRC, will be the subject of a 3rd deportation attempt withescort on the same flight and he is asking for our help. Asylum seekers from the DRC seem to be currently systematically rejected by the Foreigners Office and the CGRA and they will be handed over to the authorities in Kinshasa.
Besides, this man as huge health problems and he should have got an emergency surgery already last week.
The only way to prevent extremely dangerous situations for them is to prevent the deportation by speaking to the passengers.
LET’S ALL MEET AT THE AIRPORT THIS THURSDAY 12 APRIL 2018 AT 08:35 A.M ! BRUSSELS AIRLINES FLIGHT SN359 10:35
———————————————————————————————————————————Message BY CRACPE: CALL FOR URGENT SUPPORT : NO TO PROSPER’S DEPORTATION
This Thursday 12 April, Prosper K., Congolese asylum seeker should be deported to Kinshasa on Brussels Airlines flight SN359 10H35 from Brussels National airport.
Prosper fled the DRC for political reasons. Unfortunately he still could not get the asylum in Belgium but he plans to introduce new procedures. “In case of deportation he would be in danger when arriving to Kinshasa.”
I am here, admitted to the centre Vottem. I was arrested in Brussels because I did not have any papers. I am not a delinquent, I am not a criminal, not a murderer, not an assassin, they put me here in a closed centre but it’s worse than prison.
It’s all closed off, we are abused, the officers do not respect us, we are like animals and people who do not understand French are insulted. But when they see someone who speaks good French, who knows his laws and rights, well, they do not like it!
So I had a problem the day before yesterday, they brought me in, I spoke with an officer since I was talking about my rights. He did not like it. He went to see the manager, they wrote on my report “in emergency cell “.
Why? Because, sir, he defends himself with his tongue, because he knows how to speak French well, because he knows his rights. Because, people who do not know French, I help them translate into French, I help them, telling them here we must do that, we must not accept, we must not do that, so they brought me to the prison, the officers threatened it is necessary, they did not even allow me to go to the manager to express my point of view in relation to what happened, they just told me “sir, you’re going to Bruges because you’re threatening”, even though that’s not true!
I speak on behalf of the people here. There are men who have families, they have children, who have been in Belgium for 10 years, 15 years, but they are here locked up like animals. Even the animals I find here in Belgium, even an animal here in Belgium has its laws, we have no law. It is unacceptable, it is unfair, it is unfair. The problem is that the Belgian citizen only sees what sees on TV.
The Belgian citizen he does not know exactly what happens in closed centres. That’s why they do not let journalists or people in, because they know what’s going on here. They have banned camera phones because they are afraid of filming what’s going on.
We are badly treated, they speak badly to us, they treat us like animals. They do not know what respect is, even we are foreigners, we know what respect is.
It’s unfair, I think it’s happening on the government side, they’re crowding people into closed centres, why? Because for them it’s a business, it’s a business for them to lock people up like that. We are not terrorists, we are not delinquents. We are just simple people looking for a life, a job, a future. The Belgian state does not care, even if you shout, even if people march in the streets, they will not listen because for them, it suits them, because it is a business. The centre is made to earn money and the state is ready to do anything to make money.
We are treated like animals and I really hate it because they want us to come out with hate, really they want us come out with hate. When I was in Morocco, when I heard about Belgium I thought it was a country with human rights, but there are no human rights here! Nothing, nothing at all. Just hatred against us, it’s fascists working with us, agents, real fascists.
Please, we are not asking you to release us, but we are just asking that they respect our rights, our laws.
It’s true we are human beings, we are all human beings we are descendants of Adam and Eve. It’s true there are Moroccans, Algerians, Chinese, Afghans but we do not ask you to free us, we just ask you to treat us a bit as we should. There, there is no respect, the agents, in the morning they speak to you aggressively. Afterwards, when you speak with them, they respond in a way that wouldn’’t even dare to do! Sorry because I’m a little upset, I’m not against Belgians, Belgians are good people, because of what they do for us, that I’ll never forget, but I’m talking about the state.
For me, the Belgian state is a mafia state, that’s what I mean, I say it clearly and clearly, the state is a mafia state. They treat people like animals. I would love to have a face-to-face interview, but they won’t allow it.
On 21st of March, a 22 year old man died at the port of Zeebrugge as he tried to reach the UK. He was stuck between 2 containers and died instantly. This is the fifth known death since July 2017 of people trying to cross the Channel from Belgium.
THE BORDERS KILL
Tribute to
-Omar died under a bus in Brussels on 23/07/2017 Sudanese 18 years
-Dejen died in Aalter fell from a truck on 04/11/20117, nationality unknown, 16 years old
-M found in the canal in Brussels on 17/11/2017 Sudanese
-Mohammed died in Jabbeke prosecuted by police on 29/01/2018 Ethiopian 39 years
-M died in Zeebrugge on 22/03/2018, Algerian nationality 22 years old
Last year, 15 people grounded a deportation charter flight for ten
hours to prevent it taking off. On MONDAY 19TH March 2018, they are
standing trial, charged with a terrorism-related offence that could
result in life imprisonment !
Secret deportation flights take thousands of people from our
communities every year. Parents, friends and neighbours are targeted
on the basis of their perceived nationality and snatched to fill a
flight that the Home Office has chartered. Many critics have argued
that like Trump’s ‘muslim ban,’ these deportations are unjust
and racist. Violence and abuse from security contractors have been
documented on these flights. Most people would be horrified if they
were aware of the nature of this process.
The Stansted action was the first time a deportation flight has been
grounded in the UK by people taking action against the immigration
system. People who would have been forced onto the flight were able to
stay in the UK because of the action, as it gave them time to have
their applications heard. People across the UK are standing together
to stop the Home Office breaking up families and tearing communities
apart.
Proposition of lettre to send to Ambassador in Brussels
Subject : Trial of 15 activists
To the attention of Alison Rose, Ambassador
Dear Honorable Ambassador,
In March 2017, at Stansted airport, 15 people grounded a deportation charter flight for ten hours to prevent it taking off.
Next Monday, 19th March 2018, they are standing trial, charged with a terrorism-related offence that could result in life imprisonment.
I hereby would like to remind the fact that these people acted legitimately by humanity and compassion and shouldn’t be charged for this, especially with such a disproportionate and mismatching charge.
I’m therefore asking you to take action and question the United Kingdom’s competent authorities in order to express your support of the defendants, and demand the charges to be dropped.
I also demand to put an end to deportation charter flights.
Thanking for your attention to my request I nourish the hope you will give it an appropriate reaction as soon as possible.
Best regards
Ambassade du Royaume-Uni à Bruxelles, Belgique
Avenue d’Auderghem 10
1040 Brussels
Belgique public.brussels@fco.gov.uk
For a few weeks, raids on parkings and in stations all around Belgium are ongoing again. Several hosts contact us to warn us of the arrest, often violent, and/of the retention in closed centres of one of their guests. Very few of them will be released after several months of retention, most of them will be deported to the Dublin countries. A few Sudanese still riskk deportation to their country of origin and had to go through an intense questioning by the Office to determine the danger forthemto go back to Sudan.
Releases
A few were released these days, mainly because of a procedural defect, the Foreigners Office wrongly formulating the Order to leave the territory. The Office preferred to release them than to lose face during an appeal (see the positive outcomes gained by the lawyers at the CCE http://www.rvv-cce.be/fr/actua/champ-dapplication-directive-retour-et-reglement-dublin-iii )
One example: « It is a procedural defect. When he came back to the centre after his second arrest he had to sign an OLT mentioning he would be sent back to his Dublin country, but the latter never got confirmed hence he was non-deportable. The Foreigners Office might have understood its mistake and absolutely wanted to avoid the success of an appeal on the issue».
Dublin :
The retention conditions are so bad that most of the Dublin people end by accepting their deportation to the Dublin country without knowing what their fate will be overthere. They could end up being deported to the country they fled. It is for that particular reason that many come back after their deportation to Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway – to keep on trying to reach the United Kingdom.
For 1, 2 3 years, they crossed many countries, thousands of kilometers and it is not the closed centres nor the intimidation or repression, nor the European migration laws that will stop them.
The Dublin rule is just about passing the buck to another country but it nevers fixes the situation of the exiled. Debates are ongoing with extremely contradictory proposals: reinforce the Dublin system or adjustement of the rule proposed by several MEPs.
Arrests on the streets, in the public transports, at home, in airports:
A lot of arrests of Moroccans, Pakisatni, Subsaharians on the streets, the public transports, at home, in airports are going on. According to our contacts, Algerian people seem to be the nationality currently privileged by the Foreingers Office… Please warn your Algerian friends!
Several Algerian detainees testify :
-“It is international here” says one of them.
-A man in Belgium for more than 10 years risks a deportation to his country of origin :
« I don’t know my country anymore, (…) because of your “integration” I barely speak Arabic! »
-In Belgium since 2011, arrested on the street in Brussels 15 days ago: “It is not fair Madam, we are full of hate but we bear with it!” Until the day when??!!
Actions
IN all the European countries, undocumemnted associations, exiled people and citizens rally and fight against these migration policies, demanding the abolition of the Dublin rule, claiming for the freedom of movement and establishment. The European migration policies must be fought against throughout Europe via demonstrations, actions, debates, etc. All means are good to ask for this freedom of movement that has been claimed for almost one century, and for universal human rights.
28/02/2018: At the time of big demonstrations by the citizens’ platform in favour of a ‘more human policy’, we received less calls from hosts announcing retentions of exiled people in transit.
However, they continue to arrest people: Albanians, Erythreans, Turks, Romanians, Congolese, Moroccans, Algerians and even an old Greek man (!) are the main nationalities present in one wing of a closed centre. These retention places, worse than prisons, retain people who were arrested at home, on the street, in public transports or even in parking places.
A spontaneous demonstration took place this Monday 26 February in front of the 127 bis closed centre. The demonstrators called for the destruction of closed centres and for the immediate stop of deportations. Many retainees called us to say ‘It is wonderful, we are not lonely!’, ‘It cheers us up’, ‘Help us!’.
« Please you people can help me ? I have been in Belgium for nine years. I was walking on the road when they
arrested me. I have been here since 4 months. They plan to deport us with soldiers’ airlines tomorrow. Please help us ! »
First, the other retainees could speak with the demonstrators, but then people from the security, quite nervous, prevented them from doing so, threatening them with sanctions.
Even though our Secretary for Asylum and Migration excels in exclusion policies, the latter also are European. Europe and its Nation States took the decision a few dozen years ago to wage war against migrants for ‘economic and security’ reasons, and they use all the means possible to that end. No matter the deaths in the Mediterranean sea and at the borders, no matter the agreements made with dictators, no matter the fate of deported people, no matter the Geneva Convention, the universal human rights, no matter this cooperation that has become a form of currency to send men back to death, retention, camps or a life of misery.
This is globalisation; the freedom of movement for capital and the exclusion/deportation of exiled people who flee disasters provoked by our wars and with our weapons or famine and precariousness caused by the same globalisation.
New visit by a Sudanese delegation in the closed centres!
Urgent 26/02/2018 :
Call by a Sudanese man retained in Merksplas closed centre to a host.
“The social assistant warned me that ‘a meeting will take place on 27 February 2018 at 12 a.m. that will gather all the Sudanese people with the Foreigners Office in order to discuss about their situation.”
The retainee we are in contact with has doubts about this information and fears that a new Sudanese delegation will be present so as to ‘identify’ them!
Two other retainees have been convened at 10 a.m. “for a meeting with the Foreigners Office in order to know whether they would be in danger if they returned to Sudan.”
Other visits to Sudanese may be foreseen in the other closed centres.
Call to the hosts – get in touch with your guests being retained in ALL the closed centres and warn their lawyers
If you have more information on this ‘invitation’, please warn us by sending an email to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net or ring 0484 026 787
We stand in solidarity with the 120 women on hunger strike in Yarls Wood detention centre.
Ici leur revendications:
1. Shorter bail request periods
Legally it should 3-5 days, however it can take anywhere up to 21 days, or even a month before you get a bail hearing date
2. Amnesty for those who have lived in the UK 10 years and above
3. End indefinite detention
Detention periods shouldn’t be longer than 28 days
4. End Charter flights
Charter flights are inhumane because there are no prior notifications, or only an oral notification with no warning. They give no time to make arrangements with family.
5. No more re-detention
Redention should not be allowed – if you have been detained once, you should not be re-detained if you are complying with the laws they have applied. This is a contradiction, you are being punished for complying with the law; it ruins the whole purpose of expecting compliance
6. End systematic torture
Systematic torture takes place in detention – at any point an officer could turn up and take your room mate; you’re constantly on edge, not knowing what will happen next. Those who are suicidal now have their privacy taken away because they are being watched – you don’t know if an officer is coming to check on you or coming to take you away. Our rooms are searched at random and without warning; they just search first and explain later
7. Stop separating families
Separating families is inhumane – people in here are married or have British partners and have children outside, and they are denied their right to private life and right to privacy; their Article 8 rights
8. No detention of people who came to the UK as children
Young adults who came to the country as minors should not be detained, deported or punished for their parents’ immigration histories
9. The beds need to be changed
Some of us have been here for a year on the same bed; they’re the most uncomfortable beds
10. LGBT+ persons’ sexuality be believed
It should be understood that explaining your sexuality is difficult
11. Fit emergency alarms in every room in the detention centre
Only some rooms have them, and there have been a lot of cases of people being very ill in places where they can’t call for help
12. Give us access to proper healthcare
13. Give us proper food to look after our diets
14. Release people with outstanding applications
15. We want to speak to Alistair Burt MP for the constituency
Update 22/02/2018 When he got to the airport, A was notified that his third asylum request would be dealt with by CGRA and that his deportation was cancelled.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Spend my life in prison in Algeria or die in Belgium?
Mr A has been retained in the closed centre for 4 months and he will be confronted to his second deportation attempt with escort on Wednesday the 21st of February on the Air Algérie flight 2036 at 2 p.m..
He recently heard that he had been sentenced to death in absentia in Algeria several years ago already, following a fight. He recently got the evidence of that sentence through DHL.
He introduced two asylum requests that were refused. He wants to introduce a third one but he will nevertheless most probably have to go through a second deportation attempt.
Mr A is asking for help to prevent this deportation: he would rather die here in Belgium than spend the rest of his life in an Algerian prison.
He also asks us to warn the pilot and the airport police, as well as the Foreigners Office, of his situation.
Let’s meet at the airport this Wednesday 21 February at 12 a.m. to explain Mr A’s situation to the passengers.
Flight Air Algérie 2063 2 p.m.
Hharrass the people in charge of these deportations:
Et mail, faxe à Air Algerie
BRUXELLES Adresse : 101/103 BD ADOLPHE MAX –1000 BRUXELLES +33 1 76 54 40 00, +213 21 98 63 63
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AirAlgerieOfficiel/
Update 10/02/2012 : Arrests are ongoing and lately the favorite targets of the Foreigners Office are minors and women. According to several testimonies by hosts who look for their guests in the centres, the information is not given anymore by the people working at the reception of these centres. One of the answers frequently given is “weet het nit mevrouw “(I don’t know madam”) and they hang up.
–——————————————————————————————————–
Arrests :
The police is everywhere in search for migrants in all the parkings and train stations of the country. Even if wishtleblowers associated to the platform sabotage the raids, we are the witnesses, through the hosts and the people retained in closed centres, of multiple arrests, mainly of Erythreans, Sudanese and Ethiopians. These arrests sometimes happen with heavy violence by the police forces.
The majority of the people arrested are freed with another Order to Leave the Territory, probably because of a lack of places in the centres. One part is driven to closed centres. The last days we heard that the most frequent detentions are of young people and women, which demonstrates a very well known sadism: retain the most vulnerable!
Closed centre
After a lot of searching, the hosts finally find their guests back with the help of other hosts, and sometimes thanks to a picture! The hosts who have the time and energy bring them a mobile phone, deal with the lawyer, go and pay them a visit.
Those who don’t have hosts are very isolated. The most resourceful manage, with the help of a co-retainee, to alert us. Others remain without contact, without phone, without lawyers etc and it is by chance that they are discovered, sometimes after several months of retention. It is more than likely that some are deported without anyone being informed!
Lawyers :
At present, lawyers are not court-appointed anymore for people coming from Sudan. The social assistant often tells them: ‘You don’t need a lawyer since you will be sent back to your Dublin country’ or ‘If you request asylum, you will be deported to your country, you’d better not request asylum’, ‘a lawyer is not of any help’. Here we notice again the misappropriation of the role of social assistants by the Foreigners Office.
Deportations
Most of the Sudanese and others in closed centres are systematically being deported to their ‘Dublin’ country (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany). According to gathered information, it seems that they often agree by signinf an document in a language they do not understand. We also got testimonies that, if they do not sign, it is the social assistant who signs on their behalf. For those who do not have a lawyer or a contact with the outside, which is often the case, while ‘official’ assertions say the opposite, it is extremely worrying. If they are sent back to their Dublin country, it is not guaranteed that this country will not send them back to Italy or Sudan, and they will find no one to advise them.
Sudanese are really the scoop of the year, but for others, migrants in transit, all those undocumented people who have been living for years in Belgium, the asylum seekers, the same illegal procedures are being used daily without any external supervision, once they find themselves in closed centres.
According to the government, a commission to assess repatriations would be implemented, a sort of compromise found between the different parties in order to legalise the illegal actions of the Foreigners Office! They are being trusted! The commissions only report what they are supposed to report. http://plus.lesoir.be/139341/article/2018-02-10/politique-migratoire-le-retour-du-bon-sens
All the retainees were displaced in the courtyard. The police and firemen hastened up.
The retainees stayed in the courtyard until 3 a.m. After that, several police buses and vans arrived. All the retainees were handcuffed and placed into the buses and vans. Our witness arrived in one of these buses, escorted by police cars to the closed centre of Merksplas at 5.30 a.m. still handcuffed. He got his belongings back at 11 a.m! Our witness is very traumatised seen the lack of space (100 spaces less on that day), he might be released, anyway, no new retentions in closed centres these days, he says!
Another testimony: a man rings us, HAPPY! I had rarely heard so much joy! He heard that the 127bis had to be evacuated. He had spent 5 months there before being transferred a few days before the events. He is giggling and telling us: ‘100 spaces less, 100 prisoners less!”
Lastly, testimony by S, on the women side at the 127bis:
27/01 11 am : They were taken out from 10 p.m till 3 or 4 a.m. We got blankets around midnight. There were several benches but not enough spaces to sit for everybody, hence some had to remain standing. They were extremely cold. Some had not come out with the adequate clothes in order to stay several hours in a row outside in the night. The old woman (73 years old) was very cold; S. was transferred to the Caricole. They waited in the dining room from 4 till 6 a.m (they were still cold). Then they got a room. They did not have their belongings so they could not take a shower yet. Their phone was taken from them when they arrived to the Caricole and they only got them back now.
30/01: They got their belongings back after 2 days. There is no heating in their rooms. They can not open their windows, they open the doors on to the corridors in order to refresh the air. It is cold and the air is not breathable. Therefore, they had to suffer one night outside (10 p.m – 4 a.m) not properly dressed, plus 4 to 6 hours in a room with no heating, in addition to their daily routine without heating. Since her night outside, the old woman is not feeling well. It is still cold. Contrarily to the 127bis centre, there are no plugs at Caricole, hence they are not allowed to recharge their phones themselves, they have to give it to them and get them back later (they can not keep their chargers with them – ‘each centre have their own rules’). Do they look search their content? More than likely since there are no codes…
Bars on a logo : this is what a group of citizens depicts in a video in order to denounce the building of family units in the 127bis. Objective?
Denounce the involvement of the construction company Lareco Bornem NV in the works. Besides, the citizens denounce ‘those who collaborate actively to the implementation of the government’s inhuman programme’.
The construction of the family units in the 127bis closed centre is almost achieved and it shows the will of the federal government to retain children again in order to deport them. According to the latest information, these units could be operational as of March 2018.
The construction company Lareco Bornem NV knowingly collaborates to the enforcement of this inhuman and disgraceful decision. It is indeed terrifying to see on the Facebook page of Lareco Bornem NV a picture of the works from an article of the Standaard (14/09/2017) with, as a legend : « The works at the asylum centre for families with minor children have started. A hundred organisations against the retention centre for families with children.”
The face covered with a white mask to denounce the “invisibilisation” of the persons retained in the centres, the group calls for the works to be stopped. “A few people know about the centres and the living conditions of the people retained there. From retention to deportation, the violence of the migratory policies reaches its climax with closed centres”, explains a citizen.
In a mail sent on 24t January, a dozen French- and Dutch-speaking organisations wanted to address the company to clarify the stakes of such a construction and they sent them the following requests: stop the collaboration in this project that violates the fundamental rights of foreign families who are illegitimately deprived of their liberty, and to express themselves publicly on the retention of children in Belgium. The mail remained unanswered.
Call for action !
Please send loads of emails to Lareco Bornem NV , publish messages and comments on their Facebook page and call them to tell them your indignation, several times a week if possible! info@lareco-bornem.be https://www.facebook.com/LarecoBornemNv/
+32(0)3 890 68 80
Here under is a template email in Dutch (preferable) and French, that you may modify according to your inspiration.
Mail-type
Bonjour,
J’ai appris que votre entreprise Lareco Bornem NV était en charge de la construction des unités familiales du centre fermé du 127 bis. Comme vous le savez parfaitement, ce bâtiment vise à enfermer des enfants uniquement en raison de leur statut de séjour.
De plus, vous partagez un article de De Standaard du 14 septembre 2017 qui mentionne l’opposition de « 100 organisations au centre de détention pour familles avec enfants ». C’est donc en connaissance de cause que vous collaborez à cette décision politique bafouant les droits fondamentaux des familles étrangères privées illégitimement de liberté.
Entre autres, la Cour Européenne des droits de l’Homme, le Commissaire aux droits de l’Homme du Conseil de l’Europe et le médiateur fédéral se sont clairement prononcés contre de telles mesures. Tout comme nous nous opposons à la politique dramatique du gouvernement Michel, sachez que nous nous opposons également à toute entreprise collaborant à un tel projet.
Nous vous demandons d’arrêter immédiatement les travaux.
Ik heb vernomen dat uw bedrijf Lareco Bornem NV instaat voor de constructie van de familiale afdeling van het gesloten centrum 127bis. Dit gebouw heeft, zoals u het perfect weet, tot doel kinderen op te sluiten, enkel op basis van hun verblijfsstatuut.
Daarbovenop, hebt u een artikel van De Standaard van 14 september 2017 gedeeld, dat ‘100 organisaties’ vernoemt, die zich tegen ‘het opsluitingscentrum voor families met kinderen verzetten’. Het is dus in eer en geweten dat u met deze politieke beslissing instemt.
Het Europees Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens, de Commissaris voor de Rechten van de Mens van de Raad van Europa en de Federale Ombudsman hebben zich duidelijk tegen dergelijke maatregelen uitgesproken.
Wij vragen u paal en perk te stellen aan deze werken.
* CRER • Getting the Voice Out • Coordination des sans-papiers de Belgique – Coördinatie van mensen zonder papieren • Ligue des droits de l’Homme • Ciré • Brussels Platform Armoede • Association pour le droit des étrangers • Le Monde des Possibles • Comité des Élèves Francophone • Défense des enfants international Belgique • Plateforme citoyenne de soutien aux réfugiés • MRAX • CRACPE • Voix des Sans-papiers de Bruxelles et de Liège • Beweging voor Kinderen en Jongeren zonder papieren
24/01/2018 : Lots of raids have taken place in parkings and train stations in the whole country over the last weeks. Some migrants are released with an order to leave the territory, others (among whom a lot of minors) are taken to closed centres. They are selected by nationality. The Office’s current top 1 being Sudanese, Ethiopians and Erithreans.
For the Sudanese, faithful to his past beliefs and convinced that it is them and only them who pollute the North Station and the Maximilian Parc in Brussels night and day, Francken declared that he would continue to arrest them to send them back “to a country that will deport them to Sudan”.
If Ethiopians are currently targeted by the Office, it may probably be linked to an ongoing readmission agreement between the EU and Ethiopia. The negotiations started several years ago, according to the well-functioning logic of “more development aid in exchange of more collaboration in repatriations and migratory controls’. In December 2017, the agreement project was disclosed (see the French article https://martinplaut.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/leaked-european-union-document-outlines-procedure-to-expel-ethiopians/)
Once more, it is not about a real readmission agreement that should be ratified by the European Parliament but about something else (in this case we speak of “admission procedures”) – very practical to avoid any debate…
This agreement notably foresees missions of civil servants of Ethiopian secret services in the EU Member States in charge of identifying the people to be repatriated. Does it ring a bell?
Interviewed by the EUObserver, the Ethiopian ambassador to the EU recently confirmed this information https://euobserver.com/migration/140614
We still ignore when the document will be signed but there is no doubt that the EU wants to conclude the agreement – with the consequences one can imagine for the Ethiopians currently retained in closed centres and for those who will arrested in the near future…
Thank you to the hosts: you were more than 10 this Sunday to share a car to go and visit your guests in the Merskplas closed centre. Please continue to support them in the closed centres, continue to follow them until the end of the road.
Through your actions, you are taking part in a struggle against the restrictive, freedom-destroying, morbid and inhuman European and Belgian asylum and migration policies.
Let’s support the fights and occupations of undocumented people in the whole country. It is thanks to the individual and global fights that we will impose this beautiful principle of “freedom of movement and establishment for ALL”.
He just heard that his next deportation attempt will take place this Wednesday 24th January on a Turkish Airlines flight (the same airline that collaborates to returns to Sudan…).
Saha is desperate and he is asking for help. He will introduce a new asylym request but he already knows that this step will not cancel the deportation attempt and that the latter will be even more violent that the previous one.
WHAT TO DO:
1) For those who can, go to Zaventem airport at 4 p.m to speak to the passengers of the Turkish airlines flight 1940 to Istanbul (departing at 6.15 p.m).
3) harrass the people in charge of these deportations:
Directeur van de dienst Vreemdelingenzaken
F.Roosemont Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
14/01/2018: It seems that the federal police have launched a migrants’ hunting in the whole country, determined to ‘clean’ all the country: arrests in the stations, parkings and trains the last days. Many hosts are calling us to report missing persons. Some are found back, others ring us from Great Britain, but many disappear and are most likely being retained in our prisons called ‘closed centres for illegals’. It is extremely difficult to find them back because often the hosts do not have their full names. Therefore, the detainees are deprived of any contact with the outside and often have no contact with a lawyer. This is a strategy by the Foreigners office to prevent them from defending themselves, to keep them in their ‘dungeons’ so as – at least so they hope- to deport them in total secrecy…
Appeal to all the people who have contacts within closed centres : ask the detainees to look carefully around them and to report newcomers, giving us, if possible:
• the name under which they are known by the Office
• their nationality (as registered by the Office)
• the name of the closed centre where they are being retained : 127bis, Caricole, Vottem, Bruges, Merksplas
• their identification number (OE/IBZ/SP)
• their date of birth
• the date when they were arrested
• the place where they were arrested
Send this information to stopdeportationsinfo@riseup.net
10/01/2017: S. has been living in Belgium for ten years. He tried to get regularised since his arrival, in vain, although he worked and respected the laws. He never stole anything, not even to eat. Some of you may have met him. While he was retained at the 127 bis centre, in autumn 2017, he got in contact with militants after a support gathering in front of the centre. A few days after he got released, he wanted to take part to a gathering on closed centres to bring his testimony – on his story but also on the persons’ he had met while being retained – isolated young people, fathers, separated couples, etc.
He then took part in a demonstration against the deportations to Sudan and hosted a former Sudanese co-retainee who had just been relased after three months’ retention. “He spent one night at my place and left to France”.
End October, the police went to his place to arrest him. Back to the closed centre, in Merksplas this time.
This Tuesday 9th January, S. was the object of a very violent deportation attempt to which he resisted in the end. The flight passengers reacted and the captain demanded that S. be disembarked. The police officers started to beat him in the centre. “I knew one of them, the one who was beating the hardest. I asked him not to beat me in the feet because I already have one broken foot, but he did it anyway, while the others were watching… Who are the criminals?”
His co-retainees assert his sayings. S. also got one hand, one eye and the head injured.
“He doesn’t know anyone in Bangladesh, he has been in Belgium for years.”
“Our hands are tied. There is nothing we can do”.
“Please do something for him.”
“We need a doctor”.
If you know a doctor who could rapidly go to Merksplas to pay him a visit, contact us in PM or send an email to crer.info@gmail.com
The fast intervention team of the Office des étrangers at work
On the 25th of December 2017 around noon : a host brings back two migrants to Brussels. The federal police holds an alcohol control on the highway E40 at Reyers. Because of the presence of the two migrants in the car, the police asks the driver to wait there. One or two hours later, two men out of uniform arrive. The car gets completely searched. The two migrants are taken away and the host is threaten of human trafficking.
“human trafficking”: this information is wrong: Aider une personne sans-papiers n’est pas un crime, mais un devoir citoyen http://www.liguedh.be/les-documents-des-commissions-thematiques/2899-destination-solidarite-
What are our rights in front of the police? http://www.quelsdroitsfacealapolice.be/spip.php?article62&lang=fr
A cat-and-mouse game
Due to similar controls on the roads and the reporting of controls on the trams and trains, the hosts are playing the cat-and-mouse game with the police. They try to avoid the controls so that their protégés don’t get arrested, or they advise their protégés not to take the road.
The migrants have no interest at all in staying and all they want is to continue their road. The ones that are hold in detention centers are aware of the rumors. They refuse the lawyer that is offered, they refuse to seek their asylum. They only have one request: to get out of these prisons and to be free of movement.
The lawyers, the NGO’s, the hosts are trying their best to explain the rights to the migrants, but the message is rarely heard. A migrant, who has known only repression and traps since his departure, does not believe in his “rights” anymore, does not trust our “state of law”. The only thing he claims is his freedom of movement.
News 27/12/2017 from closed centre 127Bis
At least 10 new people have been placed in a wing of the center. In the second wing there are also many newcomers, but the number is unprecedented.
Sudan, Erithreë, Syria, Ethiopia, …
The center is FULL
When will there be a moratorium on the suspension of arrests?
When will a movement resume the demands of those involved: freedom of movement and establishment for everyone.
FREEDOM!
Video of a manifestation for closed centre in Steenokkerzeel during the mass arrest of Iraqis.
The persons detained in the Merkplas detention centre are very angry. A man was recently brought to the detention centre even if he had a valid residence permit in France.
It is definitely not the first time that a person is kept in detention for months even though he/she has a valid residence permit in the Schengen area, whether in France, the Netherlands or Spain, which was the case for a Sudanese person who had a valid residence permit in Germany … This happens all the time, people have to stay in detention for months before being sent back to their Schengen country. For very obscure reasons, they get arrested during razzia’s in trains, trams or in public areas and are then brought to detention centres.
While being held in detention for months, they lose there jobs, there houses. Those situations quickly turn into a disaster for them. What the detainees put a stress on through this testimony is the unmanageable administrative logic with which detention centres are rules, a logic which banalizes the practice and idea of an “extra penitentiary” detention :
Deprivation of freedom for mear administrative motives, the green light is given to detentions without any obligation to bring the matter in front of a court and the detention can be maintained for an undetermined period of time.
Another phone call from a man’s relatives : he has been in complete isolation in the the detention centre high security area in Vottem for 4 months already. This month he had been transferred to Merkplas and put in the dungeon. During his transfer he was beaten up. He has a residence permit in France and two of his children live there. The Office of foreigners suspects him of islamic “radicalisation”. His relatives in France tell us that this is not the case: he has two children in France, he used to be a singer and above all that there has never been any type of investigation about this presumed “radicalisation”.
This case reminds us of the incarceration of a man supposedly suspected of “terrorism” who was eventually released after months. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/testimony-by-an-extremely-dangerous-terrorist/
And the most recent call of today 22/12+17 : “Madam, my husband has been detained in isolation cell for 4 days in a closed centre. Is this legal? isn’t that torture?”
The detainees in detention centres are protesting : “Does the Schengen area still exist? What are the duties of the Foreign Office and what do they do that is beyond their role and duty? What about people’s rights? Are detentions decided according to people’s colour of skin? Is it blatant racism? What are detention centers meant for exactly?”
Before that I was living in Verviers. I lived there for four years.
Firstly I would like to say that we, the foreigners as they call us, we do not come here to be a burden for others, for the Europeans. We come here to participate to the life of the community. Most of the people who come here do so because they flee problems in their country: problems of security, of war, of family; hence they are both economic and social problems.
We come here because we can see the media all the time, thanks to the internet, we have access to everything. All the people who are living in Africa, in Asia, in the poor and third-world countries, we can see that life is better in Europe and that’s the reason why we come and seek refuge here.
When we come here to search for freedom and peace and we find ourselves in a closed centre, many thoughts cross our minds. Of course, even the word closed centre annoys me a bit, it is like if we called it closed centre to reassure the people who are outside, to reassure society. In my opinion, they say closed centre to say that they are not like prisons and that people are well treated. In my opinion, here it is worse than in prison because when you are in prison you know for how long you are staying there whereas here we do not even know for how long we are going to stay, it all depends on the good will of the Foreigners Office. Therefore, we can stay 2 months, or 4 months, or even 8 months and live without knowing when we are going to leave, just that is unbearable. So many thoughts cross our minds…
When you find yourself retained, hope becomes despair, reality becomes a nightmare. I always thought that the human being was not created to be imprisoned. The fact of being imprisoned can transform the person. I have always been caring and kind to others; the others are myself, I’ve always been like that.
Just wondering: is it Belgian society that imprisons me, or just one part of it, or just Belgian politicans? All these thoughts cross our minds. It is a bit difficult, honestly, there is a risk that the persons retained here lose their values of humanity. The risk is that love transforms itself into hatred.
When we see demonstrators who sometimes come here, then we understand, but when we don’t see them, we believe that all the society agrees with that.
When we see demonstrators who sometimes come here to shout for our freedom, to support us, it makes us so much good, it brings us back together and we start to think that it is not the whole society that agrees with us being imprisoned, hence there is always something positive, when we see demonstrators we think that luckily enough everything is not bad. Fortunately, even if they are not a lot, there are voices that arise to oppose to this inhumane policy and to support us.
I would like to add many other things but my heart is very heavy. I just want to say Long live Freedom, the innocent human being was not created to be imprisoned.
I say it here and I’ll continue saying it when I leave the centre, I’ll continue to fight for it to remain the truth for ever and ever, long live the human being, long live human values.
Update 5 december (Nl): De mensen opgesloten in her centrum 127bis waren van plan mee te betogen vanuit het centrum. Maar hun dagelijkse wandeling tussen 15 uur en 17 uur werd door de direktie afgelast. Zij zijn solidair en zullen hun best doen om mee te betogen vanuit hun kamers”
6 DECEMBER – “SAINT NICOLAS” ACTION AT 127 BIS NO CHILDREN IN CLOSED CENTER FREEDOM FOR ALL AND ALL!
We share the call of the League of Human Rights, Tout Autre Chose and Humans Welcome denouncing the construction of the new wing for families with children at 127bis.
Meeting Wednesday 6th December at 14.00 at Nossegem station!
“1km walk to the construction site of a new centre. Accompanied by St Nicolas, we will bring toys that we will symbolically fix on the fences. Everyone, come and create a human chain in solidarity with people who have been criminilised and locked up simply because they did not have a residence permit.
Please bring used or non-used toys (teddies, dolls, etc.) to hang on the centre grilles. ”
Belgium has long boasted to other European countries of its “maisons de retour” (“homes for returns”), which were supposed to allow the smooth expulsion of families with children. Meant to be more “human”, this solution was nothing more than variation on the theme of migration injustice, which means that some people, some families, some children, are not welcome in Europe.
The proof is that many families were escaping from these “open centres” to avoid repatriation operations. Hence the need for the Belgian authorities to start locking up children again. Note also that already families with young children are placed in a closed centre the day before their expulsion, precisely to increase the “rate of return” …
The new family wing of 127 bis, announced by Theo Francken in 2014 (see http://regularisation. canalblog.com/archives/2014/ 10/25/30830216.html), is just another wheel in the sorting, segregation and oppression machine put in place by our governments.
Collective deportation to Guinea and DRC on 2017/11/28
Several guineas detained in the Vottem and 127bis closed centres have
received a ticket for a collective flight this coming Tuesday
2017/11/28. The flight would leave at 10:30.
The social assistants have explained it will be a military flight to
Guinea and DRC!
It is important to tell all Guineans and Congolese detained in the
centres to contact their lawyers. In some cases appeals are possible!
Please tell your Congolese and Guinean friends. Arrests are still
possible!
During the demonstration for the regularisation on October 12th, retainees of a closed centre wanted to participate live through their phones. Unfortunately it was not feasible for technical reasons.
“There are Sudanese who suffer here. I know pepole who spent one day, only one day here in Belgium and who were directly sent to a closed centre. They were obliged to introduce an asylum request. Obliged! How? They brought someone from the embassy to identify them and then they asked them to request asylum. Those Sudanese did not want to request asylum in Belgium. Then they brought flight tickets, hence people go to the airport, one time, two times, three times, and then they get embarked by force. When the Foreigners Office brought the planes to Sudan, they had to request asylum. There is a person who has been here for about 4 months and a half. They forced him to request asylum two months ago and they said “everything you’ve done before the asylum request does not count anymore, that’s the law”. I don’t get it, there is no logic in all this…
There are Sudanese here who introduced a release request, they went to the court of appeal of Brussels and were released. But the Foreigners Office appealed in front of the Indictment court, and there there release was refused. Now they are here, waiting for an appeal in cassation, it takes longer, and they suffer…
Besides, everybody knows that Sudan is a dictatorship, the President is wanted, they are all dictators. They dared to send people, how to call them, they are not deputies, they are not consuls, they are people who came to identify the Sudanese here. In fact, they brought people from the consulate here, in the closed centre, they saw the retainees one after the other to identify them, without warning them of course. The problem is that the Belgian government collaborates with the dictators and the representatives of the dictatorship, it is bad!”
Before the great manifestation for regularisation of all on November 12 2017 some detained persons had volunteered to participate through telephone. Sadly, it was not possible because of technical difficulties.
“We are here in a closed centre, they retain us: two months, we sign, two months again, we sign. They deprive us of our liberty and they tell us “you are not in prison”. But we are in prison! We are imprisoned, we have the right to one hour courtyard in the morning, one hour in the afternoon. If one of us does a small thing, we get disciplinary reports. It is prison, it is all the same!
We have families outside. Personally, I have two kids and a wife who are waiting for me. What I don’t understand is that the Belgian government want to take me away from my children. They want me to go back to my country, and my children are anyway legally registered here, so is my wife. They gave me inadmissibility for 10 years, which means that I’ll alsmot be 58 years old when I can come back, in ten years.
It is not logical, it is not normal, is it Madam?
And the stories are many. One week ago they brought a young Syrian boy, who is 14, a small young boy. We had to talk to the social assistant, we talked to everybody here so that they would intervene. He spent two nights here. Do you find it logical that they bring a minor in a closed centre, with majors, because they had doubts on his age? When you see his face, it is obvious that he is only 14, there is absolutey no doubt about that! When they have doubts, usuaylly they have, they place him with other minors, in a centre for minors, and then they make a test such as the one they were going to do to prove he was minor. But when we put a little bit of pressure on them, we spoke to the boss here, to the social assistant, we rang the organisations, and it worked, two days after.
We are here, retained, deprived of our liberty. There is nothing better than freedom, Madam. But we suffer, I swear, we do suffer a lot. It is already difficult to be separated from your children. We suffer from everything, Madam, everything. Luckily we have faith, because if we didn’t, we would commit suicide. The problem is that we fear the dark world because we ignore what there is after. And we have faith, hence we do not do that, we can not do that. We have people behind us, we have family waiting for us, children, wives.
What they do to us is really serious. And the politics, it is ture… with the politicians, we can not get nowhere. They have the power!
14/11/2017: The hunt for migrants in transit goes on in all the country. Every day we get alerts by hosts who lost their guests, their main worry being that they get arrested, retained and expatriated.
Controls and arrests continue but they are less visible: Sudanese, Erythreans, Ethiopians,…. are controlled and arrested more discretely in train stations in Brussels, Charleroi, Ostende, Bruges, Zeebruges or in trucks on their migratory road.
A few of the migrants who had disappeared then reappear a few days or weeks later. Some were arrested and then released. One current trend is that the authorities prefer to retain the Dublin cases who are much more easily identifiable and deportable.
Others disappear without giving any news, avoiding to be tracked by the authorities.
Others are sometimes found back in closed centres.
In closed centres they are still very badly welcomed: no telephone, no lawyer. We face loads of difficulties to get in touch with them because of the censorship of the centres’ management, because we ignore their exact names or alias, and because of their total mistrust in contacts with the outside. This prevents us from finding a lawyer who might introduce an appeal in extreme urgency, the deadline being of 5 or 10 days according to the case.
We respect this will of migrants to stay fully anonymous, but in some cases a fast appeal against their arrest may enable their release and the possibility to resume their migratory journey. We continue to wish them a SAFE TRIP.
If you host or are in contact with people who could find themselves in this situation, we invite to:
– speak to them about the possibilities of arrest and their consequences.
– explain the possible legal steps to follow during a retention: very rapidly introduce an appeal in extreme urgency or an asylum request
– arrange with them a way to contact someone to warn them of their arrest. They can call from the closed centre with the phone of a co-retainee (solidarity works very well among retainees) to a number remembered by heart.
– tell them to immediately warn if there is a deportation risk, either by contacting you, or by directly contacting Getting the Voice Out ( 0032(0)484026781) and the facebook group stop deportations info&actions to enable a mobilisation (see http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/comment-arreter-une-expulsion/)
– Send us any information useful to help find the arrested person, maintain a contact and understand the new tricks used by the Foreigners Office : gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
MESSAGE we convey to the hosts who are worrying:
« If the person has been arrested, he/she should, within the coming hours, be released or be placed in a closed centre.
If you still do not get any news during the day, ring the Caricole Centre who have the list of all the retainees in the closed centre (you will have to insist!). Or, to be certain of the result, ring all the closed centres. But know that 24 hours at least should pass before one finds him/herself in a closed centre after an arrest.
Phone numbers:http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/quels-sont-les-centres-fermes-en-belgique/
If it is the first time he/she gets an order to leave the territory, we have 10 days to introduce an appel in extreme urgency. If he/she already got an order to leave the territory before, we only have 5 days left! Several lawyers are available but it all depends on the place where he/she got arrested, and in which centre he/she is retained.
O5/10/2017 Mikele is a young Erythrean who got arrested in Brussels and retained in the 127bis closed centre on the 22nd of October 2017 although his refugee status had been acknowledged in Italy and the social assistant of the centre had all the documents required to certify his identity and refugee status, and therefore also his right to circulate freely in Belgium.
When he was arrested, he said he was called Mikele, but the agents wrote ‘Mickey’, not making a single effort to understand his name which was however very visible on all the documents the social assistant of the 127bis had in her possession. This could have had extremely serious consequences for him.
Without the reactivity of her lawyer, the 10 days of retention would have passed and Belgium would have tried to deport a man acknowledged as a refugee in Italy!
Following a release request in extreme urgency, the lawyer received last Friday (3rd November 2017) a decision to release him immediately. Two days later, Mikeke is still being retained at the 127bis!
Update 1 November 2017 After the call from the closed centre of Merksplas, we promised ourselves that the young boy would not stay another night in that jail. Mission accomplished! Thanks to your calls, faxes and emails, the guardianship service went to pick him up to bring him to an adapted open centre. Thank you! Let¹s destroy closed centres
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31 October 2017
Several retainees of the Merksplas closed centre warned us of the presence of a 14 years old Syrian boy in the centre! They were told that bone tests would have to be made to confirm his minority, deadline:one week!
“He is a child, madam! He plays games on the play station and has no hair on his chin!”
Write, phone, fax to request the release of Ahmed TODAY!
19/10/2017 : I. cut her wrist in her shower at the Caricole closed centre on 18th October 2017.
She was very bad psychologically for the last two days, she had asked assistance from the medical service and an appointment with the director of the centre, in vain. Desperate, she ended up calling us, first saying that she needed to talk to someone. She was crying, saying she wanted to die, asking us to ring her mum and tell her she loved her. We had said goodbye, talk tomorrow, and she had thanked us. The same day she took action. We would have hoped that the “talk tomorrow” and the “thank you” would at least have relieved her for one day.
I. fled a forced marriage in Morocco. Her father, a “hard Muslim” as she said, wanted to marry her to an old man. She had to pass her BAC2 and thought she could do it here in Belgium. She also likes singing very much. She had sung us a song on the phone at the start of her retention.
“I was in prison in my family and now I’m in prison in Belgium.”
“I had chosen Belgium because it is the country of Human Rights.”
I. could not stand this “administrative” imprisonment. She expected a different welcome.
No to retentions, no to closed centres
RELEASE this young girl, release all th retainees!
If you have contacts with retainees in a closed centre who risk being deported:
Try to know:
– if it is the first time they are being brought to the airport
– what is the flight number on the ticket they got in the centre. It is not enough to know the airline: for e.g, Turkish airlines have 4 flights leaving Brussels every day, what is the stop over (if there is one), and the following flight number to the final destination. We have relay-people in some countries or other militants who may intervene during the stop over.
– if the ticket says ‘with escort’ or if the social assistant told them that there would be an escort.
– Try to get in touch with their lawyer to know whether appeals are under way.
In general, during the first deportation attempt they are being brought to the airport and the police insist in asking (saying that ‘next time the flight will be with escort ,which is not nice at all’) if they want to leave. If they refuse, they are brought back to the centre (not always the same one, to isolate them from their friends and acquaintances). There have been exceptions, although very rare, to this rule when as from the first deportation attempt the escort was present without them being notified in advance.
During the second, or the third deportation attempt, they are being brought to the police station at the airport where several police officers are waiting for them. They are being ‘sliced up’, handcuffed and carried to the back of the plane with the escort, before the arrival of the passengers. Read a recent testimony here: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/arrest-and-deportationattempt/
It is important to know whether they want a mobilisation at the airport in order to warn the passengers of their presence on board. If so, it is also important to explain them that they should make noise in order to alert the passengers of their presence on board (sometimes they are hidden behind a curtain and the passengers can not see them!).
It is also worth knowing that if the second deportation attempt fails, they are sometimes being kept in the airport and secretly boarded on another flight, often with another airline!
1) BEFORE THE DEPORTATION : if a deportation, individual or collective, is announced, alert your contacts and the media, briefly introducting the story of the person (or the group of persons) who are on the point of being repatriated, giving the data of the flight and inviting the people to send protest messages to the authorities and the airline, and to go to the airport on the day of the deporattion (the latter will not be possible in case of a collective deportation from a military airport).
«Airlines are the weak link of the deporation system, as written by Ian Dunt, a British journalist, in 2014. Up to us to break that link.
2) ON THE DAY OF THE DEPORTATION : go to the airport to warn the passengers who will be boarding on the same flight because very often they totally ignore what a deportation is about. If they are being explained that someone will be embarked against his/her will and that he/she will go through violent treatments, a few passengers may decide to interfere once on board in order to prevent this deportation.
3) IN THE PLANE
The victim of a deportation attempt may try to resist and draw the attention of the other passengers.
The passengers may refuse to sit down as long as the person that has to be deported has not been disembarked. The pilot will not take off if he thinks the security of the flight is not granted. If a passenger refuses to sit down, the plane is not allowed to leave. The pilot will have the person to be deported go down the plane. Sometimes, the ‘rebel’ passenger will also be disembarked. It may also happen that the airline puts the latter on a ‘black list’.
If the deportation takes place, try to get the testimony of the person deported. Denounce the abuse and violences, use this information to feed your campaigns and actions. Generally, it is important that the public opinion is made aware of the issue, very often not known, of the participation of airlines in forced repatriations and to target these airlines through actions and campaigns.
This Saturday 7th October, we heard from reliable sources that deportations have been planned every day of the week : 2 on the 7th October, 4 the day after, etc. In total, the Sudanese delegation « welcomed » in September delivered 43 laissez-passer to Khartoum ! The fundamental rights of the Sudanese retained in our closed centres are violated : the staff of the centres is telling them that they will not be allowed a phone, a lawyer, which is false, or more ingeniously, they tell them that they will not need it.
One solution against the deportation would be to introduce an asylum request, but most of them do not trust the Belgian authorities and refuse to introduce an asylum request from a closed centre.
The Foreigners Office policy is the following : if a person is not requesting asylum, it means they are ready to go back to their country. Let’s quote the spokesperson of the Foreigners Office : ‘If they request asylum or introduce an appeal, it is their choice and freedom. If they have the least fear for their freedom, they may request asylum in Belgium and their requests will be dealt with. If they do not, we assume that they do not fear for their life. However, since they are in closed centres, that they have been identified and got a let pass, our objective is to repatriate them and not to retain them eternally in closed centres.’ This summary is an interpretation of law that is more than discutable.
The law is very clear, confrontation with the native country is only authorised after an asylum request has been refused ultimately. Even the members of the governement who are in favour of ‘voluntary’ return to the countries of origin severely call into question this way of applying the law.
We are clearly opposed to these return policies, but we underline here that even in the logic of the policy in place, procedures are not being respected.
‘Since Theo Francken realises very well that by doing so he violates the European Convention on Human Rights, art. 3- as already mentioned by the Litigation Council- he does so ‘like a bandit’, said the President of the Human Rights League Alexis Deswaef.
‘They gave me an order to leave the territory, then they put me in jail. What does that mean ? They prevent me from leaving the territory. Never in my life will I stay in Belgiqum. I WANT TO leave this fucking territory and they are preventing me from doing so’ (testimony by a Sudanese detainee).
We are talking of dozens and dozens of people (at least 26 only in the closed centre in Vottem, and 27 in Merksplas!), among whom minors. Lawyers and militants are trying to enter in contact with these detainees but it is not always obvious : after being subjects to raids in the Maximilien Park or at the North Station in Brussels, questioned by Sudanese secret agents, they mistrust everything and everyone.
Some detainees who did not meet the Sudanese delegation are still being brought to the Embassy of Sudan these days to be identified and delivered a laissez-passer. This means that, besides the 43 people identified by the delegation, others will be identified by the Embassy in view of a deportation.
Violating the international obligations and the judgements of Belgian courts, Michel’s government only has one goal : that Belgium looks as a country hostile to migration and discourages the arrival of other refugees on its territory, without considering the future of the repatriated people.
Following the decision of the Court in Liège, Francken has declared that we will appeal against the decision but that in the meantime he will keep deporting the Sudanese detained in the other closed centers that are not affected by this decision.
We clearly know now who are the ‘illegal’, the ‘criminals’ : Michel, Francken and their clan, who abuse their powers to send dozens of refugees to distress and death.
CALL TO RALLY THIS THURSDAY 12 OCTOBER 2017 at 5.30 pm in front of the Office des étrangers – Chaussée d’Anvers 59B (Gare du Nord) FREE THEM ALL, DEPORT FRANCKEN AND MICHEL!
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW :
– If you have direct or indrect contacts with Sudanese migrants, share this information and insist on the fact that they may refuse the first deportation attempt. At least four of them did so. But how many know that they have this right ? And what is going to happen during the second deportation attempt ‘by force’, and often without police escort ?
– Through a lawyer, they may introduce an appeal against their retention at the Aliens Litigation Council within 10 days after their arrest, and they should be released.
– If lawyers manage to get in touch with them, they are currently appealing for their release, the only solution to finally get them free.
WHAT YOU CAN DO :
– Participate in big numbers in the rally of the 12th of October to denounce the criminal acts of the government
– Write, call, send faxes to the Embassy of Sudan to denounce the fact that they are providing laissez-passer to their citizens
– Write to Egyptair, SN Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, who organise these repatrations through Cairo, Istanbul, Doha, to denounce their complicity in these illegal deportations (contact details below)
– Go to the airport to talk to passengers (calls are posted via Getting the voice out and the Facebook page “Stop Deportations Info&Actions”) : people have the right to refuse the first deportation attempt, but the second time they will be put on the plane by force and with a police escort. That’s when we should be at the airport!
– Gather in front of the closed centres to support the detainees and call all the centres to warn them of the presence of Sudanese people and express your indignation at these arrests and deportations (contact details below)
– Send tons of protest messages to the criminal members of this governement (contact details below)
Ethiopian airlines
Belgium +32 289 483 03
For Reservations, Sales, arrival/departure, ShebaMiles, and other enquiries
Toll free: 3228948303
General Sales Agent
Address: Kales Airline Services, Park Hill, J.E. Mommaertslaan 18A, 1831 Diegem
E-mail:et.be@kales.com
Phone:0032 2 716 0060
Fax:
+32 2 716 0086
THE CLOSED CENTRES
Le caricole :
Chaussée de Tervuren 302, 1820 Steenokkerzeel
TEL: 027197110/09
FAX/ 02/759.81.68
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Vottem (CIV)
Visé Voie 1, 4041 Vottem
tel. +32 4 228 89 00
fax. +32 4 228 89 13
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Merksplas (CIM)
Steenweg op Wortel 1 /A, 2330 Merksplas
tel. +32 14 63 91 10
fax. +32 14 63 91 20
Le Centre pour Illégaux de Bruges (CIB)
Zandstraat 150, B-8200 Bruges
Tél. +32 50451040
Fax. +32 50315956
Le centre de retour 127 bis à Steenokkerzeel
Tervuursesteenweg 300, 1820 Steenokkerzeel
Tel. +32 2 7550000
03/10/2017 Every day, families are being broken by the Foreigners Office that retains fathers and mothers, separating them form their children, sometimes newborns, and does not hestitate to deport the parent to the “country of origin”, on the pretext of “danger for public order”, refusal of cohabitation or marriage, lack of residence, etc, asserting that the contact with the father/mother can be continued through Skype!
A mother separated from her a few months’ old twins
Cases follow each other, more and more sickening.
This 2nd of October 2017 in the morning, we got a phone call from the women retained at the 127bis closed centre. They told us that a woman had just integrated the centre who said she had been separated from her twins (one month old). We learnt later that they were 5 months old. She had been brought to the centre after having spent 24 hours in the police station in Molenbeek.
The coretainees were outraged. They told us:
“She cries and keeps shouting ‘my babies!!!'” She is incapable of speaking, she can not even say her name!’.
The day after (03/10/2017) a call was launched via Facebook, inviting the citizens to ring the 127bis: dozens of people rang the central. The Delegate general for Children rights, Bernard De Vos, wanted to investigate. He was told : “There is no record of children in the file of that woman at the Foreigners Office.” And other people who rang the 127 bis were told: “Bring us the birth certificate”.
Later in the afternoon, good news arrived: “the mother will be released this evening or tomorrow morning”. And in the evening she got released!
A happy ending for which we would like to thank the retainees who dared denounce the situation, the citizens who put pressure on the centre, and the Delegate General for Children rights who insisted towards the Foreigners Office.
Multiplication of the cases
The case of that woman is not isolated. We are faced confronted with such situations very regularly.
Here are some recent examples:
The child of T., deported on 26/09/2017, is 6 months today. T. arrived in Europe in 2012 because he was fleeing proceedings in a country where dictatorship slowly imposed itself. He had finally started a new life with his girlfriend but, despite a household composition certifying their common living for more than 18 months and his acknowledgement of paternity, he was sent back to a country where his life is in danger.
Mr M arrived in Belgium in 2005. After a small mischief he was sentenced by default and imprisoned during 8 months in 2008. Then he resumed his life, he met his girlfriend whith whom he has had 2 kids (one is more than 2 and the other is a baby of 8 months). He was deported on 11th of June 2017 because he represented a ‘danger for the public order’.
A mother arrived from the United States at Brussels’ airport to visit her family. She got arrested with her 2 children, retained and deported on the 30th of July 2016 because her visa was ‘suspicious’. Her children were under guardianship for two months and repatriated after.
M. was deported this Tuesday 3rd of October to Morocco. He had obtained the paternity of his child after two years of proceedings. The child has been placed by the judge because the mother is absent and his father -acknowledged as his father by the youth court- got deported!
The twins of O. (who got a deportation notice for the 5th of October 2017) will presumably be born at the beginning of November. The request for legal cohabitation with his girlfriend was refused the day the dossier was submitted. The Foreigners Office want to deport him whereas he signed the prenatal acknowledgement of parentage.
The Foreigners Office flouts the best interests of the child
While the construction of the new closed centre for families is ongoing (https://www.cire.be/presse/communiques-de-presse/la-construction-du-nouveau-centre-ferme-pour-familles-avec-enfants-a-commence-communique-de-presse-12-septembre-2017), the Belgian authorities already found other means of imposing the cost of their migratory policies to children: minor refugees retained because suspected of being major on the basis of bones surveys that are highly criticized (https://jucticeetmedecine.wordpress.com/les-tests-osseux-peu-fiables-et-pourtant-massivement-utilises/) and children traumatised by the arrest, retention and deportation of their father or mother.
We strongly condemn those practices as well as the multiplication of cases violating the best interests of the child behind the doors and barbed wires of the closed centres.
05/10/2017: They were several dozens this Sunday afternoon 1st of October 2017 to walk to the closed centre 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel to show their outrage against these retentions and deportations.
They made a hundred people happy. Bangladeshi, Algerians, Rwandese, Iraqis, Brazilians, Cameroonians and 2 Sudanese minors, and loads of women extremely happy to see us coming.
Around 20 calls on our telephone:
« THANK YOU THANK YOU »
« Now we know we are not alone »
« Today we are feeling fine »
« It is very pleasant»
« It moves us deeply »
« We are extremely grateful »
« It comforts us »
« There are people who think about us, it is great »
« We are suffering here»
« It is torture to be retained here»
« Thank you »
« we are not terrorists »
« It is so kind of you »
« Thank you for what you are doing for us»
« They come to take us at 5 a.m to bring us to jail. It is scandalous.»
« When we get back home, we will burn all your embassies »
« It’s wonderful »
« Please warn the human rights people, they have to come and see »
« Where are the human rights ? »
« We are human beings »
« We need your help »
« we need help »
« This is inhuman »
CALL to reiterate the walk in front of all the closed centres: Bruges, Merksplas, Caricole, Vottem.
CALL to the people who can keep a phone contact with one of them or go and visit them. Languages: French, Arabic, English, Dutch, Portuguese, etc.
AND CALL to help us recharge their phones to enable them to have contacts with the outside. Our cash boxes are almost empty !!
You may support the retainees by buying a 5 or 10 euros Lycamobile or Ortal recharge at your grocer’s, bookshop or nightshop. Send us the pin code that is written on the recharge card to our email address gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net or by SMS to our mobile phone number 0032(0)484026781
It is of the upmost importance to warn the family and friends of their situation and a recharge brings a considerable assistance to the retainees, also enabling them to contact us again.
We send the code to the retainees asking for it, it enables them to keep a contact with us and with the outside.
If easier, you may also send us 5, 10,20 euros or more – a standing order would be even better- on the account :
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions
Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB
Message recharge
Please spread the word.
THANK YOU on their behalf.
gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net
Since the mass arrestations in the Maximilien park and in the North Station, we had a lot of difficulties to get in touch with the hundred people arrested and retained in the closed centre.
According to the information we got by other retainees:
In some centres, when they arrive they are being told that they are not allowed to make phone calls or to have a lawyer, and that they are not allowed to have contacts with the outside. Many are under pressure, they distrust everything and everyone, they don’t understand why they are being retained, why they can not continue their journey or request asylum, why they are not entitled to a lawyer. Without a lawyer they are not allowed to make an appeal to their retention and they can hardly introduce an asylum request. It is for that obvious reason that they are denied a lawyer.
Others remain unyielding and refuse all support or defence.
The meetings with the Sudanese delegation also raises questions. For the least that we heard, that delegation would introduce itself as “an association that could help them”: a few fell in the trap and told their lives, others remained silent. We don’t understand very well how this delegation succeded in identifying as many ‘Sudanese’, most of them having refused to talk.
Testimonies we could gather from a few contacts we have in the closed centres.
“You may not have a lawyer yet, first they have to find an interpreter’
“They say one has to request asylum but I do not want to request asylum from the centre, it is much too complicated. Then they told me that they would ask for a let pass, but I know that it is very hard to get a let pass, I think they will not get it. That’s why I don’t request asylum, they will extend my stay every two months.’
“You are here for 5 months, we will ask a passport to the authorities and if they refuse to give you a let pass or a passport then it will be possible to leave’.
“I don’t want to eat anything here. They are crazy here, totally crazy. I don’t even know why they arrested me, for how long they will keep me here, nobody is talking to me, I am not being told anything.’
“I could never have imagined this in Europe, I am shocked.’
“Among all the people from Sudan here, none wants to request asylum, life is better in England, here it is hell, even if you have documents, the police is always after you’.
« Sudanese are not allowed to have a lawyer nor a phone.’
“People from the embassy came, they said we had to return. They are offereing 1000 euros per person to go back to Sudan.’
“They say I don’t have the choice, I have to go back to France. They say that if I request asylum here I will stay imprisoned for 4 months, they say people don’t do nothing because of that.’
19/09 : “Here they know very well that they can not be deported, the Foreigners Office sent an email, a fax or whathever and they have decided that the Sudanese would stay here for 3 months, not 2 months like the others. This is a violation of law. They asked all the Sudanese to go into a room with interpreters and they told them that a few days ago.’
23/09
« On Monday, he was told that Sudanese people wanted to meet him. Since he thought they were visitors like us, from the associative middle, he talked to them and gave them a lot of information. It is only later in the conversation that he understood he was in front of a representative of the Sudanese embassy. Then he was offered to return with 1,000 dollars; 650 directly and 250 later. He feels extremely vulnerable and is calling for help.’
27/09
At 9 am today a man of the centre asked to come with him because he has an interview he was surprised because he did not ask for asylum. Then they brought him from the Caricole to the 127bis where he met the Sudanese delegation for 20 minutes. They talked to him, not in a good way, “we know you are Sudanese” so asked to return back and they will solve his problem if he has problems wit the government or financially ! He refused to talk and they brought him back to the Caricole. I talked with him . They told me this delegation has been to Antwerp and Bruges. They said they heard 15 people deported to Sudan. He heard from people in Sudan.
They are angry.
RESISTANCE……..and profile of the DRC people deported on the collective flight to Nigeria, Ghana and the DRC
Opponents
Several are well known opponents to Kabila’s regime and they have been militants for years. They have been retained in closed centres for months, they have introduced several asylum requests, but the CGRA did not believe them despite their irrefutable proofs. They have been registered by the regime and they might be arrested as soon as they land in Kinshasa.
Criminals
Some have been to jail. According to what their acquaintances told us, they were minors when they arrived in Belgium and their parents had obtained asylum. Their families all have the Belgian nationality and they do not know anything about Congo. One of them has been out of jail for 10 years already. Another one had obtained the Belgian nationality and they withdrew it to him after several convictions. What the hell are they going to do in the DRC?
Fathers
At least two of them became fathers very recently but they got arrested while introducing their cohabitation or marriage request in the framework of Francken’s campaign in search of fake babies/fathers!
Women
As far as we know, at least 5 Congolese women got their ticket, among whom one mother and her two daughters aged 18 and 22 who have been living in Belgium for 5 years.
Surrender opponents to the DRC governement, advertise the deportation of ‘criminals’ and this way increase the statistics of Mr Francken, prevent marriages or child recognition, anything is good to ‘reassure’ Kabila’s people and regime. The iron fist of the Belgian state is striking its ‘foreigners’, faithful to the European migration policies and to the Return Directive coordinated by the criminal agency Frontex!
Aristing as a result of repressive and racist policies, these deportations put these people, families, and children in a situation of extreme distress.
AND SEEDS OF RESISTANCE : Escape attempt at the 127 bis on 23/09/2017 : 5 retainees tried to escape: Sudanese, Syrian, Moroccan… They were prevented from doing so and the morning after they were transferred because there was no place left in the confinement cells that had been ‘reserved’ for nationals of the DRC, Ghana, Nigeria, all candidates to the collective flight of 26th September.
Let’s destroy this deportation machine, let’s prevent deportations.
Update: The collective depootation will take people from Nigeria, Ghana and DRC
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Several DRC retained in the closed centres got notified that they had been registered on a group flight to Kinshasa on 26 September 2017 at 10 a.m from the military airport of Melsbroek. It could be a Frontex flight where the DRC/Guineans or other people living in other Europen countries would be gathered.
Warning! Other nationalities could be concerned. Previously, most of the collective flights to Kinshasa were having a stop over in Conakry to drop Guineans.
A social assistant told one retainee: ‘Do no worry, you will not be alone, there will be other people flying with you’!!!
Warn the Congolese and Guinean diaspora. Arrests are still likely to happen to fill this flight! Flyer to spread/print in order to warn the DRC nationals of possible raids and arrests in the coming days.
Flyer alerterafless here
— Let’s make the voice of retainees in closed centres audible TOGETHER, LET’S OCCUPY THE PUBLIC SPACE AND READ TESTIMONIES OF RETAINEES IN CLOSED CENTRES
Friday 22nd September 2017 3.30 p.m.
Place de la Monnaie Brussels
The 22nd of September is a yearly moment to protest against the policy of closed centres in Belgium, which commemorates the assassination of Semira ADAMU, a 20 years old Nigerian militant who choked and died after Belgian policemen had pressed a cushin on her face during their 6th attempt to deport her in 1998.
Today in Belgium, more than 6,000 people per day are being retained in closed centres, and threatened with deportation. The situation in the centres, the raids and deportations are inhuman and hidden from the public by the authorities. This situation is unacceptable.
Info and contact: audible@riseup.net.
–Friday 22nd September from 7 p.m., rue du Foulons 47/49, 1000 BXL
*https://www.facebook.com/events/1894082557577980/
On 22nd September, we commemorate the murder of Semira Adamu, who choked to death during her deportation from Belgium (1998). It is the date we chose to highlight the daily struggles against the deporations and imprisonment of foreigners in Belgium since that event. The harder migration laws, the more the authorities criminalise resistance. Today, to oppose a deportation equals to being accused. It is definitely the will of the Secretary of State for Migration and of the Foreigners Office.
With testimonies by actors who have been convicted today (the ‘six passengers’, for having opposed to the deportation of a Cameroonian man in August 2016) and miltants of other periods, we will debate on the ways to oppose this repressive machine that destroys thousands of lives each year.
This political and festive evening aims at raising funds for the court costs of the ‘six’ (travels, legal expenses) as well as supporting other struggles to come. We invite all these persons, collective groups and organisations that support this fight to join us for this important event and to reflect with us on strategies for resistance.
– PROGRAMME –
7 – 9 p.m.: Debate with the accused and past/present militants
9 – 2 p.m : Alpha guitarist & band – https://www.facebook.com/GuitaristeAlpha%20/
Atomes d’intifada – https://www.facebook.com/AtomesDIntifada
Les Lapins Electriques – http://leslapinselectriques.blogspot.be/
DJ Jo Selector – https://www.mixcloud.com/JoSelector/
– Entrance and meal by Collect’Actif – open price
Organised by past and present militants in collaboration with the campaign « Je ne la boucle pas ! » (I won’t shut up!) and with the support of Colectivo Garcia Lorca.
NB: the next hearing of the ‘six passengers’ will take place at the Court of Justice of Brussels on 15th of November at 9 a.m. We hope you will be coming in numbers!
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/
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.
Despite the militarisation of the European borders and the construction of walls and barbed wire, thousands of migrants still want to reach Europe. Since 2015, the politicians have been speaking of “migrants crisis”, of “asylum crisis”, of the management of situations said to be uncontrollable and of constant urgency. However, far from undergoing this situation, it is the policies of the States themselves that constructed it from scratch, either through borders control, or through populations’ control. The rationales of monitoring, each time more restrictive and security-oriented, undermine the possibilities for legal entries, leading to situations of huge precariousness where migrants find themselves trapped. The Maximilien parc is an example of these spaces that multiply themselves everywhere in Europe.
In every European city, migrants try to settle, live and eventually get the sesame, i.e. documents!
Like in Calais, like in all the cities of Europe, the State has only one answer: repression, retention and deportation for reasons of public order and public health. These actions only have one goal: nurture the threatening speeches around migrations.
We do not accept that people have to sleep in parcs or in train stations.
We do not accept new raids in parcs and train stations.
We do not accept retentions in closed centres.
We do not accept this violence by the State.
We will continue fighting for the dignity of all migrants, undocumented, foreigners, asylum seekers, homeless!
We will continue welcoming them in dignity.
We will continue fighting against the repression strategies that only exacerbate the sufferings and distress.
We don’t want any Calais in Brussels.
We don’t want a Calais where the same methods used for years have been a complete failure.
We don’t want history to repeat itself.
Let’s unite beyond our peculiarities and our different ways of fighting in view of organising a strong resistance. Let’s demand that the budgets allocated to the restrictive and repressive migratory policies- and we are talking about billions of Euros- are invested in favour of real welcoming policies.
Brussels 2017 can not be like this!
First protest meeting this Friday 15 September 2017 at 5. p.m. in front of the Foreigners Office Chaussée d’Anvers, 59 1000 Bruxelles
and on 14 September 6.30 p.m. in front of the town halls of Schaerbeek and Brussels city centre to show our determination to the mayors, responsible for the raids in the North Station and in the Maximilien parc.
05/08/2017: Francken discovered two countries he didn’t know: Sudan and Somalia.
Since almost a year, migrants – mainly Sudanese and Eritreans, have been sleeping in the Maximilien Parc in Brussels.
Associations and volunteers try to provide them with food and sleeping bags since their arrival.
Politicians and NGOs suggest lodging proposals, “selection or pre-welcoming centre”, which will look like hot spots rather than lodging.
Francken announces “arrests and returns to the countries of origin”.
In front of the concentration of migrants in the parc, harassments and intimidations have been organised by the communal and federal police, followed by repeated raids, early in the morning, of around hundred people, all this accompanied by thefts of valuable objects (mobile phones, etc), intimidation/ban on serving meals, dispersion and arrests of the most recalcitrant, not to mention asset forfeiture, occupation of the parc by the police during the day, preventing the migrants to come back etc.
After pressure and negotiations, these raids and police presence have become less frequent over the last weeks.
However, this doesn’t mean that Francken’s promise to “place all of them in closed centres and deport them to their countries of origin” is no longer on the agenda.
We heard that between 20-30 people, mainly Sudanese, 2 women among them, were arrested the last weeks around train stations and that they have been placed in closed centres. Some of them have been there for serveral weeks, others have just arrived!
Instead of carrying out visible actions, the Foreigners Office have adopted a more discreet method and they arrest them around train stations and public spaces, when they are isolated and far away from witnesses’ eyes.
One has to know that during controls, several nationalities are designated and brought to closed centres so as to be deported. They are chosen according to existing agreements or tensions between Belgium and the countries concerned, according to the nationalities present on our territory or according to Francken’s moods.
Thus, Algerians have been languishing in jail for months because the Secretary of State tries in vain to obtain a ‘return agreement’ with Algeria.
Thus, Congolese are being retained and sometimes deported (a lot of opponents to the current regime) most likely following ‘secret agreements’ with Kabila’s regime.
Thus, lots of Cameroonians are being arrested and deported following the agreements recently signed with Cameroon and, many of them are put in jail as soon as they arrive to Cameroon because they left the country to request asylum in Europe.
And thus, insidiously, far away from any witness, the Foreigners office target Sudanese and Somalis, arrest them and retain them to try and deport them.
Some retainees are ‘Dublinised’ and should be sent back to the country where they left their fingerprints, often Italy; a country that struggles a lot to deal with asylum requests. They will find themselves on the street, and if they are dismissed, they will be deported to Sudan, since Italy signed a ‘return agreement’ with Sudan. Movements and demonstrations by citizens and undocumented against this ‘Dublin’ agreement are ongoing in several European countries (Germany, France, etc.).
Most of the retainees who were arrested over the last weeks refuse to request asylum in Belgium:
“They say that we should request asylum but I don’t want to request asylum from the centre, it is too complicated. Hence they explained to me that they would ask for a let pass, but I know it is very hard to get it, I doubt they get it, therefore I don’t request asylum for the moment, they will extend my stay every two months.”
“ All the people from Sudan here, none of them wants to request asylum, life is better in England, here it is hell, even if you have documents the police is always after you.”
The closed centre refuses to appoint a lawyer to some of them: ‘You may not have a lawyer yet, first we have to find a translator’.
As usual, the Office and the Secretary of State only have one answer to these travellers: intimidation and repression!
Some will be sent back to the European country where they left their fingerprints (Dublin) and will continue their migratory road to the country they have chosen. Ohters will remain in our closed centres for months, labelled “Dublin Belgium” and they will be obliged in fine to request asylum in Belgium if they want to find their freedom again, although Belgium is not the country they had chosen.
We can not allow it to happen. These migrants travelled thousands of kilometers to find a better future, their migratory route passed by Brussels, but NOT to find themselves imprisoned in an endless administrative trap which was built by Europe to prevent the ‘foreign’ human being from travelling.
Update 31st August 2017 Some people were at the airport but it was very difficult to find passengers willing to listen to the problematic. Fefe arrived in Kinshasa in a very bad state. Friends and family members were waiting for her. She was brought to the hospital where she is on drip. The Congolese community here and there remains attentive to her situation and her family’s. It often happens that opponents are being chased or killed long after their deportation. A lot of Congolese are currently being retained in closed centres, sometimes for several months, notably opponents to Kabila’s regime. Some explain that Kabila, in collaboration with Belgium and undoubtedly with other European countries, make everything possible to intimidate and gag the DRC Diaspora before the elections that are foreseen to take place at the end of the year in DRC.
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30th August 2017
Mrs Fefe, a famous opposition journalist in DRC, retained in Bruges for more than 5 months and on hunger strike for 20 days, was “urgently” brought to the airport for her third deportation attempt.
Former deportation here: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/le-gouvernement-belge-va-livrer-une-militante-congolaise-aux-autorites-rdc/
She will most likely be put on the Royal Air Maroc flight of 5.4 p0.m. this 30th of August 2017, which will have a stop over in Casablanca and reach Kinshasa this 31st of August at 3 a.m!
Fefe is in a terrible physical state after her hunger strike of 20 days.
Let’s meet at Zaventem airport at 3.40 p.m to speak with the passengers of Air Maroc flight
Today 25/08/2017 11 am : a Moroccan man detained in 127 bis’ closed center freaked out.
He had learned that his brother died in Libya and was to be burried in Morocco. He had asked for a return to Morocco. The Office answer, received on 25/08, came as to be a prolongation of his detention for another 2 months. Many other detainees receive like him detention prolongations of 2 months, leading to “administrative” detentions up to 1 year. Some ask to be repatriated to their home country.Others are in Belgium since 20 years or more, among them some have families here. This decision towards this Moroccan man has aroused a violent solidarity movement in the centre today. Some detainees started destroying the living room equipment. The Moroccan man has quickly been put in confinment which led other detainees to gather in front of one of the centre directors’ office.
At 2 pm: 32 detainees refused to eat lucnh. 3 police vans arrived and police entered in the centre. The demonstrators, gathered in front of the centre, have been put aside.
At 3pm: 25 violent “robocops” were present. The centre’s direction designated 3 detainees who were then brought in the police vans. A provisory calm is restored in the centre.
Media https://www.rtbf.be/info/regions/flandre/detail_debut-d-emeute-au-centre-127-bis-pour-etrangers-de-steenokkerzeel?id=9691456
“Police is on the scene
Round 2pm, policemen in riot control outfits have entered the centre.Through the mobile telephone of one of the “lodgers”, we could hear part of the intervention, carried out using dogs. According to our witness, policemen have arrested and hit one of the rioters (the one who took on to be the spokesperson of his fellows to the centre’s direction, reporting their precarious living conditions: bad food, insufficient food, smelly toilets etc.).”
Already on 3 May, detainees had protested and had refused to eat what they had been served. Three “leaders” have since been transferred to other centres.
Here are some detainees’ words:
” We ask for more rapid procedures on files in order to avoid long detentions. Some are getting crazy herE. We are detained for months without any reason and without getting any news. The social worker always says yes and never does anything! I think she works for the Office. The guards aren’t respectful (to the eXception of 1), they are mean and racists.”
” We are all in the hands of the Office without any rights: Isn’t this Gestapo?
Medical care is also challenged:
“Some are very sick, have appointments at hospital, wait for urgent surgery. These appointments are never respected and seldom are the ones who are brought to hospital.”
“When someone is very ill, we must insist heavily to have a chance to see a doctor. And when no doctor comes, the centre ends up calling an ambulance when we put the mess (3 times this week!)
We will continue claiming for the closing of these shameful closed centres. These “administrative” detentions are the expression of a European and global repressive approach towards this supposed to be “invasion”.
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND SETTLEMENT FOR EVERYONE NO ONE IS ILLEGAL SOLIDARITY
20 August 2017 : It’s been 10 days already that two Congolese women, Clarisse Iseka Mbongo and Fefe Tuluka Mizaku have been on hunger strike at the closed centre in Bruges. Powerless in front of the oppressive system, they are trying to launch a last SOS call to us, after having experienced several deportation attempts. They are starting to feel heavy pains (back , articulations) and feel extremely weak.
The strike is not acknowledged by the closed centre of Bruges which tries to ‘break down the fights’ and to stifle the movment through confinements in isolation cells, transfers and violence. Fefe has been isolated for 4 days at the nursery. They took her mobile phone because it is on the ground that links her to the outside that the prolongation of this form of resistance is happening.
What the retainees are saying:
“I prefer to die here”.
“If they want to kill me, they’d better do it here, in front of everyone”.
“I’d rather die here than being raped etc in my country. It’s become hell over there. At least here my family will have my grave and I will be recognised among my people”.
“I was able to gather a lot of evidence, but Belgium doesn’t care”.
“They say we are the victims of money”. (the staff of the centre say that, reminding to some the era when Mobutu was generously “watering” South Africa for them to send back the political opponents… This was never certified with evidence, and it was too delicate to investigate upon… but “we know it existed”. However, yesterday’s reality seems to have become that of today, with Kabila and some of his allies.”
The acquaintances of the retainees add: “She can see she is being treated as a criminal. Her last deportation attempt was traumatising, she can not recover from it, she was humiliated, brutalised, she doesn’t believe in anything anymore, she stopped feeding herself.”
When we call them, the Bruges centre answer:
“We are getting calls for her”.
“Who are you?” “It is not possible to speak with Mrs FT… but I’ll put you through to the social assistant.”
The social services:
“It is impossible to speak to her now, only this evening after 7 p.m.”
“The doctor and the management decided to oblige her to rest”. “She is rather stressed out, she should avoid constant phone calls, she needs rest, she will be in touch with her lawyer this afternoon.”
We do not speak of HUNGER STRIKE…!!! The tone is courteous but they avoid all dialogue while giving an impression of transparency.
To support them, let’s keep ringing the central of Bruges in mass! Ring the central of the closed centre au 050.451.040 and ask to speak to one or the other, and ask for news.
Write, ring etc to the services responsible to express your outrage related to these policies.
14/08/2017 : A second deportation attempt with police escort is announced on August 17 for Mrs TULUKA MIZAKU Fefe
She arrived in Belgium in 2006, fleeing Kabila’s regime which had put her in prison for being critical.
Mme T.M.Fefe is a journalist. Once in Belgium she carried on denouncing Kabila’s regime.
She was arrested on March 6 2017 and has been detained, since then, in the closed center of Bruges.
She has made several asylum requests with indisputable proofs of her investigation work against Kabila’s regime as a journalist. She has several videos and radio extracts showing for instance the illegality of the last elections (this radio program was realised with the EU representative, diaspora members and so on). But the new elements for her fourth asylum request were considered as “not relevant” by the CGRA.
The Congolese diaspora in Belgium does not understand that Belgium wants to deport to DR of Congo, a “fighting” journalist who has produced programs expressing critical talks against the present regime in DR of Congo, when it is well known that Kabila’s regime does not tolerate any criticism. The Diaspora acknowledges with terror that many Congolese activists are presently detained in Belgian closed centres to be deported to DRC while the Belgian government, the European Union, the USA, the United Nations et the International Community are all denoucing and condemning multiple and increasing human rights violations.
Mrs T.M.Fefe is also extremely worried for other compatriots in DRC. The whole file of her asylum request will be given to the Congolese authorities when she arrives in Kinshasa. The file contains several names of people who sent her documents to testify of the situation in DRC. Those people would risk deadly prosecutions by the present regime.
Féfe should not be sent back to DRC! Demonstrations have already been organised by the Congolese diaspora, and others are foreseen to protest against her deportation.
Flight SN359 17/08/2017 10:35 to Luanda and Kinshasa
Come and join us at the airport to show your opposition to these practices! Let’s meet at 8.30 a.m. this 17th of August to explain the situation of Fefe on flights SN 359 and question SN Airlines on their deadly collaboration to the deportation policies of the Foreigners Office.
Beware! it is the same SN Airlines counter for all Africa. You should ask their destination to the passengers (Luanda SN 359 and Kinshasa) and explain them that they are allowed to refuse this violent deportation by remaining standing in the plane and talking to the aircraft captain.
For info :
How to prevent a deportation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Umb7MyDhw
Denunciation campaign: fax , mail and call the people in charge
Brussels Airlines (demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord)
Update: 11/08/2017: Some people went to the airport to tell passengers that Clarisse would be on the plane: Clarisse resisted her second deportation attempt with police escort.
“When we went up the stairs onto the plane, some of the police officers were in front of me and I could not see what was happening. I saw people passing next to me and I knew it was the right moment. I started to scream. They took my head and put it on my knees. I could not breathe but I kept screaming. All the passengers stood up. A young Angolan guy said “But do’nt you see she is Congolese! I can see and hear she is! The police officers answered: “we have the certificates (passes)”. But people stayed standing up. The pilot came and asked that I should leave the plane.”
Last Monday morning 08/08/2017 she was called at the “social assistant”‘s office where she was told she will be deported to Angola. She reacted “I have introduced a new asylum request, therere are videos which explained that I am congolese, why don’t you watch them! Is the asylym request refused?” She was told:”we do not have the answer, we cannot tell you anything, the answer will be given to you at the airport.”
Legal insecurity. Pressure maintained- Deterrence logic. Those technics are well known and seem to become usual work methods for the Office des Etrangers (Immigration Agency) espacially when migrants resist the stystem. This is shown throught the answer beeing given in the airport and the impossibility for the lawyer to introduce an appeal. Human rights, did you say? tout particulièrement quand les personnes démontrent une résistance au système
Flight SN Airlines 359/ TAAG Angola Airlines DT6359 : 10h35 ,destination Luanda/Angola and Kinshasa.
Come and join us at the airport to show your opposition to these practices! Let’s meet at 8.30 a.m. this 10th of August to explain the situation of Clarisse on flights SN 359 and question SN Airlines on their deadly collaboration to the deportation policies of the Foreigners Office.
Beware! it is the same SN Airlines counter for all Africa. You should ask their destination to the passengers (Luanda SN 359 and Kinshasa) and explain them that they are allowed to refuse this violent deportation by remaining standing in the plane and talking to the aircraft captain.
For info :
How to prevent a deportation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Umb7MyDhw
Denunciation campaign: fax , mail and call the people in charge
Brussels Airlines (demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord)
05/08/2017: Mid May 2017 the Council of Ministers have approved a masterplan “Detention centres for illegal residents”. The masterplan provides a big extension of the existing return capacity and the creation of three new dentention centres.
“With this masterplan we will be able to repatriate much more illegal migrants. This will make the idea of becoming an illegal resident less attractive. The time when the order to leave the territory was nothing but a rag of paper will soon be behind us. This [our] government does not regularize the criminals, we repatriate them.”, says Theo Francken, Secretary of State for Asylym and Migration.
Where and when are these three new detention centres supposed to be built?
Holsbeek, 2018
In the beginning of January 2013, the federal authorities have bought an ancient Formule 1 hotel in an industrial zone of Holsbeek, in the suburbs of Leuven. Maggie De Block, Secretary of State at the time, wishes to transform the building to a open centre for voluntary return that can host a hundred personnes.
Succeeding Maggie De Block in 2015, Theo Francken closes the centre almost overnight because of bad results. If the voluntary return doesn’t offer sufficient results, it seems logical that the forced returns from detention centres will offer better results. What a beautiful demonstration of nicely measurable migration politics.
The building of the open centre, being built, it is only a matter of updating the facilities to the required safety standards. It can then become a detention centre.
Zandvliet, 2020
The previous mayor of Antwerp had already asked for a detention centre near Antwerp. The project of a new detention centre in Zandvliet strongly satisfies the current mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever: “Zandvliet is an ideal place because it’s a remote rural zone.” According to De Wever “the center will improve the security and the quality of life within the city of Antwerp, and 150 jobs will be created. It’s interesting to see how a detention centre offers a solution to both migration and economic problems.
Except that a fierce opposition was put in place as soon as the masterplan was announced. The inhabitants gathered 700 signatures to oppose the new centre. The reason? They “are afraid for their own security” and declared to “have become the garbage bin of Antwerp”…
Initially, the detention center was planned to be built on currently abandoned lands which are property of the Flemish government, along the A12 highway and close to the Dutch borders. But now, the town has started negotiating the exact location where the detention centre will be built, basing itself on the intricacies of the spatial implementation plan.
It appears that the centre will be in use much earlier than 2020 because Theo Francken has planned to reuse containers coming from the Tilburg (The Netherlands) prison to accommodate the detention centre.
Jumet, 2021
The biggest detention centre of Wallonia is planned to be located in Jumet (Charleroi). It’s the building of the IPPJ [Public Institution for the proection of the Youth ] which is requested to be transformed into a detention centre with two sections for children (boys and girls). The educators of the IPPJ have expressed their dissatisfaction at finding themselves either “working in Brussels or staying in Jumet as a prison guard
The city of Charleroi supports the project but “regrets the lack of consultation with the local authorities concerning the announcement of the project”, says the Alderman-delegate Françoise Daspremont… but if the different power levels had worked together, would they have adressed the issue of the relevance of building detention centres or would they have simply adressed the details about its location? We say NO to any detention centre!
And other project: Charleroi Airport for deportation operations
Moreover, the future Jumet centre is explicitly linked by the Government to the possibility of using Charleroi airport as a base for deportation operations, allowing more and more forced repatriations.
Here is Theo Francken’s answer to a parlamentiary question adressed on 28 June 2017:
” Regarding the use of proximity airports; with the federal police services, we are currently considering the possibility of more actively make use of Charleroi airport for the return operations.The project is still embryonic and I can’t inform you at this stage about the additionnal running costs or the related infrastructure costs. A proper collaboration with the federal police services has been been provided to ensure an optimal flow of the return operations.”
Congratulations to Brussels South Charleroi Airport and to the related airlines!!! For how much money will you become accomplices of violent and repressive migration policies?
Update 07/08 /2017: departurz of the flight the 09/08/2017 at 10 p.m.
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We learned from a sound source that 80 to 100 Nigerians will be deported on August 9th or 10th. It would be a Frontex flight organised by Austria.
The flight will take off from the Melsbroeck military airport (Brussels). It will stop in Viena and will l and in Lagos. Some detainees will be brought by bus from the Netherlands.
Please tell the Nigerian community (arrests are still possible in order to fill the flight), alert your networks.
Imagine what they think impossible: let us stop this massive and deadly deportation organised by the European Union through FRONTEX, the European anti migration army with all the means possible (pressure on diplomats, on military, actions, demonstrations) in the whole of Europe
Action in GB : https://www.facebook.com/events/1762411670660192/
2015: Following the thousand-strong demonstration at Yarl’s Wood in Nov 2015,there has been successful collective resistance to stop a mass
deportation to Nigeria by charter flight, and for the first time put the collusion of the Nigerian government on the public agenda in Nigeria.
As a result of organising coollectively inside YarlsWood to resist and a mass campaign to get the Nigerian government to refuse to allow the
charter flight to land – out of aproximately 40 women, only 2 were on the flight.
After the success of the latest Surround YarlsWood demonstration on 12th March we mst contonue to build ouir movement to end detention and end
these mass deportation charter flights – join us on 17th March at the Nigerian High Commission – Nigeria can refuse to accept these flights –
we must demand they do so!
The next Nigerian charter is in 9 days (22nd March), and we must orgainse again to defend our community from being forcibly ‘removed’.
Changement de programme : ils ont essayé de mettre Francis sur le vol vers Abidjan à 11h15……Coups ,saucissonage….Francis a expliqué sa situation aux passagers. Beaucoup se sont levés, beaucoup ont filmé. Francis a été ressortit de l’avion et ramené au centre fermé de Bruges……
Francis, born in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on 09/07/1980 has been living in Belgium for more than 20 years. He is 37 years old. His mother was granted asylum in 1992 in Belgium and Francis joined her under the refugee family reunion rules in 1995. His mother passed away in 1996. Francis was then 16 years old. His maternal grandmother, who obtained Belgian citizenship, was appointed as her tutor and he has been living with her since.
Francis had an orange card (which allows individuals to legally remain in Belgium while the decision about their visa/residency is being made). When he was 22 years old, Francis made a mistake, was judged and detained. In 2008, the Office des étrangers (Immigration Office) ordered him to leave the country (Ordre de quitter le territoire). While he appealed to this decision, he never received an answer to his deportation appeal. After being released from prison, he moved on with his life, took courses, worked when opportunities arose and was supported by his family.
In the view of the Office, Francis is one of those criminals who absolutely needs to be deported, though his criminal record dates back from more than 15 years ago and without any trouble since then.
Francis has a sister, a grandmother, aunts, cousins in Belgium who are all Belgian citizens! He has no one in DRC and does not know this country. Where will he go if he is deported to Kinshasa? Francis does not want to leave his family. “ What can I possibly do there, my country is Belgium, all my family lives here. I don’t know anyone in DRC”.
Francis needs our help to prevent his third deportation attempt on an escorted commercial flight. This Monday 24 July 2017, he will be escorted on an Air Maroc flight to Casablanca (Royal Air Maroc AT833) at 5:40 PM for a connecting flight to Kinshasa. Join us at the airport to explain Francis’ case to passengers and inform them that they have the right to ask the pilot and employees to refuse to participate in this forced removal
Denunciation campaign: fax , mail and call the people in charge
17/07/2017 Call from Bruges: “Who can we turn to, Miss?”
Sleepplace and lifeplace closed centre Brugge 2016
Fifteen days ago, around forty people made a written request to the direction. Two representatives of the group met the direction. Thy asked daily showers and partial freedom to move around the centre. The problem is that they are detained all together during the night and that in the early morning some detainees get up and wake up the others. They suggested to open the door so that people who wake up can go the the room where they spend the rest of the day, letting the others sleep. They still haven’t received an answer to their requests and don’t know what else to do.
“Who can we turn to, Miss?”
17/07 Merksplas immigration detention centre: the Robocops in the centre
It was the end of Ramadan. It was very hot. Detainees asked to meet the director of the centre. They sleep in cells occupied by five people where it’s very hot. They wanted to ask the director to open the only small window at night, to air the cell. They also wanted to inform him that the quantity of food was far from sufficient. The director came to the romm to meet them. During the meeting, while the director carefully took note of their requests, the room was invaded by helmeted and armed robocops (surely called by the director). Some robocoffs aimed their weapon at the detainees, others drew their truncheon. Five detainees were bludgeoned and violently put in solitary confinment, where they stayed three days. One of them still suffers from the physical consequences of this treatment. “We are treated like terrorists”. “We have no rights. As soon as we make a request, they put us in solitary confinment” “They are the outlaws” “Who are the criminals?” “This is brutality” “To them we are not human beings, just animals to be crushed” “Should we contact the animal welfare organisations?” “Who will listen to us one day?” “We must alert the media!” “The most renowned lawyer can not do anything. Francken is above the law”
Rally organised by the Congolese community to support Ms C, who resisted a deportation to Angola, and to support all detained Congolese who risk deportation
Thursday 13 July at 9am in front of the Office des étrangers – Chaussée d’Anvers, 59B 1000 Brussels (Gare du Nord)
Ms C has been detained in the closed centre of Bruges since November 2016. She is from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and has been living in Belgium for more than ten years. In 2009 her regularisation application was approved, but following several blunders her file got lost in the maze of the administration. The deadline was exceeded and Ms C, against her will and against all logic, became an irregular migrant. While living in Belgium, between 2009 and 2016, Mrs C has built her life as well as a relationship. She was arrested at her partner’s place. This is how it went.
At 6 am (therefore illegally) “they rang at the door and said ‘we are here to arrest you, you are illegal’. I was handcuffed and taken to the detention center in Bruges”. Although Belgium has already been condemned for this kind of unlawful arrest, these practices continue on a daily basis!
During her time in the Bruges closed centre, Ms C has been facing daily the logic of detention and she has tried to hold on: “I wait. People here sometimes stop eating and cry. This is what life is like in the centre”.
To flee her country, Mrs C transited through Angola, where she got her documents and bought a plane ticket (under a fake Angolan identity). Today, this is precisely where the problem lies in her file: according go the Office des étrangers (Immigration Office), she can not prove her Congolese identity. She has however submitted several documents proving it, but the CGRA (Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons) criticised “the absence of biometrical data”! Against all logic, the OE wants to deport her to Angola, where she does not know anyone and, most crucially, where she could be imprisoned.
Ms C is well known in all the communities where she has been involved (Church, neighbours…) and many positive testimonies have been gathered to support her application for asylum. The OE, however, did not take into account any of these elements, nor the specific nature of her path and her integration into society. Their only message is: “You are illegal, pack your bags”.
On July 11, Ms C faced a violent deportation attempt, with its usual trail of abuse, insults and threats.
“When I arrived at the airport, that took me to a little room, there were two persons, they told me: this is what will happen now, today we are escorting you to your country. I said I was not Angolan, they replied: we have the laissez-passer, that’s it. Four more people arrived, there were three women and three men… Then they put the special belt on me. People started getting on the airplane, there were’t many passengers, I pretended I was sleeping. When more people had boarded, I screamed, I screamed a lot, I said: I did an application for asylum, I gave them evidence, all the evidence, I’ve been living here for years and I gave them the address. I said I am not Angolan, I am Congolese, they know very well. I started giving the name of my primary school, of my township in Congo, that’s when people realised I was Congolese and stood up, they started filming. There were a lot of people standing, they were saying: you are not going to leave, Miss, your are not going to leave. The hostess arrived and she told me to disembark.”
“The policemen form the escort were angry, they insulted me – I can not repeat what they said. Then they said: you will get back here in two or three days and this time it will be with Air Maroc, we are going to make you a personal record as an undeclared worker and we will give it to the centre, this way you will not get out of this”.
Join them to support the opposition and resistance movement to these blind policies.
This Thursday 13 July at 9am in front of the Office des étrangers – Chaussée d’Anvers,59B 1000 Brussels (Gare du Nord)
17/06/2017 Violence strikes again: married and repelled
He is Iraqi and he benefits from the subsidiary protection. She is from Morocco. They got married then years ago and they were living in Iraq from where they fled in 2013. In Jordan their marriage was recognised by Belgium and they requested asylum in Belgium. He got it, she did not. Different steps are undertaken to settle the situation to allow her to continue living legally with her husband. Despite a marriage certificate in due form certified by the Belgian embassy and living together for more than 10 years, they refuse her everything and she gets several orders to leave the territory against which she appeals.
One morning, she is alone at home. He was gone to renew his residence permit. Someone rings the bell, on the door phone she can hear ‘here is the plumber, there is a leak in the house’. She opens the door and three policemen enter the appartment. They ask to see her papers, she gives them her passport. They say she has to accompany them to the police station. They ask her to dress. She does with the mandatory presence of a police woman. They tie her hands and leave the house. Downstairs she discovers that there is another group of policemen expecting her. She is driven to the police station and placed in a cell where she has to undress. She is forbidden to wear her scarf. She can not keep her inhaler for her asthma. They take a picture of her and her handprints and bring her back to her cell. The cell is cold, there is no water, no toilet paper. Short visit by a doctor. After several hours, she is transferred handcuffed to the Caricole closed centre.
During her stay at the centre, she is regularly brought in front of different courts, always handcuffed. She denounces this criminalisation, and the multiple times they bring her to a confinement cell sometimes for a complete day, notably at the Court of Justice.
She experiments her first deportation attempts to her country of origin, Morocco. They drive her handcuffed to the airport. An agent comes to ask her: ‘Are you ready to leave? If not if will be under constraint.’ She refuses to leave.
Return to the centre. There they continue to put pressure on her to make her leave and they continue threatening her with serious violence during the next deportation attempt in case she rebels. The centre director even tells her ‘you will be able to go and visit your husband in Iraq’ although he is being protected in Belgium and he may absolutely not go to Iraq!
She was extremely scared of this escort that was accompanying her; they tried to deport her a second time on 9th June 2017. Since then we do not have any news from her and her husband who had gone to visit her just before her deportation.
Mr D was arrested in Liège in February 2017. He wanted to prevent an attempted rape and had called the police. He was undocumented for six years on the Belgian territory, hence the police arrested him and brought him to the closed centre in vew of a deportation to his ‘country of origin’.
It was foreseen that Mr D would have his first deportation attempt this Tuesday 13th June 2017. Legally, a first deportation attempt may be refused by the retainee at the airport, after which he is being driven back to the centre. Here, unlawfully, an escort of a dozen policemen was expecting him at the airport. Tied up and handcuffed as required by the protocol, he was taken on an SN Airlines flight to Conakry. In the plane he shouted and explained his situation to the passengers. One policeman put his hand over his mouth, others beat him all over his body. Passengers alerted by the cries intervened and refused to travel with him on board. He was taken out of the plane by his escort and driven back to the closed centre. A complaint has been lodged against this violence.
The escort policemen threatened him with a military flight and warned him that he would be deported anyway, ‘even if they had to cut him into pieces and send him back piece by piece’.
It seems that the escort policemen are currently particularly violent, others seem to be part of a contestation movement that has to be informed. Indeed, for one month already we have heard retainees say that many deportations are being cancelled because of a “lack of escort”. This information make us think of protest movements in the ‘escort’ services of the federal police. An article in the Dernière Heure confirms this discomfort: an escort refused to take part in the deportation of Mamadou.http://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/l-expulsion-de-mamadou-annulee-la-police-a-refuse-de-jouer-l-escorte-pour-l-office-des-etrangers-5920b13acd70022542f04f4f
CALL to the passengers who witnessed the deportation of Mr D – please contact gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net. CALL to question SN Airlines that takes part in the daily deportations CALL to question the protest movemement by the federal police escorts, which presumably is a state secret!
On Tuesday 6th of June 2017, a Senegalese named Medoune Ndiaye, member of la Voix des Sans Papiers (VSP) de Bruxelles (The Voice of the Undocumented – Brussels), was deported on a Brussels Airlines flight to Dakar. He was arrested end of March in Virton and retained in the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem (Liège). Retention conditions similar to prisons’, lack of information regarding his retention, his arrest during which he was beaten up (broken finger), lack of medical care (refusal to give him analgesics), withholding information on his medical file, repeated intimidations by the closed centre’s staff and the police… Closed centres for foreigners are deportation machines. To prepare these deportations, one has to break up the retainees’ resistance through imprisonment, psychological torture until applying a confinement measure, which Medoune experienced during several days.
The Foreigners Office very quickly delivered a deportation order. The Senegalese embassy then granted a let pass without any investigation nor contact with Medoune. After a first deportation attempt, Medoune Ndiaye was driven to the airport on 6th June. A dozen policemen were waiting for him. He asked to speak with his lawyer in the context of an appeal procedure against the police of Liège. This right was denied to him on the grounds that the complaint would have been withdrawn; which is false. This was followed by threats and violence. A policeman held him on the ground, another one sat down on him and several others beat him; preventing him from breathing until Medoune passed out. In the meantime, he was tied and handcuffed without noticing. Forced to get on the plane with two policemen threatening him: ‘Even if you die, you are going back home’; he could hear them speak with the captain in Dutch. Medoune then struggled and broke objects around him. Both policemen beat him again. Nobody in the plane, neither the staff nor the passengers did intervene. An air hostess had asked him to calm down, saying that recently another man had been beaten, that he had had broken teeth and that they had deported him even though he was bleeding. Before landing, the two policemen mentioned a possible medical care once in Dakar. Handcuffed, he was brought to the Senegalese authorities represented by the gendarmerie. A fake file concerning him was mentionned, accusing him of several thefts in markets, and of robberies in Belgium. This document had been written in Dutch. Medoune requested a copy but it was refused. He also questioned the gendarmerie that do not oppose to receiving a document in a foreign language, accepting it without wondering about his obvious bad physical state. Then Medoune got angry at the gendarmes who in turn threatened him of imprisonment. Two passengers interferred to defend him so that he could leave the place without being charged. The gendarmes refused to call an ambulance and asked him to go away and find a way to go alone to the hospital.
Two broken ribs, the body molested and bruised, he was also stolen half of the money he had as well as his mobile phone, without knowing when it all happened.
Here are the concrete results of the policy implemented by Théo Francken, consisting in closing borders and in deporting 1000 more people each yar, increasing the retentions! Many decisions directly concerning the undocumented are being taken by European and national authorities, and their lack of transparency and democratic nature is not to be demonstrated any longer.
The members of the group VSP, among whom Thierno Malik (still retained in Vottem) and Medoune Ndiaye, directly pay the price of it. Lastly, other groups of undocumented also were subject to reasserted repression. When European leaders boast the promotion of peace and human rights throughout the world, the undocumented of Europe hide and follow the walls. Actually, this policy doesn’t care about human dignity and about rights which are supposedly inalienable.
We question the Senegalese, Belgian and European authorities on these facts, and we call the citizens to denounce with us these raids, retention conditions, ‘administrative’ retentions and deportations. We support Medoune Ndiaye as well as all the other retainees in closed centres (men, women and children) in their fight for justice, freedom and dignity that they lead courageously.
First signatories: Voix des sans-papiers Bruxelles, SOS Migrants
Be it a proved asylum seeker or the father of two small kids, the Foreigners Office is persisting.
Two escorts will operate, with their well-knwon violence, at the same time at Zaventem airport, to forcibly embark two persons on two different flights to Africa.
One escort of the federal police will try to embark Mamadou on the flight SN 285 to Abidjan and Cotonou at 10.35 a.m this Sunday 11th of June.
Mamadou already escaped a second deportation attempt following an escort problem. The later would have refused to take part in Mamadou’s deportation, and the media had taken hold of Mamadou’s story.
Mamadou has two small children. However, the Foreigners Office think he has to be deported in the framework of the mass deportations decided by Mr Francken because he is considered as a ‘criminal’. Yes indeed, Mamadou had been convicted 10 years ago, in 2007. After serving his sentence, he resumed his life, met a girlfriend with whom he has had two children. He doesn’t want to abandon his children and wife.µ
A second escort of the federal police will try to forcibly embark Riser on the flight SN 359 to Luanda and Kinshasa also at 10.35 a.m.
Mr Kamanga Kabala Riser is still active in an opposition movement against Kabila. He had been arrested in Kinshasa in 2012. He escaped prison and fled to Belgium.
He was arrested at the Foreigners Office and retained in the 127bis closed centre following the introduction of a second asylum request on the 10th of February 2017.
He also warned the media who published an article with his testimony. http://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/la-belgique-veut-expulser-a-kinshasa-celui-qui-criait-degage-kabila-592f1a75cd702b5fbee5f658
Come and join us at the airport to show your opposition to these practices! Let’s meet at 8.30 a.m. this Sunday 11th of June to explain the situation of these two persons to the passengers of flights SN 359 and SN 285 and question SN Airlines on their deadly collaboration to the deportation policies of the Foreigners Office.
Beware! it is the same SN Airlines counter for all Africa. You should ask their destination to the passengers (here Abidjan and Cotonou SN 285, Luanda and Kinshasa SN 359) and explain them that they are allowed to refuse this violent deportation by remaining standing in the plane and talking to the aircraft captain.
For info :
How to prevent a deportation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Umb7MyDhw
NB : Both persons introduced appeals against these deportations. The results will only be known the day before or the day itself. Get info at the following number: 0484026781
Denunciation campaign: fax , mail and call the people in charge
Brussels Airlines (demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord)
Come and join us at the airport to show your opposition to these practices! Let’s meet at 8.30 a.m. this Sunday 11th of June to explain the situation of these two persons to the passengers of flights SN 359 and SN 285 and question SN Airlines on their deadly collaboration to the deportation policies of the Foreigners Office.
Beware! it is the same SN Airlines counter for all Africa. You should ask their destination to the passengers (here Abidjan and Cotonou SN 285, Luanda and Kinshasa SN 359) and explain them that they are allowed to refuse this violent deportation by remaining standing in the plane and talking to the aircraft captain.
For info :
How to prevent a deportation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Umb7MyDhw
NB : Both persons introduced appeals against these deportations. The results will only be known the day before or the day itself. Get info at the following number: 0484026781
Denunciation campaign: fax , mail and call the people in charge
Brussels Airlines (ask that your message be transmitted to the aircraft captain)
Email :customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
Fax= 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 /027232362
https://www.facebook.com/brusselsairlines
Their press contacts:
Vice Président External Communication – Porte-parole
Email: geert.sciot@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0)2 723 84 00
Mobile: +32 (0)477 77 49 11
Vice Président Corporate Communications – Porte-parole
Email: wencke.lemmes@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0)2 723 85 11
Mobile: +32 (0)477 61 86 45
Media Relations Manager – Porte-parole + médias sociaux
Email: kim.daenen@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0) 2 723 84 55
Mobile: +32 (0) 479 69 36 48
Les autorités belges:
F.Roosemont
Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
Charles Michel
Premier Ministre
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02512 69 52 e-mail:charles.michel@premier.fed.be
Jan Jambon
Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre del’Intérieur
tél: 02 504 85 13 Fax:02 504 85 00 email:kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile etla Migration
Tél: 02 206 14 21– theo.francken@n-va.be kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
Didier Reynders
Téléphone : 02 501 85 91 E-mailcontact.reynders@diplobel.fed.be
He was able to give us a brief phone call when arriving to Casablanca. He explained to us that he went through serious violence when boarding, he was tied and handcuffed like for every forced deportation, with systematic shots by his escort. Outside the aircraft he asked to speak to the pilot. He explained him the situation, insisting on the fact that his country was Belgium because he was born there. The pilot did not seem to listen to him and he didn’t speak to him. Once in the plane he tried to ask for help to the passengers, but in vain. He spent the whole flight (4 hours) with the feet and the hands tied. The poilce told him ‘if you resist, we will worsen your case when you get to Morocco’, but he thought he had nothing to fear once there because he had not done anything wrong.
However, they kept him for 48 hours in a police station in Casablanca in conditions ‘as bad as in Belgium’.
They finally released him on the 2nd of June. He rang us.
He is totally destabilised. He is shouting on the phone, he is crying and expresses his anger. He is convinced that this deportation is illegal, he wants the Belgian state to repatriate him to Belgium immediately. He is asking for help (‘please do something for me’). He is blaming the whole wide world, even us. He says that he is coming back, that he is full of hatred, that he will beat up the Belgian state.
Prison and the real torture he had to go through during deportation attempts and during his retention in the closed centre in Merksplas where he really insisted on his belonging to Belgian society, destabilised Yassine to the point of losing self-control and going crazy (we hope temporarily). Yassine, probably already fragile from the beginning, seems to have a serious post-traumatic syndrome which could be fatal if he doesn’t get emergency assistance.
Yassine is a victim, his life is endangered because of the implementation of the new laws enacted in a deafening silence week after week and month after month by Theo Francken. This time it is about the laws against ‘criminal’ people born in Belgium whom we absolutely need to get rid of, according to the same Theo Francken!
The result is a serious and very tough infringement of the liberty to live. Deny humanity by imprisoning and deporting will not solve the problems of that so-called ‘criminality’.
The boomerang effect of these rejection policies has been tangible for several years already and it will only increase if they continue to use
violence and repression to empty the country of its Œforeign criminals¹ and to control migrations or even forbid them.
Belgium, just like Europe, will continue to reap what it is sowing: hatred!
Here we go, the legislation allowing to deport foreigners who were born in Belgium enters into force, and it is with Yassine that the governement will ‘inaugurate’ it, in the name of alleged ‘security measures’.
Born in Belgium 36 years ago, Yassine spent all his life in this country. Unfortunately, he went to prison. Without work, he was forced to steal. But, no matter the reasons, imprisonment will never be a solution.
They tried to deport him a first time on the 19th of May. Is it necessary to precise that once again the police were seriously violent? Yassine has been traumatised by this ‘super close’ contact with the police, but mainly, he doesn’t understand a thing: he belongs to Belgian society, he was born and grew up here. What is he going to do in Morocco?
And to our politicans who would see any relevance in arguing on the ‘criminal’ or ‘security’ aspect; we all know too well that prison as a punition does not function.
As regards deportations; repel in order to get rid of ones’ responsibilities? We are missing something. Yassine served his sentence. Deport him to Morocco equals to a life sentence.
He is currently being retained at the closed centre in Merksplas. In a state of panic due to the coming deportation, he cut himself with pieces of glass. He cries everytime we call him. A story that sadly reminds us of the events in Vottem several weeks ago, and all the other suicides or suicide attempts in the closed centres.
Yassine is in a confinement cell and he is psychologically extremely fragile. To the psychological violence of his retention one may add physical violence. His state will not allow him to resist another deportation.
From the bottom of his cell, he is telling us: ‘they saw my cuts, they saw, they entered, they beat me again, they handcuffed me again. I can not feel my fingers anymore, mum… My country, what are they doing to me? They have absolutely no mercy. I served my sentence mum!’
Exclusion, repression and deportation: this is how our government plans its security policy. It just confirmed that when announcing the building of 3 new closed centres. To what cost? Sacrificing our values. At the expense of humanity. At risk to our rights.
More than ever, we should show the government that we refuse and will resist to these repressive and inhuman policies, before one can say ‘if we had known’. Let us not mix what is legal and what is fair. This new legislation is deeply unfair.
Solidarity with the 6 heroes sued for having prevented a deportation
Let’s go in numbers to the audience and in front of the Tribunal!
31 May 2017 8.30 a.m.
Law Courst of Brussels, (Palais de Justice Place Poelaert)
On 17th of August 2016, a man was the subject of a deportation attempt on a commercial flight to Cameroon.
He was handcuffed and maintained seated by two policemen. He was crying out of pain and seemed to be choking.
In front of this inhuman scene, most of the passengers orally expressed their indignation and refused to sit down.
This movement of solidarity obliged the policemen to abandon the deportation. Then they chose six passengers randomly and drove them to the police station.
On 31st of May 2017, those six ‘heroes’ will appear before the criminal court of Brussels. They are being sued because of ‘serious impediment to air traffic’.
We oppose to the criminalisation of a human gesture of decency and solidarity.
We support the six heroes and we declare that in front of a violent deportation, we also will refuse to shut up!
Theo Francken and the Foreigners Office announced the opening of 3 new closed centres where men and women will be ‘administratively’ locked down, with the congratulations of the different parties that manage the residence and migration of foreigners with a strong hand.
In the context of these migration policies, the organisation of the confinement in closed centres reflects well these policies with a series of intimidations, violence, even torture by the staff of the centres.
At the Caricole closed centre close to the Zaventem Brussels National airport are mainly confined people who were arrested at our borders when requesting asylum to Belgium, as well as people who would not be aministratively in order to enter the territory and whom the Foreigners Office tries to have deported to their country of origin by the responsible airline .
The Caricole closed centre was inaugurated on 29 April 2012.
A few speeches on this occasion :
“The Caricole centre aims at humanely retaining foreigners and repatriating them the soonest possible to their country of origin or granting them access to the territory when the legislation allows for it’, explained Maggie De Block.
“The aim in the building is, on the one hand, to create as much as possible a climate of security and conviviality, and on the other hand a certain freedom of movement’ asserted the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration.
The Director general of the Foreigners Office, Freddy Roosemont also present at the inauguration, refused to compare the centre with a prison. ‘There is space and there is light, we did everything to make their stay as pleasant as possible’ he explained.
No retention, of anyone, can be accepted. Prisons, closed centres are places that were built to exclude the others, those whom our leaders do not give (anymore) the right to participate in their type of society.
In the Caricole closed centre, announced as a golden prison, ‘human’, secure’, ‘convivial’, ‘with a certain freedom of movement’, the retainees are not happy and they express it after several events that happened the last months!
On 04/05/2017 the so-called « residents » have been shocked by the extremely violent arrest by the federal police in the centre of a man from Sierra Leone in view of his deportation. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/deportation-attempt-urgent/
On 11/05/2017 three retainees escaped from the centre. Two were caught by the police the day after, the third one is still running free. The residents were deeply moved by the courage of the escapees.
After these multiple events, the retainees are confronted with a lot of pressure.
After the escape, the freedom of movement within the centre was restricted during several days and the vigilance of the guards is omnipresent. They are trying to convince the retainees that the escapee of 11/05/2017 who kept a lot of contacts with the retainees is radicalised, that he is a terrorist and that he is extremely dangerous.
For 2 months they have not had internet connection; which strongly reduces the access to the documents and information necessary for the introduction of their asylum requests and also the contacts with their friends and families.
Mobile phones are progressively cut by the providers. The centre management refuses the use of phones from the centre, and nothing has been foreseen to allow the calls essential for the retainees to their lawyers, families, associations, etc.
The people arriving at the centre generally do not have any lawyer to introduce their appeal against their arrest or their deportation. The social assistants of the centre are obliged to appoint a lawyer generally pro deo. We notice that most of the lawyers appointed by the social assistants are currently totally incompetent and absent, which the social assistants pertinently know.
The documents they have to sign are in Dutch which very few retainees can understand.
From the medical point of view, the health care is almost non existent or not adapted to the pathology of the ‘resident’. It is the unqualified staff (no need of a degree to apply there) who distribute the pills without supervision by a doctor.
The staff of the centre doesn’t miss an occasion to put pressure on the retainees, using the same strategies than the Foreigners office. They promise violence if they refuse a deportation, arrests in their country of origin, etc. They dissuade them to ring their external contacts, to spread their messages, warning them that they daily read the articles published on the website gettingthevoiceout and that they know everything.
A few live testimonies Internet
“Still no internet at the centre, it’s awfully long… impossible to search for information’.
Telephones
“A lot of phones have been cut here. When people ask to make a phone call in the office, they say no. So we try to arrange ourselves among us but it is not easy.’
Pressure and intimidation by the staff
“They tell everybody that the fugitive, the one they could not catch, is radicalised, that he is a terrorist and that he is extremely dangerous.’
“Last Thursday, two men and a woman visited the centre, the bedrooms, the shower rooms etc. They were accompanied by the director and she was showing everything. One can say that there was almost no contact with the retainees, they avoided me for sure.’
“Every day, the staff of the centre watch the page gettingthevoiceout before they start working. Even the director does that, they decided that recently.’
“People don’t understand antyhing anymore here. They get their documents in Dutch, however their lawyer doesn’t speak that language either, so why are they doing that?’
« A lot of rumors circulate here on the associations that are working for the Foreigners Office, in the centre they tell me that I am in danger when I communicate with you.’
Lawyers
“I gave 900 euros to the former lawyer and she didn’t react. The new lawyer is ok but when she got the file it was already too late, nothing had been done, it hurt me, it hurt me so much.”
“I keep trying to ring the lawyer but in vain. We are in a total state of panic, we are really in need of help’.
“He asked me for 100 EUR but he still hasn’t done anything.’
Medical care
Another woman had a crisis. ‘She fell today, she was lying on the ground, her eyes closed, she didn’t move anymore. People ran from everywhere, she was brought to the nursery where she will spend the night. We all gathered and showed our dissatisfaction to the guards, we told them it was really bullshit, that she ought to be driven to the hospital, that there was no doctor during the week-end. We were told to speak to the director on Monday morning”.
“Here a lady is not feeling well, her eyes are red, she can’t open them anymore, and she has headaches too. They just give her ointment, it doesn’t help at all!’
” When people are feeling sick here, they tell them to go and take a shower to feel better… what is this?’
« A woman asked to see a doctor. The day after, she asked again for medical help because she could not get rid of her pains. They just shook her and asked her to stop pretending. ‘
One retainee told us ‘we do not have the right to be sick. It really shocked and hurt me that they feel we are pretending. You have to die first to have them believe that you are sick. We are stones for them, not human beings.’
CGRA and the Foreigners Office
“The whole argumentation is to question the reliability of the documents and testimonies… it is hard. They are always looking for contradiction, they say the evidence are not valid, but where are the criteria, they do not give any reason or explanation.’
“It is always ther same when there are relevant elements they accelerate deportations’.
“This morning at 8.30 a.m. they came to my room. They asked again if I wanted to introduce a new asylum request, they put pressure on me. I think they want me to get a negative answer and put pressure on the embassy to give me a let pass because they don’t have any!’
“Tickets are being distributed to everybody here, it is like a slot machine!’
“They don’t want people to know what is going on here, that is why we do not have phones with cameras! But what is going on here is absolutely crazy! For example, yesterday two people slept in the corridor with just one blanket!’
Visit of parliamentarians and Steenrock Festival
A women was prevented from seeing the parliamentarians because she is not well at all, it seems that her case was hidden. ‘The guards followed her during the whole afternoon, they control every single step she takes.’
“The parliamentarians saw more or less 17 people I think, the guards never left them, but they could film a bit on the sly with their mobiles.’
“I gave my phone number, he said he would look at article and ring me back. I am still waiting for his call’
“We could not see nor hear anything from the event, and they had also cancelled the visits.’
Update : We were several at the airport, including the lawyer and one parliamentarian, to talk to the passengers. We heard that the deportation of Mahmadou had been cancelled because, so they told him, there was “no escort available”. It’s the second time we’ve been told this! Would the escort team suffer from a burnout?
Let’s be cautious. Mahmadou may be placed on a flight very rapidly, out of the blue, which would be totally illegal. Let’s remain on the starting blocks to be able to run to the airport in case he was being taken at the centre! Updates will be published on the site as soon as we hear news.
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Let’s prevent the deportation of a ‘criminal’ father, this 21th of May 2017
“Massive deportation of criminal foreigners” is one of the populist declarations by Mr Francken on his website on the occasion of the announcement of the construction of new closed centres.
« De gevangenispopulatie daalt immers, oa omdat we voor het eerst massaal criminele vreemdelingen het land uitzetten. » https://theotuurt.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/topdeal/
Families are being separated, children are losing their father or their mother.
Mr ML is among these ‘criminal foreigners’ and his two small kids are going to loose their dad.
Let’s prevent a family drama, let’s give a dad back to his kids.
Mr ML has been in Belgium since 2005. After a mischief he was convicted and imprisoned during 8 months in 2008. Then he got on with his life, he met a girlfriend with whom he has 2 kids, one is 2 years old and the other is a baby of 8 months.
After he was convicted in 2008 he was arrested 3 months ago and he is being retained at the 127bis closed centre in view of his deportation with a prohibition to come back for 10 years!
He will go through his second forced deportation attempt this Sunday 21st of May to his ‘country of origin’, Benin.
He doesn’t want to abandon his girlfriend and his kids and he is asking us for help to prevent his deportation.
Flight SN 285 Abidjan and Cotonou 10H35 21/05/2017
Be present at the airport, at the check-in desk this Sunday at 8:35 in order to explain her situation to the passengers
and/or go for a fax, call and mail campaign to the people responsible for this nonsense expulsions
The annual Steenrock festival 2017 took place on 06/05/2017 in front of the Steenokkerzeel closed centre to protest against imprisonments and deportation, with concerts, public speaking, demonstration in front of the fences of the centre, testimonies by former and actual retainees. https://www.facebook.com/anne.rakovsky/videos/10155371524177948/?hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE
But, first, alert from the Bruges closed centre 10/05/2017
One wing will be closed because of a criminal invasion by fleas! Transfers of retainees (not fleas) are underway!
127bis
During the Steenrock , the situation in the 127bis was extremely tense after actions of repression organised by the management and the guards of the centre :
The day before already, a dozen of retainees had been placed in confinement cells. At least two of them were transferred to other centres. On the day of Steenrock, the men were isolated in a room that was hermetically closed, under the eye of the guards who, according to several testimonies, were extremely stressed out. It is true that the fact of being locked into a room with around 40 men deprived of all possibility to speak and circulate can be extremely stressful! They could not open the cages, could they?
« During the Steenrock, many retainees were placed in isolation, others were locked in rooms. Everything was done to avoid the contact with the militants gathered in front of the centre. All was made to control and monitor the retainees to prevent them from speaking. The police role was played by the guards ready to repress the least protest, the smallest opposition. The meetings with parliamentarians were watched and closely listened to by the guards.
“A man who had arrived to the 127bis was directly placed in a confinement cell for ‘security’ reasons in the night of the 5th of May until the end of the Steenrock »
Many wanted to speak on the phone during the festival, some could do it but they were transferred to another centre the day itself or the morning after.
On the women’s side, very few contacts. It seems that they were even more isolated and unable to contact us.
Parliamentarians entered the centre and they could discuss with some retainees. We are expecting their reactions.
it is to be noted that since the Steenrock and the militants actions during Theo Francken’s monologues in Gent and at the VUB, the retainees are forbidden to ring us and face penalties.
Caricole
First the retainees are tense. The day before the Steenrock, they witnessed the extremely violent arrest of a friend by ten police officers of the federal police.
Call at 8.50 a.m on the 5th of May: ‘People are crying and shouting in the centre, they came to fetch Emmanuel K.’ ‘They said You have to leave today!” EK had not been warned, he was given no previous indication of a deportation. Hence he answered that he did not understand and that he would not leave. There came the federal police, they threw him on the ground in his room to neutralise him, they handcuffed him and took him away. They were ten police officers inside the centre, they all told us to get out of our rooms.’
The retainees are traumatised: ‘it is a small piece of all of us that they’ve taken away today.’
‘A guard burst into tears, he apologised.’
‘It is chaos here, it is hell this morning. A woman was shouting so hard, she fell on the floor, they brought her to the infirmary’.
‘They went too far today!’
‘When they asked me to leave my room, I said ‘why should I get out if you are going to do me something legal?’ ‘I didn’t get any answer and they made me go out.’
‘Everybody was shouting: you are going to kill him, you are going to kill him!’
Then the cleaning the same day in view of the visit of the parliamentarians:
‘They had a spring cleaning at the end of the week: a company came to clean everything, we had never seen that, even the lawn was mown!’
4 parliamentarians entered the Caricole during the Steenrock :
« A woman was prevented from meeting the parliamentarians because she is feeling very bad, her situation seems to have been hidden: the guards followed her the whole afternoon, monitoring her very closely.’
‘The parliamentarians saw more or less 17 people I think. The guards were all the time by their side, spying them’.
Testimony by a Guinean deported on the 11th of May, partly read to the parliamentarians during their visit and which he would have liked to broadcast.
‘I am of Guinean nationality and I have been retained at the Caricole centre for almost two months. I am very seriously ill and after a medical exam the doctor of the centre confirmed that I have the sickle-cell disorder. After the consultation on Monday the 26th of April, I got a prescription that says I have to take specific pills. However, in spite of all this my health doesn’t get better. I had several crises here at the centre because of my illness. According to my analyses, competences are lacking as well as adequate material to cure the people. I keep losing weight, everything I eat I vomit. The staff of the Caricole is laughing at me and my health! Despite my poor health they want to deport me. I am asking for support to associations. Thank you.’
A flight with escort was foreseen for him on the 11th of May, and then it was cancelled because he was deemed “not fit to fly”. The doctor of the centre modified the certificate so as to make him “fit to fly”. He was deported with escort to Guinea. The staff of the centre is disgusted (sic) !
In the caricole centre, the parliamentarians discovered deprived people, incapable to defend themselves, often without lawyers. Some were astounded! They saw 8 Palestinians from Gaza and 4 Vietnamese (3 women and 1 man), victims of human trafficking, according to the information they got. They also saw several Congolese people living in Belgium for several years and that the police fetched at their house early in the morning several weeks ago.
In all the closed centres the retainees are angry, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, tired, discouraged. They are the object of a blind repression and treated like ‘beasts’ as many are syaing. They were deported manu militari to their ‘country of origin’.
Incomprehensible imprisonments
‘I did not choose to be illegal’
‘They want to drag me down, I can feel it. Why are they keeping me here, I don’t want to stay in Belgium, I just would like to go back to Italy. I had a residence permit in Italy.”
‘What’s this? I came here to work and send money to my parents who are old and extremely poor. I am clean, clear, all in order. What’s this? Why are they retaining me?’
‘This is not legal, this is not democracy, it is unfair, I am angry!’
‘it is like a cemetery here, one is dying day after day. People are suffering…’
‘I am ok to go back to my country, it is not such a big disaster, but I don’t want to be separated from my children.’
‘We are waiting. We do not know what they are going to do with us.’
There are countless hunger strikes in the different centres, countless escape plans, countless rioting attempts, countless solidarity movements within the centres.
The retainees do not understand this imprisonment because they are asylum seekers, regularisation seekers, sick, asking for a life of rights and dignity’.
News of the day 14th of May: 3 new closed centres will be built for OUR security, in other words, ‘they are ALL dangerous’ dixit Francken.
05/05
Call at 8:50 a.m. People are shouting and crying in the centre, they came to fetch Emmanuel K. They told him he had to leave today. EK had not been warned, he had got no information on this deportation, hence he answered that he did not understand and that he would not leave. The federal police came and threw him down on the floor of his room to neutralise him, they handcuffed him and took him away very fast.
The retainees are in a state of shock!
A guard burst into tears and apologised, saying ‘It is chaos and total hell here this morning’ A woman was shouting so hard that she fell on the floor and was taken to the infirmary’.
Summary of Emmanuel’s deportations http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/deportations-sans-fin-et-torture-dun-demandeur-dasile/
Emmanuel would be deported on Brussels Airlines’ flight SN241 at 12:15 a.m to Freetown – once again, the airline is complicit in this State violence.
For months, Emmanuel has been the victim of a stupid and inhuman determination by the Foreigners Office. His story was denounced by the press, which annoyed the authorities who are used to persecuting underground the foreigners in so called illegal stay.
The only illegal actions in this are those committed by Belgium: retention of an asylum seeker, inhuman and degrading treatment, failure to assist a person in danger, deportation attempt without notice.
What can we do for Emmanuel? We were warned too late to organise an action at the airport, but let’s invade the mail boxes and fax machines and phones of the culprits!
Brussels Airlines (ask your message be forwarded to the captain)
Email :customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
Fax= 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 /027232362
https://www.facebook.com/brusselsairlines
Their press contacts
Vice President External Communication – Spokeperson
Email: geert.sciot@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0)2 723 84 00
Mobile: +32 (0)477 77 49 11
Vice Président Corporate Communications – Spokeperson
Email: wencke.lemmes@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0)2 723 85 11
Mobile: +32 (0)477 61 86 45
Media Relations Manager – Spokeperson + social media
Email: kim.daenen@brusselsairlines.com
Tél: +32 (0) 2 723 84 55
Mobile: +32 (0) 479 69 36 48
Belgian authorities
F.Roosemont
Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
Charles Michel
Premier Ministre
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02512 69 52
e-mail:charles.michel@premier.fed.be
Jan Jambon
Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre del’Intérieur
tél: 02 504 85 13 Fax:02 504 85 00
email:kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile etla Migration
Tél: 02 206 14 21–
theo.francken@n-va.be
kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
Didier Reynders
Téléphone : 02 501 85 91
E-mailcontact.reynders@diplobel.fed.be
Liens sur Emmanuel:
http://regularisation.canalblog.com/…/2…/04/13/35166325.html
http://regularisation.canalblog.com/…/2…/03/23/35082975.html
Ms J is about to undergo a 2nd expulsion attempt this Monday 8/05/2017
She is from Cameroun and lives in Belgium since 2005. he obtained a work conditionned based regularization. She lost it due to the fact that her future employer didn’t want to hire her. She then applied through a cohabitation request with her friend. It was rejected. Due to her poor health (cerebral lesion from unknown origin) she went for a 9ter request for regularization that was also refused.
On 22/02/2017, sha was arrested in the train to Libramont during an identity control. She is since in the 127bis closed centre.
She is due to undergo a second expulsion attempt under escort this Monday 8th of May. She doesn’t want and can’t leave. her life is here. She askes us to help her resist to this expulsion.
The flight is SN 351 to Fouala and Yaounde at 10:40 this Monday 8/05/2017
Be present at the airport, at the check-in desk this Monday at 8:40 in order to explain her situation to the passengers
and/or go for a fax, call and mail campaign to the people responsible for this nonsense expulsions
Surprise demonstration in front of the closed centres in Steenokkerzeel this Sunday 30th of April 2017
Information from inside the centres
This Sunday, we got a first phone call from the Caricole closed centre: ‘There are demonstrators in front of the centre who are crying out for freedom; they are many, it’s great!’
Then another call from the 127bis closed centre:
First the men were not too happy. They were deprived of their daily walk at 3 p.m.They want to speak with the demonstrators.
Then came the details:’It is terrible madam, are they all with us? I didn’t know’.
Then further details: ‘They are 40 or 50. They are shouting out loud. The guards were really panicking.’ We were trying to shout with them but the guards very quickly locked the windows. The police arrived after 30 minutes with dogs. We will be there for the Steenrock demonstration next Saturday! We are with you.’
A man is calling us from his cell from where he can hear the demonstrators: he has been on a hunger strike for 10 days. ‘Here it is disgusting, we are not animals. We want freedom.’
On the women’s side, the guards very quickly locked all doors and windows, even the toilets’. “We can not even go to the loo anymore.’ ‘It’s a prison here’. ‘We would like to participate but they prevent us from doing so!’
After the demonstration, all the men were in a state of shock. Some were rying, one of them freaked out and broke everything in the toilets. Then,
4 detainees tried to escape by cutting the fences. The guards realized very quickly and intervened.
On the 1st and 2nd of May, 7 detainees were been transferred to various
centres.
26/04/2017 In a wing of the centre, two Pakistani retainees have been on a hunger/thirst strike for 5 days. They refuse to be deported because they are in danger in Pakistan. They started the hunger and thirst strike after learning that a flight had been booked for them. They are asking us to speak about that, about the insecurity in their country, and one of them also insists on the long term acquaintances and connections he has in Beligum.
In another wing of the centre, two other retainees have been on a hunger strike for 15 days.
Many retainees show solidarity with their action and they support them.
They are protesting against:
– the long retention (up to 8 months), and for some who are willing to return to their countries, their maintenance in retention during months!
– the racism and ill-treatments in the centre. “We are not animals”. “As soon as you make a comment you are being threatened with confinement cell”. “The doctor is letting us die”.
– the illegal arrests: “We are legal, NOT illegal. What is this? They withdrew my card because I no longer had a residence, others’ because they had been to jail, BUT we ARE legal! Personally, I have been living here for 16 years and I have two children. Francken (Secretary of State for Migration) is pulling new undocumented out of his sleeve!”
“This is too much now Madam, we can’t take it anymore”.
20/04 We are expecting news from the deported. It was a “joint flight” organised by Frontex.
Mainstream media com: http://www.sudinfo.be/1828519/article/2017-04-19/dix-neuf-congolais-et-guineens-expulses-par-vol-militarise-depuis-la-belgique Nineteen Congolese and Guineans deported from Belgium on a military flight. Eleven Congolese and eight Guineans were smoothly deported on Wednesday morning to their countries of origin from Melsbroek airport. It was a joint flight organised with Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Romania and the Czech Republic who each deported one Congolese or Guinean national. The flight will have a first stop early evening in Conakry before landing in Kinshasa, as reported by the Foreigners Office on Wednesday.
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Update 18/04
They are currently being retained at the 127bis centre without phone: 4 women and a few men from the DRC and Guinea; approximately 20 people. Among them is a man from the DRC opponent to the regime who already had been through a very violent deportation attempt and whose testimony had been published. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/arrest-and-deportationattempt/ A woman from the DRC who has been living in Belgium for 10 years. A woman for which the 9ter regularisation is under way. A woman who has been living in France since she was 8 years old, who has 3 children living with their father in France.
Two Guineans who were in confinement cells in Vottem were transferred yesterday night to the 127bis but in complete chaos! In Vottem, they refused to enter the van, a fight followed during two hours according to the retainees of the centre, blood, head injuries etc. The police put a helmet to one of them and, according a retainee of the 127bis, the man arrived with that helmet at the centre and was directly placed in confinement cell.
“They come to pick us up as if we were livestock to be taken to the slaughter house”. “I don’t understand. My name is in all the social media and in the media in Congo, they know me as an opponent, and they want to send me back there.”
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Update of 17 April 10 p.m. Some had received their ticket for the group deportation last week, but other Congolese or Guineans are taken by surprise and driven to the 127bis centre. Bruges : a man and a woman were transferred from Bruges to the 127bis closed centre this morning and placed into confinement cells on 17 April. This evening 10 p.m., 2 women who did not receive tickets were asked to prepare their luggage so as to be transferred to the 127bis. There are still women from the DRC and Guinea who fear being taken by surprise tomorrow. 127 bis : 5 men (2 from Guinea and 3 from the DRC) have been asked to prepare their luggage tonight. Vottem : 2 other Guineans were brought by surprise to the 127bis and have been placed into confinement cells. Also, there is some confusion about the let passes: international let pass, let pass delivered by the secret services in Kinshasa, visit of a member of the DRC embassy in Bruges with a long list of Congolese? For the moment we know about 4 men from Guinea, 4 or 5 men from the DRC and 4 women from the DRC. They will probably be joined by other travellers from other Schengen countries tomorrow.
Testimony:
“ I have been here since 2010. I was told to integrate, I learnt Dutch and followed many courses during 7 years. I started a family, I am integrated and now they want to send me back!” « Please do something for us! Do you want us to get killed?” « This is crazy, she has marks on the whole body which prove what she went through. Beligum is very close, everybody knows what is going on in Congo, there are observers, etc; it is asolute nonsense to send people back there! « They are not respecting laws, we are just a drop in the ocean.” ” Why do they give us an international let-pass?” “There are troubles everywhere in Congo, and they are sending us back there?”
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SPECIAL FLIGHT to the DRC and Guinea on 19 April 2017
We’ve heard that a FRONTEX (most likely) flight might be organised to Guinea and the DRC this Wednesday 19 April 2017 from Melsbroek’s military airport.
Several Congolese and Guineans, detained for several months in our closed centres received their tickets for this group flight.
Flight itinerary:
Departure Wednesday 19 April, Melsbroek airport, 10 a.m. — Conakry 5.10 p.m. —- Arrival in Kinshasa during the night.
Transfer of the detainees from Bruges to 127bis/Caricole on Tuesday.
Among the people who will be deported, several women who have been living in Belgium sometimes for more than 10 years, and several DRC opponents.
13/04/2017 Emmanuel, a young Sierra Leonean, has already experienced several deportation attempts to China (through which he transited) and to Sierra Leone (his home country). They even brought him by force once to Sierra Leone – two days sleeping on the ground in the airport- and in China where he stayed more than 24 hours in the airport without drinking and eating. The last attempt was extremely violent (14 policemen) and he still suffers the consequences. Despite a complaint lodged against this violence, despite the visit by the federal ombudsman following this ill-treatment, despite a testimony by Obospol, the Foreigners Office want to try and deport him again under escort this Friday.
His story is here : http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2017/03/23/35082975.html
and here: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/endless-deportations-and-torture-of-an-asylum-seeker/
Emmanuel is calling for help to prevent this deportation to Sierra Leone because his life would be in serious danger there.
“If I return there, they will find me and kill me”. “The villagers (who are part of the secret society of the ethny I belong to) want me dead”. “I am extremely worried madam, this tradition is destroying me”. “My mother, the only person I trust, is old. She is scared.” Please madam, help me save my life”.
Vol Brussels Airlines SN 241 to Monrovia/Liberia with a stopover in Freetown/Sierra Leone at 12.15 a.m on Friday 14/04/2017
Meeting at the Airport in Zaventem 14/04/2017 at 10 a.m.!
his flight SN 241 to freetown and Morovia 12h15 pm
THE FIGHT GOES ON… SOLIDARITY… WE WILL NOT LET IT HAPPEN!
Gathering at the Foreigners Office on 10 April 2017 at 1.30 p.m to demand the closing of the centres and the end of deportations.
PRESS RELEASE OF THE UNDOCUMENTED’S COORDINATION
ON THE FRANTIC ARRESTS OF UNDOCUMENTED PEOPLE
It is with great anger and huge indignation that the Undocumented’s Coordination heard about the arrest of 31 undocumented people in Ixelles after a control mission that took place on 28 March in the public transports while on that same day the CSC, the FGTB and the Coordination of undocumented workers were demonstrating in the beginning of the afternoon to denounce the exploitation of undocumented workers on many building sites in Brussels and more particularly in the framework of the development of four lanes in Arts-Loi metro station.
The federal police argued that this action aimed at further reducing the criminality in Brussels’ public transports and at increasing the feeling of safety of the users. It is not because a control mission is legal that it is legitimate. The date and place of the control were not chosen randomly, it clearly points the frantic hunt of undocumented people.
It was with the same anger and indignation that we had heard about the arrest of our two comrades Medoune Ndiaye and Malik Ball, devoted key activists of the Undocumented’s Voice.
The Undocumented’s Coordination believes that the vase of the pressure against undocumented people is overflowing. The indifference of the Belgian people to the extremist excesses of Theo Francken upsets us. Theo Franken built his asylum and migration policy on prejudices and paranoia. The amalgam between immigration and terrorism has become too important within the government which much too easily associates undocumented with criminals and terrorists. Thousands of arrests of innocent people continue to happen on the street, randomly. They sometimes happen through trickery at the Foreigners Office and are followed with imprisonment in the five closed centres of Belgium. Francken’s obsession and obstinacy for imprisonment and his behaviour full of disdain for migrants should have all Belgians bouncing of indignation. The treatment reserved to immigrants and undocumented is a reason to be outraged.
After all this, the Undocumented’s Coordination is calling for a big indignation gathering in front of the Foreigners Office this Monday 10 April at 1.30 p.m. to denounce the recent wave of arrests and demand the release of Medoune Ndiaye and Malik Ball.
Coordination des Sans-papiers de Belgique
Serge 0493 291 974, Romina 0479 772 317, Mamadou 0493 995 444
Udate 07/04: Le vol a été annulé suite à une nouvelle demande d’asile. Il a fait un aller retour Merksplas-127 bis-Merksplas et n’a pas été présenté à l’aéroport : ““Merksplas – 127 bis – Merksplas- Tout ce va est vient, c’est le stress, j’ai mangé avec les yeux, l’appétit est coupé !”
Ce jour sa demande d’asile a été rejetée par l’office de étrangers!
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Mohamed Sofiane, 37, of Algerian origin, has been retained for 5 months at the centre in Merksplas, which the retainees call the “Flemish Guantanamo”!. He was arrested while shopping. “I entered a shop and they arrested me in front of everybody while I was shopping. It is not normal. I am not a terrorist.”
Mohamed had a car accident and his legs were severly injured. He is walking with crutches. His health requires a close monitoring and an urgent operation. However, in the centre, nobody deems necessary to follow the treatment prescribed by the medical file. The doctors appointment and operations foreseen are systematically cancelled! Five months of retention in pain, with always the same answer “it is not urgent, you are totally normal!”. Mohamed is getting tired of all this. “It is like in a cemetery here, we are dying slowly. People are suffering…’.
Today, following the decision not to grant him the right to live in Belgium, it is total lack of understanding! He built his life here, his mother and sister are living here and he is very close to them, he has no family, no acquaitances in Algeria anymore and he will refuse to return.
The deportation flight is foreseen this Friday 7 April at 3 p.m. in Zaventem.
LET’S MEET AT 1 P.M. IN FRONT OF THE CHECK-IN COUNTERS of the flight AH 2063 3 P.M to Alger. 15 heures vers Algiers.
If you can not be present, you may still send faxes and call the people in charge of these deportations:
Algerian consulate that should deliver a let pass to enable the boarding on the flight
I simply wanted to introduce myself first. My name is Massmu Koti (???). I live in Schaerbeek, I have been there for 6 years and a half.
On 28th November they came home, 3 police officers (2 men and 1 woman). They said they had come to catch me. I asked why? They said that I would be told there at the police station. We left with them to Schaerbeek, I had not understood, but before leaving I wanted to change because I only had underwear. I went to my bedroom and the police man followed me there. I was naked to change myself, they stayed there. I asked them to leave the room because I was going to change clothes but they stayed there.
When i was ready they handcuffed me; I asked why because I had not stolen anything nor done anything wrong!
I hold my hands and they handcuffed me. We went to Evere. There they took my fingerprints etc. We left to North station and there they directly put me in a confinement cell. I spent more than 2 hours there then they called me and told me that I was going to the closed centre in Bruges, on 28th November.
They brought me here. I stayed here for 3 months and a half. I introduced my 3rd asylum request. I had introduced the first one in 2010, the second one here, and the 3rd one here also, it was on 21st of February, therefore I am waiting for the answer.
To my surprise, on 21st of March, the social assistant called me to tell me that she had got my ticket and that I had to fly back to Congo on the 24th of March. From 4 p.m they put me in a confinement cell, until 6 a.m
Was it the first time they tried to deport you?
Yes it was. Arrest and deportation attempt:
Around 6 a.m the drivers came to pick me up. At the airport they left me in a cell with guards. The police told me that I was going to Congo on the same day.
I said no, I cannot go to Congo like this, I had requested asylum and I can not leave because I haven’t received the answer yet. They told me that they had contacted the Foreigners Office and that they would get the answer within an hour.
I said that things could not happen that way. First we need an answer to prepare the travel! You do the opposite! you prepare the trip and then you expect the answer!
They said, well we don’t know, but you will for sure sleep in Congo tonight.
They asked me to undress, I stayed with my underwear but they also wanted me to take it off. They were four men and 1 woman, I took off the underwear. They asked me to get 30cm down, I did that twice.
« Then they said ok let’s go”. They took a belt to tie me. I asked them why they wanted to tie me because I am not a thief nor a criminal!
Since I’ve been in Europe it’s the first time I’ve been to the police station. They told me that they were going to tie me, I refused, I said I was not leaving, then they said ok now you’ll see…
They were 8, they started to beat me in the cell, they put me on the ground and beat me, especially the woman, she almost strangled me.
They put the belt, the scotch tape, they tied me very well and carried me to the bus like an animal and then to the plane, they placed the steps, I didn’t move, they had to carry me, they were 6, they had to carry me like a bag, like a corpse until the plane. We entered the plane, there was nobody. They seated me at the very end, two of them on my left, two on my right, two at the front and the woman next to me.
Now you’re going to Congo and when we get there we’ll help you, we’ll make you leave the airport and let you 500-600 meters away from it. I said “you say you want to help me but if you let me 500 meters away, you know I’m kin danger!’ If I was not in danger you would leave me in the airport, I could go out etc. so you know I’m in danger, I am a fighter, one can see me everywhere!
And in the plane
Once in the plane they told me “Go there sir, we’ll sit you there, be quiet. When we get to Congo, we will escort you until the exit and we will help you, we will drive you 500km away and drop you.
I said: ‘I am telling you that I have problems there in Congo! If I arrive there, they will hurt me, they will kill me. But you don’t believe me. Why are you telling me that when we get there you will escort me and drop me 500km away? I will be in trouble there. If I didn’t have problmes, why would you escort me 500 km away?’
I stayed quiet because there was nobody in the plane, I was alone with 5 police officers. I remained quiet and when the people started to come, I saw there was a lot of people, I started shouting, and then everybody started shouting and making a fuss with the police.
Then two air hostesses came and said that the pilot could not take off like this, that I had to get off the plane. They had me get off the plane.
The woman, the police woman, removed the scotch tape I had around my legs, she removed everything, except the ones around my hands. They told me “we are getting off the plane”.
When in the stairs, one of the policemen told me “Did you see what you’ve done? Now you will see what I’ll do to you…”
We entered the bus, he started to beat me in the ribs, I was like a package, we arrived closed to the cell above, he started to kick me in the ass and it hurt me where I had got an operation 3 years ago. It’s all swollen and it hurts a lot. I stayed there during 45 minutes and then the people came.
01/04/2017 – We’ve heard from two different sources that a military flight to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would be foreseen in the coming days/weeks. We know that a dozen Congolese are currently being retained in closed centres, among them are 7 women!
These flights are organised by European countries or ‘sweet Frontex’ (European agency for the management of the operational cooperation at the external borders of the EU’s member states) in total secrecy. The arrests, retentions and boardings systematically happen with violence, according to several concurrent testimonies.
The military and police mobilisation is oversized for the deportation of people they call recalictrant or even criminal. Most of the persons currently retained already had to undergo several deportation attempts to which they resisted. These attempts were accompanied with severe violence by the police authorities. The biggest majority of these people which the Foreigners Office try to deport have declared several times that they could not and did not want to go back to their home country. Indeed, most of them are opponents and they risk ‘preferential’ treatments and a special welcome when they arrive.
It might be the beginning of the recent recommendation by the European Commission, which stipulates that ‘the return policy should happen following a strategy that mobilises all the means likely to ‘considerably increase’ the number of returns, within a rationalised and well integrated framework of the multidisciplinary competences at the national level’.
At that level, the Commission mainly means the participation of the law enforcement authorities, the judicial authority and even the medical and social services. According to the Commission, the immigration services should be available 24/24 and 7/7. http://www.editions-legislatives.fr/content/politique-de-retour-la-commission-r%C3%A9clame-un-durcissement-sans-pr%C3%A9c%C3%A9dent
A former ‘special flight’ to the DRC had been operated on 2 December 2016 with 12 Congolose nationals. Message by the girlfriend of a deported man: ‘My boyfriend just got deported to Congo by military cargo. Twelve deported people escorted by more than 20 police officers like real dangers. Handcuffed from 6 till 11 a.m, why? no one knows. When in Congo, from 7 till 11 p.m discussions to avoid prison and height of absurdity; a travel document in lieu of a passport not signed by him! An atrocity! His 4 years old son is now without a father, and the coming baby too! Thank you Theo Francken for breaking up families and for leaving a man lost in a country he doesn’t know! I am shattered.”
Update 25/03:He left the centre at 6.30 a.m. He rang us at 2 p.m when he was back at the centre. « When you see me, you will cry ». At the airport, there were 5 men and 1 woman from the federal police. « I had swallowed a razor blade because I didn¹t want to go back to Togo. They told me, OK so that way you may croak in Togo. » Blood came out of his mouth and ran all over his clothes. The police took off his clothes to clear all the traces. « They hid my clothes, I don¹t know whereŠ ». « Blood was still running, I kept it in my mouth and when I called for help on the plane the blood came out. » When he shouted, the police squeezed his neck. « They were blocking my mouth and my nose at the same timeŠ I was suffocating. » A young man stood up and said « You are going to kill him! ». There was a lot of noise. B was half unconscious. The captain arrived and said « I can not accept him on board ». He was taken out of the plane, a car came « they brutally threw me in the car ». B. asked if they wanted to kill him. A police officer gave him an elbow strike and said that it was not over, that when he would come back he would see what would happen. « I will never forget that in my whole life ». His luggage left for Togo, no more phone, no more clothes, etc.
B. was arrested in Zaventem in decembre 2016. Originally from Togo, he was in transit at Zaventem airport to flee the persecutions he was going through in his home country. His offence? His sexual orientation. B. is gay. In Togo he could be sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. “For my country’s authorities, it is an evil spirit that hosts a person, and in order to get rid of it, it has to be beaten up or imprisoned.”
Therefore, he had come to Belgium to seek for protection. As an answer he already got his first eviction ticket. The CGRA do not believe in his homosexuality. “The Office of the General Commissionner points out that you were not able to convince them” they said during the appeal procedure. If one could reverse the exercise, how would you prove your heterosexuality?
“I prefer to die in prison in Belgium than having to go back to Togo.”
“If they deport me to Togo, it is the same as if they were bringing an animal to the slaughterhouse.”
Meeting at the Airport in Zaventem 24/03/2017 at 9 a.m.!
his flight 11h05 a.m. Lomé SN 277
Fax and mail:
Brussels Airlines (et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord)
Email :customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
Fax= 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 /027232362
22/03/2017: He arrives in Belgium early December 2016 and asks for asylum, being persecuted in his country, Sierra Leone, as a Christian. He is transferred to the closed Caricole center.
The CGRA does not believe his story and the Foriegn office wants to remove him at all costs:
18/12/2016: Deportation attempt to China, country where he had transited. He refuses.
28/02/2017: Deportation to Beijing: China does not want him, for lack of documents, and he is sent back to Brussels
10/03/2017: Deportation to Sierra Leone: he remains 2 days at the airport of Free town (Sierra Leone) and was sent back to Belgium because he has no documents
16/03/2017: Forced deportation attempt to China: he resist
19/03/2017: Forced deportation attempt to Sierra Leone: he resist
21/03/2017: Forced deportation attempt to China: beaten by 10 federal police officers at the airport police station. The airline company refuses to take him on board because of his condition (he is bleeding all over. He is brought back to Caricole ….
He says, “They’ll kill me that way.”
He tells us that, at each (deportation) attempt at the airport, he is locked, completely naked, in a small room and allowed to dress only for boarding or to go back to the Caricole ”
“This is not my body anymore. 4 months that I have been locked up. I am not a criminal. I did not commit a crime. I only came to ask for asylum. I will never forget what has been done to me. I want them to hear me. I am a human. They don’t know what to do with me. They are just killing me slowly. God is my witness. I cannot sleep, I just wander around.
Everybody says I am a good man. The pilot (of the plane I had to take to Sierra Leone) said “I can see your are a good man”. The people who work at the Caricole have pity for me.”
On Tuesday 14th of March, I was arrested at Charleroi airport because of overstaying (90/180, not indicated on my vignette, and I was not aware of it). I was driven to the closed centre like a criminal. Shame on the Belgian authorities, shame on the Belgian people!
They retained me for 36 hours. I wanted to pay for my plane ticket to go back home the soonest possible, my flight was originally foreseen on Saturday 18th of March 2017. After talking to the social assistant, I asked him for my repatriation to any Moroccan city. It remains home to me and it doesn’t bother me at all to go there, no matter the region.
The mistreatment of your police, their way of speaking and auditioning really hurt me. To tell you the truth, they take people for criminals. It had my blood pressure raise until 15,5; 16,5 the second day, and 18 the third day!
One of your colleagues was present when they were checking my blood pressure. At the moment I am home and I still can’t accept those facts. At least I have a roof, my country is not at war.
The main issue are the asylum seekers who are suffering mentally and psychologically, and even physically. I discussed with them and I think that the Belgian state or the Foreigners Office is busy creating a kind of unlimited hatred; they might even be creating terrorists without being aware of it. People are not sleeping, they are not eating. Their main concern is to be released and to live a better life than the one they left behind.
To stop, I would say that personally, I will try never to come back again to Belgium. I forgot to say that there were elderly people also; notably a woman of 70 years old and another of 57 who was diabetic. There was also a young man of 17 and a boy of 8.
Physically and psychologically exhausted by a retention of more than 3 months in a closed centre, he had to confront the CGRA and the CEE that did not react to his call for help. However, his calls could not have been clearer.’Iprefer to die in a Belgian prison that having to go back to Togo’, ‘If they deport me to Togo, it is the same as if they brought an animal to the slaughterhouse!’. The administration just hid behind the following argument’ the elements related to your homosexuality are not convincing, they lack consistency…”.
Terrifed also by all these attempts of manipulation and by these thinly-disguised threats when being shown videos of forced deportation, being told that ‘it’s dangerous for him and that he really should accept a ‘voluntary’ return, that it is still time.”
It is within this context that on the 14th of March, seeing no solution to this problem, he tried to put an end to his plight.
On this 15th of March, he still is at the infirmary of the Caricole centre.
How long will we continue to tolerate this human suffering organised by the authorities in charge?
Batha was found dead in a confinement cell this Thursday 2nd of March 2017 in the closed centre of Vottem. He had been isolated there 36 hours earlier because he had mutilated his neck with a razor blade. According to the information gathererd, no doctor went to see him.
‘Natural death’ says the medical examiner.
‘The cell was flooded with blood’ says a worker of the centre.
He is bleeding, alone in a cell, drop after drop during hours…
His body empties itself of its blood… drop after drop…
The heart and breathing rate accelerate in order to bring more oxygen to the vital organs…
His blood pressure is decreasing…
His organs are getting less and less oxygen…
His brain cells are dying…
The collapse is coming…
His lungs are making efforts to continue…
He can no longer breathe..
The muscles of his heart are lacking oxygen and his heart stops…
This lasted VERY long, more than 36 hours… a horrible death… a natural death… a useless death…
On the outside, huge barriers, fences as far as your eyes can see, doorphones every 3 meters, windows padlocked with crews. In the inside, innocent people who were born with the wrong documents or in the wrong country. The entrance to the closed centre would discourage many. Idyllic vision of a State that want their migration policy to be repressive, inhuman and conditioned by fear. Retainees call it “the soft prison” or “the advanced Guantanamo”, it varies. But it is really about prison conditions: “Here we are locked in the room between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., we can not touch the windows otherwise the alarm is triggered, there is no switch; it is them who decide when lights must be switched off, it is hard.”
Whereas the migration policies are more and more authoritarian and exclusive, at the centre the departure tickets multiply, return trips to the airport do not end, it is the evictions’ waltz. Although they all have the same common barriers; the ones of the centre, the retainees each have a singular story: from political persecutions to forced marriage or homosexuality; the stories are countless.
B. was arrested in Zaventem. However, he didn’t really want to settle in Belgium. Originally from Togo, he was in transit at Zaventem airport to flee the persecutions he was going through in his home country. His offence? His sexual orientation. B. is gay. In Togo he could be sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. “For my country’s authorities, it is an evil spirit that hosts a person, and in order to get rid of it, it has to be beaten up or imprisoned.” B. was not sent to prison in Togo but in a military camp where he had to spend 3 months, 3 months of imprisonment and torture.
Therefore, he had come to Belgium to seek for protection. As an answer he already got his first eviction ticket. The CGRA do not believe in his homosexuality. “The Office of the General Commissionner points out that you were not able to convince them” they said during the appeal procedure. If one could reverse the exercise, how would you prove your heterosexuality? While gender stereotypes still are deeply rooted in all spheres of the Belgian society, the exercise seems hazardous, even dangerous. Today he has been retained in the centre for 3 months; a period of waiting, stress and anxiety that particularly affects him.
“I prefer to die in prison in Belgium than having to go back to Togo.”
“If they deport me to Togo, it is the same as if they were bringing an animal to the slaughterhouse.”
Whether he is gay or not, it is not as much the veracity of his statements that is to be questioned but rather the existence of a State structure that imprisons, handcuffs and gags men, women and even children for the simple reason that they believed Europe was a place of “human rights”.
A man from Azerbaijan, retained at the closed centre in Vottem, was found dead this morning.
According to the information available, he arrived to Vottem three days ago from another closed centre. Two days ago he had tried to mutilate himself because he couldn’t stand his retention. The reaction to this distress situation, although he was wounded, was to place him in a confinement cell. It is there that he was found dead this morning.
What happened in that cell? We ignore it. The prosecutors are there. What we do know is that confinement cells are like a prison within the prison, complete isolation, inhumane treatment. It can prevent a call for assistance, no matter the cause, to be heard and taken into consideration.
We want to recall what the closed centres for foreigners are; deportation machines. In order to prepare these deportations, the resistance by the retainees has to be broken through imprisonment, through psychological torture, and if it doesn’t work, they do not hesitate to resort to segregation. This segregation sometimes is prolonged for weeks, in a wing they call ‘special’, at the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem. On several occasions we denounced the segregation of ‘rebels’; those who simply refuse any illegal retention, but also those who would actually need a medical or psychological monitoring rather than being treated that way.
Here are the concrete results of the politics implemented by Theo Francken which consists in closing borders and in deporting 1000 additional people each year while increasing retentions! Soon it will be children whom he will have retained again in closed centres… and who will in turn be victims of mistreatments!
The CRACPE will be present this Saturday, like every week, around the closed centre of Vottem as of 4 p.m. and they are calling for a big gathering in order to denounce the unacceptable!
Words from the closed centre Vottem
Paroles de détenus à Vottem ce jour :
« Il faut faire quelques chose Madame avec vos politiques de merde »
« Un homme a perdu sa vie avec vos politiques de merde madame »
« On est pas des animaux Madame »
« Ils vont continuer à tuer comme ça ? »
« Vous allez bouger quand vous les Belges ? Combien de morts faudra-t-il ? »
« Ici ce matin les gardiens mettent la musique à fond et essaient de nous distraire. Ils ne respectent rien madame ,même pas les morts »
27/02/2017: Little Belgium has a Secretary of State for migration, Mr Theo Francken, and an Immigration Service (the Office des Étrangers or OE), which follows his orders. The OE is the key institution with regard to the exclusion and deportation of migrants.
The Secretary of State and the OE decide which migrants should be detained, including asylum-seekers.
The OE plans deportations.
The OE puts pressure on embassies to obtain consular passes for deportations.
The OE puts pressure on airline companies to facilitate deportations.
The OE detains a mother of four saying that her children are not hers, separates the children from the mother while they do a DNA test and threatens to deport her.
The OE organises collective deportations, whose legality is questioned by numerous NGOs.
For years, the OE has been using shameful and illegal stratagems to deport any “foreigners”.
The OE uses any administrative means to extend detentions longer than the legally authorised time limit.
In a quasi-systematic manner, and often with the help of the judicial system, the OE appeals legal decisions to release detainees.
This is a state within a state, characterised by abuse of power, scorn for legal judgments and civil liberties, which circumvents the law and keeps proposing more repressive laws.
A new stage has just been reached – on 9 February 2017, Theo Francken issued a new law which aims toestablish “a more coherent, transparent and efficient policy for deportation” in order to detain and deport any foreigner or descendant of a foreigner resident in Belgium, who is viewed by the OE as a danger for security or public order, without the authorisation of a legal court.
At Brussels International airport (at Zaventem), the police needs no law to arrest coloured people in transit, preventing them from catching their onward flights, casting doubts on visas or passports delivered by consulates or embassies, residency cards from Schengen countries and even the relationships of parents and their children.
Every day, we receive numerous testimonies of people arrested at the airport and detained in the Caricole detention centre on the base of “suspicion of false documentation”.
In transit
They are very often transiting through Zaventem airport to catch an onward flight with a passport, visa and all the administrative documents required by the country they are going to. OE agents are present at the embarking desk and stop them from getting on board with incredible pretexts or excuses – a visa or a passport which does not seem the right one, a hotel room canceled or not reserved… This was the case for a man who had made a reservation in his country of destination – the policeman called the hotel, canceled the reservation and arrested the man because his reservation was canceled!
A top young African athlete was invited by a sports club and a Belgian minister. The police officers declared that her visa was not in order – despite appeals she was deported under escort!
Asylum request
Some people request asylum at the airport. They are immediately arrested and imprisoned in the Caricole detention centre. Once detained, they are supposed to collect proofs of the danger or persecution they fled from and find a lawyer in order to lodge an asylum request. Of course, most of the time the CGRA or OE declare that the proofs gathered are not true (“the original is missing”…).
The asylum request lodged by a young homosexual woman with a warrant for her arrest in her home country for her homosexuality was deported because there is no proof she is homosexual. After four months of detention in Caricole, she has obviously been detained once back in her country (for up to five years, according to local law). There is no news from her.
Another young woman fleeing a forced marriage and persecution by her husband’s family was deported back to her country. The OE declaresd that “forced marriages no longer exist in her country”. She wrote to us: “ I have arrived safely but I have to hide”
When a man from West Sahara who had been granted a five-year asylum went to the OE to renew it, he was detained and deported. When he arrived in Casablanca he was arrested and sent to prison, a friend told us.
A man detained in the Caricole told us: “Two persons went to court this morning. Only one hour after their return to the detention centre, they were told that the decision was negative. Is it worth going to court?”
Residency cards
For International Airport Police officers, coloured people are easy targets. They arrest them, refusing to accept their residency cards from Schengen countries where they have been living for years and where they generally have work and families. Often they are detained for months with several attempts to deport them to their “country of origin” before they are released to go back to their country of residence.
Mr Francken and his service, the Office des Étrangers (OE), claim the right to arrest, detain and deport any foreigner or any foreigner’s child on suspicion of a danger to public order declared by them alone!
Mr Francken rejoices in the high numbers of detainees and deportations. He does not hesitate to tweet obvious lies, and shamelessly arrests people who have the right documents.
Mr Francken casts doubts on residency cards delivered by Schengen countries, and even on mother-child relations.
Nevertheless Mr Francken had the nerve to declare his surprise when US President Trump issued his executive order on immigration: “An Iranian person who has lived in the US for five years cannot go on holidays to visit Paris and the Eiffel Tower for a week because he would not be able to go back!” But he is doing exactly the same thing himself!
Mr Francken is very proud of his anti-immigration policies. He wants to make Belgium a reactionary model to be followed by the rest of Europe – a deportation machine put in action with all his unscrupulous energy.
24/02 Strangely enough (!), following our appeal and the reaction of lawyers and organisations, the three kids who had been detained in the closed centre of Bruges for a week have been recognized as minors by the authorities and taken to an open centre for minors in Steenokkerzeel! Detainees in Bruges are extremely isolated, there are no visits by NGOs and the Office des Étrangers (Immigration service) has free rein to do what it wants. Communicating with the detainees is the only way to know what is happening in the centre. Help us top up their mobile phones: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/contact-i-and-i/
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23/02: We just got the news that three young Afghans are detained in a closed center in Bruges since 9 days. This prison is, according to several witnesses, is dirty and grim, and repression is tough there. The detainees sleep in a common room. The residents who called us are scared stiff and ask us not to mention their phone number and they dare nor telling us their name. Despite of all the threats upon them, the detainees called us to let us know that 3 young Afghans are amongst them, thinking this cannot be tolerated. The youngest of the party could be 13 year old.
A lawyer is going there to meet them and the Deputy in charge of the Children Rights, dutch section, has been alerted.
These kids must not be detained any longer.
Please email, fax and call the people responsible for the dentention and the Director of the closed center in Bruges :
Centre for Illégaux in Bruges (CIB) capacity : 112 – about 750 people a year)
Zandstraat 150, B-8200 Bruges
Tél. +3250451040
Fax. +32 50315956
F.Roosemont
Director of Office des Étrangers
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be / T0279380 31 (NL – EN) – 02 79380 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
Charles Michel
Prime Minister
Tel: 02 501 02 11 Fax:0251269 52 / e-mail:charles.michel@premier.fed.be
Jan Jambon
Vice Prime Minister and Interior Minister
tel:02 504 85 13 Fax:02 504 8500 / email:kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
Theo Francken
Secretary of State in charge of Asylum & Migration
Tel: 02 2061421– / theo.francken@n-va.be / kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
Our Secretary of State for Aslyum and Migration can see bandits everywhere. He deemed all by himself that Mohamed is THE dangerous terrorist and seeks by all means to deport him without evidence and without appeal. He even publicises his exploits in all the media, until Algeria.
See press reports below.
Here is the testimony (in French) by Mohamed, currently retained in the Vottem closed centre!
– Tell me, are you in the Vottem closed centre?
– Yes I am.
– You have been there for a few days, havent’you? You had been there before, you are suspected to be radical, islamist?
– Yes indeed. At the beginning they came to my house, two months and a half ago or so, they came to see me, I spoke to the police and asked them why they were taking me like that. They answered that I had to leave the territory, that’s all they said. Then when I arrived here in the closed centre, I understood that there was something else because they placed me in a confinement cell.
I always asked the same question, i.e ‘why do you treat me like this?’. They answered that it was coming from Brussels, that they received the order to leave me isolated.
When I could see a lawyer he explained me everything, he said: ‘Here is what they say about you: you are a dangerous man, a radicalist, a terrorist, you belong to a terrorist group etc. and your wife is the first woman who came back from Syria.’ All this with no evidence at all! It really surprised me that they said things without proof, and I didn’t know how to defend myself, which was my mistake. I spent two months here at the centre, then the court bailiff released me at the last minute. The day after my release, journalists asked me whether I could meet them to explain that I was innocent but it was a trap; They told me what the minister had said, that I was a radicalist etc. So I had an interview with the journalists, for around 20 minutes, but on TV I saw that they only took two words of what I said that were positive, all the rest was against me. The real things I said they did not broadcast. So now everybody knows because it was on the news. They made the interview with me, they finished at 12.30 a.m. and it was directly broadcast in the news of 1 p.m. They had already planned the trap. In the news, I saw a well prepared reportage, they had recorded the Minister before me, they did all that against me, which means that even the journalist can not be trusted. Even here in the centre, when I came back the other retainees told me that I fell in a trap, that the journalists got me. Even at my release, the first day they hugged me, saying that I was innocent and this and that, but when they saw the news, they were very astounded and said that what they said about me was not the truth, but at the same time they got scared of me because they thought that if the Minister says something that does not correspond to what you are, we can also fall in the same trap. They are my friends, they walk by my side, so if they say that I am a terrorist, they fear that people will say they also are terrorists, accomplices or belonging to the same group.
– Did the police question you about your terrorism?
– No they didn’t, never. I lived here for 8 years, as I keep telling everyone, I have no record with the police here, it is white as snow as they say. You may investigate on me, for 8 years, you can go to the mosque in Brussels, I spent almost 8 years there at the El Hikma mosque in Forest, ask the people there how I behaved etc. Ask them about my work, I am a scrap metal dealer.
-Why do they believe that you are an extremist?
– Because my wife was arrested once by the federal police of Antwerp. They came to our home, they arrested her because she was with two friends of her, they said that they wanted to leave to Syria. But my wife had her lawyer, his name is Thomas Gilles and he managed to get her free. I stayed in touch with him and I asked him whether my wife had really done those things. He answered that no, she hadn’t done anything at all. She spent many months in prison, then she was released and came back home and we continued living peacefully.
– Francken and the media pretend that you are an extremist. Were you ever questioned? Were you ever judged?
– Never in my life.
– Never. Would you like to be judged? Would you like to come with the evidence etc?
– All I know is that I want justice, I want everybody to come, the journalists, even the cameras if they want to, we let people come and we do justice so that everybody is happy and we know if they speak the truth or not. Because now I am sleeping with this problem, I wake up with this problem. On the one hand I have this health problem and on the other hand I am alone, my wife is far away from me, she left 7 or 8 months ago. She got the order to leave the territory. My family in my village and the people here, they could see all what the journalists had to say about me, that I am a terrorist, I have been very moved by all this… I can not… I can not afford to defend myself, I am considered as a terrorist here… We know the terrorists, the real terrorists, they have a lot of money haven’t they? But why don’t I have money? I have all the troubles to make ends meet and pay my rent each month. My wife suffered with me. Fortunately, her grand-mother is here, her family, her uncle, her aunt. Each month they give her 100, 200 euros, luckily enough because if not we are dead. If I am a terrorist as they say, why do I go for food assitance?
– They only say that you are a terrorist because your wife was involved, or did they also believe she was a terrorist?
– But why do they say that directly, out of the blue? Why do they say I am a dangerous man without knowing me? They say that they have been following me for three years, without knowing me! Three years!
– Three years? What do you mean?
– They say they have been following me for three years! But if someone is suspected of being a terrorist, a dangerous man, why do they leave him free, why do they not imprison him? Logically it should be like this. If they say that man is dangerous but they let him circulate it is a huge nonsense. Francken tries his best to deport me, whatever the solution might be. According to my lawyer, he even says that I am a drug dealer. He puts all the bad things on me. The most important for him is that he sends me back. The court bailiff who released me was also angry with me. Yes I am a muslim, yes I have a beard, but I am not an extremist. I am a muslim who likes all the religions, all the people. They may investigate on the 8 years I have been living here and they will see that I am kind to all the people. They say that I am preparing minors to go to Syria, but what is left there in Syria, there is nothing left there now. They have accused me of incredible things.
– They put a label on you.
– Indeed, a huge label. I am against the people who left for Syria. You are living here, you don’t know anything about what is happening in Syria and you leave for Syria. Islam is not that. You will not say suddenly that you are a muslim and that you have to do this or that, no, Djihad means to obey your parents, to firstly obey your parents, because when I see parents cry for their children who left for Syria it hurts me, it really hurts me badly. A woman in Verviers came to see me and started to cry. She explained to me that her son who looks like me left for Syria. I felt that she had lost her faith as we say back home, and this is very sad. Here at the centre, they created a special reasoning because I wear a beard. The director and the guards tell me that they follow the orders and that it is not their problem. They got me this way, I can not retort anything. There is another bearded man here. He told me that the guards who see him talk with someone else go to see these people and warn them not to speak with bearded men because they are dangerous, they recruit people to go to Syria. I have enough of all this. I have faith because I know there are people who understand us, who like us and protect us, they defend us throughout the world.
AFTER the criminal retention, mid-January, of Mrs E. who was arrested while in transit at Zaventem airport with a French residence permit in order but with a “non-compliant” passport according to the Foreigners Office:
AFTER 3 deportation attempts to China, where she should have fixed the passport problem at the DRC embassy;
AFTER the publication online of a petition calling for her release, that got 638 signatures in a few hours (http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/a-mother-of-4-children-legally-residing-in-france-retained-at-the-caricole-expecting-to-be-deported-to-china/), the Foreigners Office FINALLY released Mrs E this Friday 10th of February at 8 p.m., out of surprise and for no precise reason. Mrs E picked up her children and went back home in Paris.
Last week, 9 Palestinian people retained at the Caricole closed centre for 2 months have been released.
ARRESTATIONS
Among the arrestations of “foreign” tourists at the airport because of the pathological obsession of the Foreigners Office who see dreadful foreigners everywhere, with passports/visas that are necessarily fake:
4 February 2017: a woman with a 3 years Schengen visa with which she has been travelling for months, came to Belgium to give a training in athleticism in a sports club and received an invitation letter by the Minister for Sports, Fadila Laanan for the medal ceremony on the 22nd of February at 6 p.m. in her cabinet BUT, according to the airport police, the rules have changed and the visa is not valid anymore… She is still being retained at the Caricole closed centre this 13th of February 2017. WHAT IS THE MINISTER DOING??? Write to her (info.laanan@gov.brussels), ring her (02/506 33 37), post a comment on her Fbook (www.facebook.com/fadila.laanan.page), twit her (@fatilaanan), each day that passes is another day in prison for her “host”!!
11 February 2017: Arrestation at the airport of 2 Senegalese women in transit to France. One of them has a diplomatic passport BUT once at the control check she is being told that she is “too young to have a diplomatic passport”, she is 35 years old! The other one works in a bank and she going to spend holidays in Paris. Both of them have been transfered to the Caricole today. Ring the consular department of the embassy and ask for an investigation at 02/673 00 97.
9 February 2017: A woman is living and working in France. She left for one week to Morocco. She landed at Charleroi airport this 9th of February to visit her brother who is living in Belgium and wanted to go back to France. She got arrested at Charleroi airport and is being retained in Caricole. She still ignores the reason of this arrestation. The Office considers deporting her to Rabat this Sunday. She can not see other solution than being deported to then catch a flight again to France on the same day. What is the French embassy doing?
RESISTANCE in closed centres
10 February 2017
This Friday, in the closed centre of Vottem, the guards had decided to isolate one man in one of the wings of the closed centre: the retainees of his wing tried to oppose to it locking themselves in their wing and blocking the doors. Intervention of the Robocops, teargas and beating.
Free Miss E,illegaly detained and separated from her children
Miss E is detained since mid-January in the Caricole detention center while she has a valid resident card in France ! Help us to collect as much signatures as we can until Thursday night (9th of February 2017). We will bring this petition to the state secretary of asylum and migration Theo Francken.
While she was coming back from holidays in China, Miss E was arrested in Brussels national airport. She was supposed to take the train to Paris where her children were waiting for her, but the airport policemen has decreed that she was using a fake passport. She has been transferred in Caricole detention center, in Steenokkerzeel, where she is still locked up.
Miss E was traveling with a valid resident card delivered by France state. Without asking any questions neither giving any receipt, policemen has taken all her documents – passeport, resident card, ID card, driving license, vaccination card. Every things. « Since that time, I’am nobody » she says.
Bring from Paris by a friend of her to gather with their mother, her 4 children (10, 5 and twins of 2 years old) spent some times in the Caricole and placed in several minor centers. Without their mother, illegally detained, tutorship services assigned them a tutor.
Height of cruelty : despite news documents which attest of their domicile in Paris, and acts of birth of the children, the Foreign Office (Home Office) questioned that they are her children ! A DNA test will be done but the results of it could take six weeks to come. « How to stay locked up so long without my children »desperate Miss E.
Madam has already undergone three deportation attempts to China without her children. The last attempt, with a police escort, happened Tuesday 31 of January. This attempt was unsuccessful only because of the presence of her children in Belgium, otherwise she could has been deported in China without valid documents !
In addition to that, she can’t understand anything about the documents that the Caricole administration present to her, which are exclusively in dutch
How long this nightmare will continue ? The one of this mother locked up despite her capacity to prove her right to pass trough Belgium* and the one of this children who are crying for their mother : « how long will you stay in prison ? ». Until which point Foreign Office wants to go on this absurd story,shameful and cruel which traumatize this lady and her children ?
We ask that they released immediatly Miss E, who wants to recover liberty and her children, to go far away from that nightmare, in Paris where she lives !
Several retainees of the Merksplas closed centre have been on a hunger strike for 5 days to protest against their retention.
Three of them have been placed in confinement cells by punishment. An escalation of racist actions by the guards has also been commnunicated to us.
Some were arrested at the Foreigners Office after being convoked to prolong their asylum, obtained 5 years ago, without any explanation nor appeal possibility. Ohters have been in the centre for several months and can not see any way out.
At the Caricole, a few drama shocked the retainees:
She does not understand anything and feels very, very bad. She tells us:
«They¹ve taken everything from me; passeport, residence permit, licence etc. I am nothing anymore. »
« How will I be able to live without my children? »
« How will we repair all this after that?”
Other similar drama/
A pregnant woman was assaulted during a deportation attempt.
“The guards carried her like a baby, they were strangling her, she was shouting, it was just horrible. Even in Africa, they would never treat a pregnant woman that way”.
« What we can see here (at the Caricole) is just horrible. A woman arrived with her baby. She said that the police had pushed her, that she fell with the baby in her arms. Then she had to stay in a very cold room, so cold that the baby could have died. She shouted for them to get her out of that room.”
“A Chinese woman came from Angola to visit other Chinese people living in Europe. Since she arrived late, she got arrested because the hotel had cancelled her reservation.”
“It is forbidden to bring food in your room. A guard teared a slice of bread away from my hands. If you want to buy biscuts or crisps, you may only do so when the refectory is open.”
“A lot of chaos today, people are nervous in the centre, they are exhausted, it is normal. If we had a camera on our mobile phones I swear that the centre would be closed down by the end of the week!”
“People do not understand anything anymore here, all their documents are givent to them in Dutch, however their lawyers do not speak Dutch, neither do they, so why are they doing this?”
“They don’t want people to know what is going on here, that is the reason why we can not have phones with cameras! But what is going on here is totally crazy: for example, yesterday two people slept in the corridor with just a blanket!”
Escape from the 127bis closed centre
We heard that 3 retainees escaped from the 127bis closed centre during the week of 12th December 2016. They took the chassis of their bedroom window apart, they sew the bars and escaped. The guards discovered their disappearance 4hours later! They are still walking free!
Fair winds!
AFTER the criminal retention, mid-January, of Mrs E. who was arrested while in transit at Zaventem airport with a French residence permit in order but with a “non-compliant” passport according to the Foreigners Office:
AFTER 3 deportation attempts to China, where she should have fixed the passport problem at the DRC embassy;
AFTER the publication online of a petition calling for her release, that got 638 signatures in a few hours, the Foreigners Office FINALLY released Mrs E this Friday 10th of February at 8 p.m., out of surprise and for no precise reason. Mrs E picked up her children and went back home in Paris.
Update 02/02
She does not understand anything and feels very, very bad. She tells us: «
They¹ve taken everything from me; passeport, residence permit, licence
etc. I am nothing anymore. » « How will I be able to live without my
children? » « How will we repair all this after that?”
30/01/2017 When can we expect the end of arbitrary and discriminator arrests at Zaventem airport?
Has Zaventem airport become a racist trap? We are tempted to think so seeing the increased number of people who, although being in possession of valid documents (visas or resident permits delivered by EU Member States), are being arrested upon arrival or during their stop over, on the basis of totally groundless suspicions.
The latest case we heard of is shocking: a woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo living in Paris with a resident permit valid until 2025 was coming back from China. She wanted to catch a train for Paris. She is the mother of 4 French children, among whom 1 year old twins. She was arrested at the airport because her passport was supposedly “not in order”.
She was transferred to the Caricole centre from where they’ve already tried to deport her twice to China! The next deportation attempt will therefore happen under escort. The Belgian authorities, violating the Belgian and international law, are ready to use strength to illegally take a mother away from her 4 children!
This Sunday 29th of January, the children were brought from Paris to the Caricole. One may imagine the shock of this reunification between the walls of a closed centre. The police took the children to bring them to the guardianship service. Despite the intervention by Bernard De Vos, General Delegate for the Rights of the Child, the Foreigners Office stick to their decision. The distressed mother stayed in the Caricole.
We ask for the immediate release of that woman.
Besides, we want to know who is responsible for these illegal arrests and retentions. Zaventem airport is more and more often the scene of systematic discrimination against these people, in general Black, Arab or veiled persons, who have a stop over there or would like to legally access the Belgian territory. We could count a dozen of similar cases and can say from now on: be careful, travelling through Brussels Airport may turn out to be very costly.
The answer of the Office des étrangers (office for foreigners) has been very quick : Walid has been put in isolation this Sunday 15/1/17 and he has been promised a deportation for tomorrow 16/1 which is completely illegal. His telephone has been taken and he cannot communicate anymore. It’s a fellow detainee who has called us !
The probable flight will be Air Algeria AH2063 at 2 pm on 16/01
Meeting at the airport to talk to passengers at 12 o clock
Call for any type of action…
Harassment, fax, email, phone
The Algerian consulate has to issue a laissez-passer this Monday to allow the embarkment on that flight
Coordonnées du Consulat Général d’Algérie Bruxelles :
Walid is living in Belgium since 2008. He has a 3-year old daughter. In 2014 he spent a few months in jail for a petty theft, and was released after his sentence.
On December 16 2015, the police burst in his appartment in Ostende at 5 AM : 5 police cars, 4 plainclothed police, sirens screaming. He’s brought to the police station and transfered after 24 hours to the 127bis closed center to be deported to Algeria, his country of origin.
In March 2016, following some renovations in one aisle of the closed center in Steenokkerzeel, 32 detainees are transfered, and Walid is sent to Merksplas, where he will spend 9 months.
Further to a hunger strike movement in Merksplas, a protest against long and inhumane detention, and so as to break the movement, several detainees are locked up in isolation cells. Walid will stay isolated for 48 hours, then brought to Vottem closed center, where he will spend another 4 more days in isolation.
In Vottem he’s finally assigned to the secured aisle, designed for unwilling and/or psychologically deranged inmates, and nicknamed “the prison inside the prison” by the detainees. He sits alone in a cell, with a one-hour-walk-outside-per-day privilege : within a barbed wire cage, under constant monitoring by cameras, and still, on his own. “A Guantanamo à la Belge”, as he decribes his predicament.
In Decembre 2016, just as he celebrates his first year in closed centers, he receives a 2-month extension notice.
He is still isolated in Vottem, even if his situation somewhat improved : he’s now allowed a few hours in other aisles to “keep human contacts”, dixit Vottem’s direction.
It’s been over a year now that Walid is detained, in isolation for “administrative reasons”, without a trial. The Office des étrangers attempted to deport him 8 times, but each time the flight was cancelled due to a laissez-passer being denied by the Consulate of Algeria.
Many times his lawyer requested his release. In 3 instances the Tribunal ordered his release, and 3 times the Office des étrangers appealed the tribunal’s decision and the Chambre des mises en accusations sided along with the Office. Walid is maintained in his cell.
He’s been looking for a lawyer for several weeks lately, who could lodge a release request with the Tribunal in Ostande or in Bruges responsible for his detention. No success so far : none of the lawyers he contacted wants to, or his able to take on this delicate case.
Walid is desperate. All he’s asking for is to be released and get back to his dauhgter. He doesn’t know what to do any more and says he’s ready for anything !
“This torture must stop, one way or another…”
15/01/2017: Walid is on hunger and thisty strike for 3 days: He asks the authorities “What do they want me to do? What do they want to do with me? When will this nightmare end? Why are we treated like animals? Rather die than continue to live like that “
Update: MH a été expulsé dans “les règles de l’art”: Fouille au commissariat de l’aéroport, mis à poil, 6 flics, attaché avec ceinture “comme Hannibal le cannibal”, accueillit par la police à Alger, prise d’empreintes et 4 heures d’interrogatoire……..puis libéré
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MH, an Algerian detainee locked up in Merksplas for many months now, is facing his 8th tentative deportation to Algiers on Monday.
He got 7 himself 7 plane tickets, but never could enjoy his free ride, most likely thanks to the failure of the Office des Etrangers to get a laisser-passer from the Algerian consulate. The (so-called) social assistant in the closed center told him the Consulate would this time issue a laisser-passer some Zaventem security agents would pick up this Saturday morning.
The Algerian Consulate currently denies any laisser-passer except on rare limited cases. The re-entry agreements between Belgium and Algeria seem at a dead end. Some Algerian citizens are nonetheless still held in closed centers since over a year in some instances ! Meanwhile, a grim turn of events is still possible, as Theo Francken recently paid official visits to Algeria to put pressure on the governement, and even ordered the arrest of many Algerian citizens living undocumented in Belgium,; so as to make examples and prove his determination.
Here’s a good example of the mean harrassment policy Francken is capable of, to artificially inflate his statistics, i.e. the deportation attemps figures : take a non-deportable person, lock him/her up for a good while in a closed center, then pretend you’re deporting him/her, even if you know you can’t do that : every time his/her Consulate denies a laisser-passer, send him/her back to prison with a nice free 2-month extension of his state accomodation (free for him/her, not for the tax payer, who will pay about 160€/day) ! Of course, you’re crushing one human being’s hope. Of course, you waste public money. But the good thing is, you keep airlines and all private other private companies involved in the detention business happy, while showing great results ! At the end of the day, is there any thing else that counts than figures in our society ?
MH has been living in Belgium since almost 30 years, he has no ties to Algeria any more, and refuses to be deported to this foreign country. He told us once that he “preferred suicide” to deportation. Here is his testimony. On a side note, let’s not forget the case of those 2 Algerian citizens recently deported who were severely beaten up by their escort. one of them had to be hospitalized with a broken nose.
MH’s deportation is scheduled for this Monday on the AH2063 14h flight from Zaventem to Algiers, operated by Air Algérie. Rendez-vous at the airport this Monday at noon at the boarding desks to lay out and explain MH situation to the other passengers of the flight.
And please also make phone calls, fax, emails to :
5 A.M.. T. wakes up. Some noise at the door, like a dog scratching. It is cold this December 5, and since the heating system in the appartment is out of order, she sleeps on the living room couch with her daughter, 12 years old, and her Algerian friend A., whom she met a few months ago. One keeps warm as one can…
Still sleepy she stumbles to the door, when the door bursts in : about 10 armed men force their way in the appartment shouting, she’s blinded by the torches at the end of the guns, deafened by the intruders screaming at her “lie down !”, “shut up !”, “You alone ? We’re not here for you, shut up, shut your fucking mouth !”. Men dart at her friend, crush him to the floor and kick him steady. He screams his name in vain, barely able to breathe. The little one is terrified, men shouting at her as well, urging her to stop screaming, while pointing their guns and torches at the 12-year old.
A. is taken to the Brussels police offices. He’s told he’s been arrested in relation with the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks and his phone number. He doesn’t understand. His number is checked, his FB page too, he’s shown pictures of people he cannot recognize. Collaborating, he still cannot reckon what he’s doing here. They must be mistaken.
For 45 minutes the police wrecked the appartment from top to bottom, empty all drawers on the floor, break T.’s objects and souvenirs from her father, to which she was very attached. They find nothing, take nothing, but leave a terrible mess behind them, including a borken down door and a mother and daugther in a state of shock. Before leaving, they have T. sign some paperwork, without reading it, too anxious to see this nightmare end. Left without a copy, she still ignores what she put her signature on and agreed to.
After half a day in Brussels, the police tell A. he’s free to go, they have nothing against him. A figure of speech. He’s been living undocumented in Belgium for several years. He’s gonna end up in the Vottem closed center in Liège. Without his phone, his money or his shoes, kept by the police. A. still can’t get why, after 6 years in Belgium, he’s being locked up. He didn’t do anything wrong, committed no crime, he’s just been living as he could here. He is an Algerian and can’t be deported. He just wants to be with his girlfriend again, and help her with her daughter. He’s scared.
As for T., she still can’t understand why her home was savaged, her boyfriend beaten up and arrested, her daughter traumatized, instead of just being summoned with her boyfriend by the police, or him being arrested in the street, as they passed by the police many times and he was not hiding but was living just like anybody else. T. tried to lodge a complaint against the police, at the local station, but was told it was not possible. A warrant had been issued, and everything done by the book. She was assured the police insurance policy would take care of the damaged door, since A. is innocent. SO, what would she complain about ?
« They asked me whether I was going to be nice to them. » Their words
still resonate in his head. « You have to leave, you don’t have the
choice. You are obliged to get on that plane otherwise we’ll break
something. » Three policemen immobilise him and put a special jacket on
him to hinder his arms. « It looked like a straitjacket » says Mohamed. «
On the sly, they put my own jacket on top so that the other passengers
would not notice anything. » https://micmag.be/vol-special-la-machine-a-expulser/vol-special-la-machine-a-expulser-2
Friday 16 December 2016, 6 p.m., block 4, Merksplas closed centre: the retainees are not happy. Despite several talks with the management about meals, notably dinner, when they invariably get cheese with two slices of bread at 6 p.m and nothing more until the morning after, a few refused to eat.
The reaction of the centre: quickly find someone who can be designated as responsible for the protestation movement, isolate them and install a climate of threat. The man who was placed in solitary confinement is 35 years old and suffers from diabetes for which we had called for the visit of an external doctor. According to his co-retainees, he would be continuing his hunger strike in his confinement cell, which is extremely worrying seen his health state.
One retainee tells us:
‘At 5 a.m. we could hear noises; they came to fetch a man for 48 hours of confinement because they said it was him who organised the strike.’
‘You can not defend yourself here, anyway, here no one believes you. All they say is : these are the rules. So the principle of the rules is that no one believes you, it is exaggerated!’
‘It is Merdeplas here, a great mafia – manager, head of area etc who do what they want! They treat us like bin bags.’
Another one, in Belgium for 31 years and three Belgian children. Retained in Merksplas for 2 months after 68 months in jail. ‘It is very hard in Merksplas, we are retained in a forest, we are far from everything, some did not commit any crime, and for me and others it is a second free sentence!’
Another one has a 14 months baby and a girlfriend waiting for him in Belgium. So, from time to time, in front of the absurdity of the situation, he expresses all his anger: ‘I feel like a fish in a bowl here, I don’t have anything to do, therefore I think… I need my son but there is nothing I can do, I break down and cry or shout, it is tough.’
R, 26, his brother A, 30, and their mother have been at the Caricole closed centre in Steenokkerzeel for two months. Ruben, the oldest, has a serious progressive disease and is heavily physically handicapped. He needs constant assitance from her mother in order to eat, dress, wash, and he sits in a wheelchair.
They came to Belgium six years ago. They fled Armenia because of political problems (the family was in danger after one uncle had been murdered) and of the very bad health of R who would not receive appropriate treatments in his country. The father fled to Russia where he is currently living undocumented and in precarious conditions.
Since they arrived in Belgium they were given an orange card three times, enabling them to live and get appropriate care for R. The latter had several surgeries and he gets a treatment adapted to his illness so as to moderate the evolution of his state and foster his mobility.
However, following a decision by the Foreigners Office, their orange card was not renewed, the family was arrested and placed in the Caricole closed centre in view of their deportation to Armenia.
On 15 December, they got a notice of deportation under escort for the coming Monday 19 December 2016. ‘Under escort’ means a deportation with several policemen, with the people handcuffed and forcibly brought into the plane. It is to be noted that the family already got handcuffed several times to be driven to court. R was handcuffed to his wheelchair and he was extremely shocked by this treatment.
Several medical certificates prove the severity of his illness and mention that a ‘return to the country of origin where these treatments are hardly, even almost totally unaccessible, would mean a resumption of the pathogenic evolution and a progression of the symptoms and handicap.
R explains that a return home would be equivalent to ‘a slow death for him’, that the treatment he gets here does not exist in Armenia and that substitutes are neither adapated nor accessible.
In October 2015, lawyers, jurists, doctors, and social assistants were denouncing in a White paper the more and more restrictive interpretation of the criteria for the obtention of a residence permit for medical reasons in Belgium and they demanded ‘a law enforcement that would respect the human rights of seriously ill foreigners.’ Today, we notice that nothing has changed. The treatments given in our ‘civilised’ countries are only available to privileged citizens.
On 13 December, Belgium was condemned again by the European Court of Human Rights for inhuman and degrading treatment. This time, the victim was a Georgian man who was seriously ill, deported to his country of origin while his family was in Belgium.
These convictions multiply themselves but do not change a thing to the repressive policy of Belgium who plans again to deport a seriously ill person to a future of sufferings.
Let’s prevent the deportation of this family. Let’s meet at the airport and explain their case on Monday 19 December 5.25 p.m. at the check-in and/or boarding.
Flight to Warsaw (with stop over) LO 234 19h25
faxes, calls and emails to the people responsible for these criminal deportations
The airline
Polish Airlines
tel + 32 78 180 014 Open 24 h E-mail lot_info@lot.pl
While Belgium tries, in vain, to reinforce the ‘police cooperation’ with Algeria http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/la-belgique-tente-de-renforcer-la-cooperation-policiere-avec-l-algerie-58494a23cd709a48787c4049 and Théo Francken declares on twitter that they continue working ‘behind the screen’, the hunting goes on. Several dozens of Algerians have been retained for months, sometimes a year, in our closed centres, and these last days we heard that others saw their houses besieged by a dozen of armed policemen early morning, in front of their wives and children, and driven to a closed centre in view of their deportation, unlikely deportation seen the absence of agreement and the reluctancy of the Algerian consulate to deliver let passes in most of the cases…
Is it what they mean by Theo Francken’s ‘work behind the screen’? Using targeted people and their families as hostages in order to put pressure on Algeria ?
Three testimonies:
Today
A woman calls us on the phone: they got officially married at the commune, have two small children, the youngest is 8 months. They are Algerians. She has a 5 years residence permit, he doesn’t have any papers. At the commune they told him that he had to wait. Ten policemen came three days ago at 5 a.m., waking up everybody, to take away the man and bring him to a closed centre. She is desperate and doesn’t understand anything, neither do we…
Five days ago, a man was arrested at his girlfriend’s. They found him thanks to his Lyca card within the context of a terrorist investigation. Seven vans full of policemen to arrest him and drive him to the closed centre.
Testimony by a man who WANTS to return to his home country, entitled “ABSURDITY”
A young Algerian, 21 years old, wants to testify on his behalf and others’ of the absurdity and ill treatments in closed centres. Retainees do not have access to trustworthy information. They ignore everything about their fate. The lawyers or social assistants of the centres do not seem to be helping either. When retainees say they feel sick, they are sent to solitary confinement cells, losing all contacts.
M. came to Belgium 3 years ago, he was 18. He found himself among other young people left behind. He committed thefts in order to survive. No housing, no earnings, life was tough and he paid for that he says. He wants to go on living in dignity. Now he would like his situation to be clarified. He says he agrees to go back to Algeria but it seems they do not send him back there, and they do not release him either. He is stuck at the closed centre and no decisions are taken, in one way or the other. ‘I don’t understand anything’ he says, ‘I agree to go back to Algeria but they do not react’. He would like a clear decision, and not stay in the closed centre where living is too hard. He says that the Belgian Minister was in Algeria this week, but that nothing seems to move since then. The consulate is not willing to give out let passes for Algeria.
Another testimony:
M. is 37, Algerian, retained in Merksplas. He was arrested when doing some shopping. “I entered a shop and in front of everybody they embarked me. I don’t understand, I am not illegal, I have a temporary card and I introduced an official request at the Foreigners Office. I am expecting an answer, I have an address and everything. Why didn’t they come home? Doing that in front of everybody, this is not normal, I am not a terrorist!’
M. introduced a residence request for medical reasons (9ter). After a first refusal he lodged an appeal and is currently waiting for an answer. At the closed centre in Bruges, they tell him that they can not find any evidence, neither of the appeal nor of his medical file. When he explains that he already had three operations to his legs after a serious car accident and that his file is at Ixelles’s Hospital, he is being told ‘we do not care, we have your passport and no evidence of your medical file, we will send you back as soon as possible.’ When he answers that he has another operation planned in two weeks, that they should at least let him finish the process, again he is being told “whether you agree or not, it will be Algeria”.
“It is the Belgian Guantanamo here, there is no Red Cross, no human rights, nothing. I saw a social assistant after two days here, she rang the Foreigners Office in flemish, I didn’t get a word, then she told me “no appeal and no medical file have been found, you will have to leave in 15 days!” In the meantime, M is waiting in pain, his health requires a strict control: pills, physical therapy, etc. The doctor of the centre doesn’t deem necessary to follow the treatment prescribed by the medical file. I got a few painkillers but normally I should get a gel to kill the pain but the doctor said that I don’t need that here, same for the physical therapy!
On Friday 2nd of December , M. heard that a flight booking has been made under his name for the day after, he will be deported at 2 p.m. “I don’t understand, they say that I will go to the airport and that if I don’t want to go on the plane I just have to say it there. It is nonsense, I don’t want to go and my opinion will be exactly the same tomorrow. I don’t get it, it is useless, do they want me to get mad?’ M. is scared of physical constraints, he will not be able to defend himself, he is walking with two crutches. He needs to talk but they isolate him as much as they can: mobile phone withdrawn, transfer to another bloc on the same day, impossible to reach his family or friends to let them know about the evolution of the situation. Everybody is waiting…
07/12/2016 Today we have received a phone call from someone in Morton Hall, who tells us that a man died yesterday in the detention centre.
We have been told that yesterday afternoon, at around 3pm, the man started foaming at the mouth. We are told that he was a fit man who exercised every day and was not known to suffer from any medical conditions. The guards then locked him in his room and said they would return, but didn’t until 3 hours later – at which point they called an ambulance and the man was taken away.
According to the testimony of a person retained in Merksplas, a police escort came to the centre this Monday to pick up Arsen K, Chechen, in order to deport him to Moscow.
It was the first deportation attempt on him, and the presence of a police escort is therefore very uncommon.Appeal here
Arsen K had informed about the heavy risks he would incur if sent back to Moscow, following a “very long story of the war in Chechnya”; several dozens of years in prison.
One of his three sons being currently in the hospital, he asked to visit him before his deportation; which was refused to him.
Hence, Arsen left the centre between policemen and no one saw him since then. We also lost the contact with him.
His wife and three children are deprived of their husband and father, without hope of seeing him again.
Another example of the iniquitous, crual and immoral policy of our government; dehumanised and which dehumanises.
Arsen had been living here for more than 10 years. He was settled with his wife whit whom he had three children.
Being from Chechnya, he was sent back to a regime known for the bad treatments, tortures and summary executions of prisoners.
1 deportation, 3 orphans, 1 widow.
Why? For no reason except for figures in a table, and may be – which is pathetic- a few voices more at the next elections.
Nice overview…
How long will we let them act this way?
Théo Francken is proud to announce the retention and expulsion of many «undocumented criminals ». These endless retentions are challenging, they are part of Machiavellian and dishonest, not to say illegal processes. As an example among many others, some had documents, but following their ‘incivility’ they were deprived of this small piece of paper, becoming ‘removable undocumented criminals’ in the statistics of Mr Francken and they are being deported!
Testimony by M., retained in Merksplas for several months, 23 November 2016
M. has been in Belgium for 27 years, and retained in Merksplas for 6-7 months.
He is Algerian, his return is refused by the consulate but this doesn’t prevent the Foreigners Office to deprive him of his liberty against all logic nor to waste the taxpayer’s money, having tried to deport him already 7 times! One might be tempted to think that the subsidizing of air companies is one of Théo Francken’s objectives.
M. who is 52 years old now had come from Algeria directly to Zaventem. He had been called to join the Algerian army where to do his military service for 2 years in order to wage war against the islamists. However, M. did not want to fight against other Algerians. Neither within the army, nor within islamist movements. His only possibility was to flee civil war.
In 2000 he introduced an asylum request that was rejected. In 2006, he was convicted to 3 years of imprisonment for theft. He recognised the offence but insisted that he had never committed violence against anyone. He served his sentence before being released.
18 months ago, he was controlled in front of his house and the police men told him that he had to go back to prison because of the case of 2006.
He doesn’t understand, because he had been released and controlled several times without any particular problem since then.
He was imprisoned in Forest, Tilburg and then Wortel before being transferred to the closed centre of Merksplas. At the time of the transfer, the court’s clerk tells him that he will be released after a few days in Merksplas. He still doesn’t understand the reason of this ‘return’ to prison.
But the few days became long months, interrupted with plane tickets and extension of detention because they were not able to send him back to Algeria.
He is asking for an Order to leave the territory within the 24 hours so that he may ‘leave Belgium and that no one ever hears about him anymore’.
But the answer is always the same: it is not possible.
M. knows that Algeria will always refuse his deportation. If they accepted, he would only go back there in a coffin. He’d rather commit suicide.
M. is stuck in Merksplas. In an absurd situation that he doesn’t understand, with no escape.
He can not stand the centre anymore, retention, deprivation, racism by the guards. Through spite, he asks for a transfer to a French-speaking centre but they say it is not possible.
He tried hunger strike for 15 days. Then he gave up because he had been threatened of confinement cell or injections, which he feared could have made him crazy.
His words show the revolt and despair linked to this cruel and absurd retention: “I should destroy everything to be able to move. They push you to do that.” “On Monday, the social assistant distributes plane tickets just like peanuts, it is stressful, I sleep very bad.” “Here, it’s welcome to hell!” “We get no help from the management, it’s too tough…” “There is a lot of racism here, it’s the NVA, the guards say that their boss is Théo Francken…” “There is no time limit here” “The food, even dogs wouldn’t eat it. They just killed us… 2 toasts, 3 slices of cheese, a piece of chocolate. We can not buy anything, only waffels and coca cola… Sometimes we get anything, they say that retainees cost a fortune”. “In 20 days, one retainee will have been here for a year (…) every time a deportation is aborted, they extend his stay with 2 mohths. ‘ “They imprison and deport fathers, their children will become thugs…””
Testimony by Arsen Kuntaev, Chechen, in Belgium for around 10 years and father of three children, whose deportation to Moscow is planned for this Monday 28th of November at 12.25 a.m from Zaventem
Arsen was living in Lier close to Antwerp with his wife and his 3 sons (6, 4 and 2 years and a half).
The police came to his house when he was looking after his children while his wife was working. She is cashier at Quick’s, with flexible working hours.
Arguing that the police knew his address and that he would not escape, he asked them to go to the police station when his wife (who as a temporary residence permit) would be back home. The police refused and brought him to the police station with his kids, in a state of shock.
He was arrested and the police went to the work of the mother with the kids. It was a problem for the manager of Quick’s, who fortunately did not fire the mother, while insisting that he would have done it normally. To be noted that she needs this work in order to keep her residence permit. Thank you Police…
Arsen has been retained in the closed centre of Merksplas for 4 mohths. He doesn’t have a Chechen passport and risks from 18 to 28 years imprisonment if sent back to Russia, because of a ‘long story during Chechnya’s war’.
He is scared not to see his children again…
He refused his first deportation, but this one will be with an escort, according to the social assistant. He is desperate and thinks he will not be able to do anything to prevent it.
Life in the centre is extremely tough. ‘When one has problems, the guards are laughing’. ‘Food is disgusting’. ‘The social assistant isn’t of any help’.
Deportation flight : Monday 28 November 2016, 12.25 a.m. Aéroflot Russian Airlines SU2169
Let’s prevent this deportation – speaking to the passengers at luggage check-in from 10.25 a.m. – sending a fax/email or ringing the people in charge of this criminal deportation.
From Ventimiglia to Calais, from Ceuta to Melilla, from Lesbos to Athens, at all borders and beyond, the criminalisation of those who hinder the good functioning of European migration policies is in full swing.
As an example among many others, the prosecution of 6 passengers who hindered the deportation of a man on a flight operated by the very famous SN Brussels which daily deport the designated unwanted.
Let’s gather in front of the Court of Justice Place Poelaert in Brussels on 1st of December at 8.30 a.m. in order to show our determination to refuse these intimidation attempts and the repression of those who dare hindering ‘their air traffic’!
NoBorders, NoDeportations
They waged war against migrants, we are waging war against them!
Here below the call supported by a few “human rights associations” and the CISPM
Six prisoners tried to escape from the detention centre of Bruges on Friday 18/11/2016 at 7 p.m.
Four of them succeeded and are now free! Two were held back by the guards.
They cut the fence of a window, climbed on the roof, and jumped on a guard’s car before running away.
The witness who called us insists that this be published, because the detention center’s management does not appreciate this event and prefers to remain silent: “this must be known !”.
Since this escape the security of the centre has been reinforced with some additional guards; which doesn’t change the life in the centre, according to our witness.
Sixty per cent of the retainees of the closed centre in Vottem have started a hunger strike two days ago.
They are protesting against:
-Medical care: some have important appointments in hospitals, which are not respected. “They are always on time to bring you to the airport with their escorts, but for medical appointments they are not there.” Sleeping pills, tranquilizers and pain killers are distributed by the guards upon request. Some retainees have become real zombies and do not stand up anymore. “I call it doping.”
-Food : ‘Vache qui rit’ cheese every morning, chocolate every evening. For lunch, a small plate with little meat not certified hallal. “Everything is disgusting”. “We are starving all day.”
-The insolence and aggressivity of the guards: “Morning, noon and evening they keep telling us: if you’re not satisfied, just go back home'”. “They do whatever they want with us.”
« Retainees coming from prison are immediately put in confinement cells. Others are placed there as soon as they dare say something. A few days ago, a man was really sick, one could easily see. He was placed in confinement celles for two days!”
Many have been retained in the closed centre for 8, 9, 10, sometimes 11 months.
One of them has been there for 8 months and after he refused a deportation, they reset the counters to zero: “Will I have to stay for another 8 months here?”
Others are asking to return and wait months before getting a flight.
And in Bruges closed centre
This Sunday 6th of November 2016, around 20 retainees refused to go back upstairs after their walk in order to protest against violents words by a guard. After a meeting with the director, tension calmed down… and 4 of the troublemakers were transfered to other centres!
Retainees in Bruges are denouncing :
the lack of medical care and the prescription of tranquilizers upon request, hygiene: “everything is very dirty; we can only have a shower every 12 days”, the unpleasant and aggressive words by the staff: “we are paying taxes for you, go back home”
In Merksplas,20 detainees started a hunger strike on 10th of November 2016
They protest again:
-Insufficient food « enough of the cheese »
-Daily and systematic searches
-Racism and ill-treatment « we are not animals »
-The disrespect of human rights
-The systematic placements in confinement cells
« It’s much worse than prison here, it is real torture.” « The system is not functioning.” « The Foreigners Office manages everthing and has all powers on us, they are responsible for tortures.” « Why does the State leave them all this power without protesting?”
All these accounts, along with the dozens that we receive weekly, illustrate the deterioration of the “survival conditions” in the detention centres, in Belgium and in the rest of the European Union, as exposed in a recent report by Migreurop, “Migrant detention in the European Union : a thriving business” (http://www.migreurop.org/article2762.html?lang=en).
Regarding Belgium, the report states: “While closed centres are managed by the public sector, private companies are also engaged for certain services related to the operation of centres and the care of detainees. Catering, cleaning and technical services can be outsourced to private companies. Access to doctors and medicine is also delegated to the private sector via calls for tender open to independent doctors and pharmacies”.
Detained for 11 months, defended by a lawyer who is a member of the N-VA, then deported to Kabul: is Belgium a safe country for asylum seekers?
S.R, a young Afghan asylum seeker, came to Belgium one year ago and was retained for 11 months,first in the closed centre in Bruges, then in Steenokkerzeel since October 2016. When he arrived in Bruges, he got a lawyer. It happens that the latter is member of a local section of the NVA where he is deputy secretary, in charge of the logistics and the organisation.
S.R introduced several asylum requests. He also received several expulsion notifications. He refused some (the law allows one to do so) and others
were cancelled. However, S.R fulfills all the conditions to get asylum because he is from the province of Nangarhâr, in Surkh-Rōd district, a
part of Afghanistan recognized as « not safe ».
Hence, two aspects of this procedure may be questioned:
first, the objectivity of a lawyer belonging to a far right extreme party which tries by all means to put an end to migration flows towards Europe and in particular towards Belgium. When the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, belonging to the same party, declares that « this government wants to deport, not to regularize », we may wonder what is the good will of this lawyer to reach a positive end to the asylum request.
Secondly,how can one assess a place to be « safe » or « not safe », in a country at war for 15 years? Since the American invasion in 2001, Afghanistan hasn’t lived one month without bombings or terrorist attacks. In Kabul for example, although declared « safe », explosions of all kinds strike the city every week. For sure, some cities and villages are less directly exposed to all this, but the European Union, which has recently signed an agreement with Afghanistan to facilitate the deportation of 80.000 Afghan failed asylum seekers, keeps forgetting one thing: when an Afghan coming from these « safest » zones flees to Europe to then be sent back there, Talibans and other members of the Islamic state (more and more
present in this part of the world) will not hesitate for a minute to consider him as a traitor and execute him right away. Since August, S.R
has had a new lawyer but the damages were done. He was deported to Kabul on November 4, 2016. We haven’t heard from him since.
More deportations to Kaboul will follow. Belgium is not a safe place for Afghan asylum seekers.
Daté HOUEDAKOR- The diary of an immigrant going to be deported soon: violence and babarism by the law enforcement staff!
Interview by Yves K. LODONOU (24/10/20016 de21h50 à 22h25) +32474 37 83 76 ; yakolod@gmail.com
The only crime is to be a foreigner, the other one there. “The foreigner is not dangerous but he is in (permanent) danger ” according to Frontières ouvertes asbl
It is variable-geometry democracy in our big States. Well, we are not really surprised. The individual does not count, institutional violence is the rule. What happens currently to the voiceless? They are whispering far away from any sympathetic ear and look…
Mr Houedakor Daté experienced an unparalleled story at his expense. He was shaken, despised, molested, handcuffed, put on a plane and then taken out of it thanks to the clairvoyance of the pilot. Read what follows:
« Caricole Centre, 3 p.m.. I am ready for the second deportation attempt. There was supposed to be another person. The social service of the retention centre calls me. I go to meet them and agents introduced themselves to me as federal police agents. A quite particular unit since they were in civilian clothes.
What will follow tells a lot.
They bring me to their premises. They meticulously search me. I was totally undressed. They checked everyting that was in my suitcase. I come from retention and they search me like a vulgar criminal.
Five officers only for me
The officers gave me a debriefing on the deportation. They assert that I have fake documents. They showed my ID card and told me that if I accepted to return I could get my ID back and then be allowed to come back.
I told them that I still had pending procedures, notably the DNA test. They answered me that I was naive, that I let myself be cheated by the lawyer, that he is a liar and doesn’t tell me the truth. etc
I have the feeling that they did not read my record and that they invent things.
I tell them that my fingerprints were taken, I am an honest man, I work and I am a father.
Then they handcuffed me very tight (you can see the traces on my wrists). I cried and shouted but these people are insensible. Then they tied my feet. They striked me with their elbows, humiliated me, trampled me, pushed on my stomach etc to then throw me into a car. The brutality continued. I am helpless and I am not a danger for anynone, neither for me nor for others nor the pulic order.
Once arrived on the tarmac, they made me go into the place and had me sit at the back. Mistreatments continued. In pain, I started to shout and cry of distress. These presumed federal police officers asked me to keep quiet.Passengers in the plane turned back, trying to understand what was going on. A man of African origin also started to shout at some point.
Each time I could shout I did it, but my voice was fading away at times.
This is how the pilot came to see me and asked me not to shout but I couldn’t handle it anymore. Then the pilot said he would not fly with me on board.
I was taken out of the plane and driven back to the Caricole. I was suffocating and asked to see a doctor.
A doctor came. He examined me and asked me what was wrong. I started explaining everything but the presumed federal police officers told him that I was lying and that I had fake papers.
What happened to me that night helped me realise how thousands of victims suffer during deportations with the presumed federal police officers.
At a certain point I thought I was going to die. I even asked the presumed officers to kill me so that my children would be able to visit my grave.
I asked them if they had children.
I have children, and twins who were just born.
I think that a criminal may not even experience what they made me experience. I did not commit any offense, any political, economical, blood crime etc. but my fate was sealed between the hands of those presumed federal police officers.
As a conclusion
May I lodge a complaint against the Belgian State (5 officers, i.e my torturers)?
Democracy and the respect for individual freedoms are not guaranteed in the areas where laws do not apply, such as the Caricole centre. Semira Adamu had gone through all that, and others as well I guess…
Today it is my turn. May be God didn’t want to? May be my African ancestors did not want to?
I lost my appetite, I am discouraged and I fear for my security. If a State like Belgium that is supposed to protect me puts my life at risk, I wonder a lot about what does the life of an immigrant deprived of their liberty represent, because he wanted to live, yes, live, it’s all about the RIGHT TO LIVE. One has to go through a therapy after experiencing all this retention things.
Belgium welcomed me, it gave me the chance to live until October 1st 2016, when I found myself in this pit, the Caricole centre.
The presdumed federal police agents really behaved like a militia obeying orders…
In countries where unpopular and antidemocratic regimes rule, one may assist to such blunders.
Belgium, a democratic country in Western Europe, big power having adhered to international treaties lets those same texts be violated by inhuman, degrading, xenophobic and negrophobic acts.
Several persons are doing a hunger strike in the closed centres. Among them:
-A young Afghan, retained at the 127 bis centre for almost 11 months (he was arrested on the 1st of December 2015). He has been on hunger strike for 12 days.
– A Palestinian activist, 13 days of hunger strike. He was at the 127bis when he started it. They would have tried to feed him by force, according to his co-detainees, but he refused. They could hear shouts and blows. Then he was transferred to Merksplas where he continues his hunger strike in complete isolation. We are looking for an Arab-speaking activist to try and get in touch with him.
– A man who has been retained in a closed centre for 6 months, who is married to a Belgian woman, has one child (the DNA tests confirm it!) and will soon have another one (due in February), will be expelled this Wednesday to the Iraqi Kurdistan (where everything is obviously going very well, according to the news) via Turkey with a European let pass!
– Sow, the Guinean who was arrested with 11 other comrades during a raid was placed in the secured wing of Vottem; a wing where the retainees are completely isolated and surrounded with barbed wire; a prison within the prison; where they keep the ‘dangerous criminals’, the ‘turbulent’ and the ‘activists’!
Francken should not come and tell us that they are former ‘criminals’. No, none of them ever troubled HIS public order! They are just illegal!!!
And don’t tell us anymore about human and children and even women rights please! FASCISM in all its glory!
There are hundreds locked away in closed centres because they allegedly “don’t have the right papers”. Many are desperate.
Some go on hunger strike, others try to kill themselves or to escape. They feel abandoned and lonely in this fight against their imprisonment and ask for support in their fight.
How are you Sow? Is the solitary confinement not too hard?
– Well, there are a couple of things to disclose. Are you taking notes? The detention, the closed centre in Bruges, and we would like to pass on our demands…
Sow does not have any self-pity. He is at his work in the little parlour of the closed centre in Vottem.
He explains:
“They came on 19 September at 5:30 in the morning with about 200 policemen, dogs and a helicopter. The police entered by the windows on the top floor thanks to the helicopter. We then opened the door downstairs because this police operation looked really violent. If there were people killed or injured it would have been easy to claim they were terrorists.
The day before we had a meeting in the house to find a solution for the last inhabitants of the occupied building, who were about to leave the place. We wanted to discuss whether some could join our occupied house at Ebola. Most of us left after the meeting, but I could not, because it was too late to get to my shelter.
It was actually planned to meet the authorities of Molenbeek on Friday. The socialists had told us that before that official meeting there was just a tiny risk for us…
But they want to scare people in order to close all occupied houses, that are our bastions. They want to stop our demonstrations, our last remaining weapons.
I would like to know who gave the order for this raid? I accuse the Bourgmestre (= mayor) of Molenbeek, Rosemont, and Francken – I think they gave the order. Rosemont was disappointed by the poor results of the raid… They wanted to arrest 45 of us. I urge that they should be iterrogated…
Now I know what it is like to live in a closed centre. It is important for those who fight for the rights of sans-papiers to know about this and to be able to disclose these informations.
In the closed centre in Bruges, we collected our 7 demands in a text book, but it would be necessary to reword it in correct French, because, you know, I am a Maths-teacher and French is not my strongest point.
So far, 31 detainees in Bruges have signed our demands… What is most shocking in Bruges are the dormitories. There are 20 people in each dormitory and the toilets are really dirty. We would like to have some cleaning products to clean them. We have to go to bed at 22:00 and wake up at 7:00, there is no internet access possible, but the worst are the medications.
I used to have a treatment, which cannot be disrupted. But they would not give me my medicines. I asked to see the doctor, but he neither did not want to give them to me. I said that I will file a complaint against him. He told me: “Buzz off!”
Later, I received the medication, but I saw that it’s not the same that I used to take. They never wanted to show me the packaging. So, basically, you have no idea of what you are taking. I did not take the medication. I wanted to keep them in order to be able to disclose them later, but when I was relocated I was searched and so they found them. Most detainees in Bruges become crazy and once they are released they are no more able to disclose what happened to them. They want us to be unable to testify. If they are deported or if they take drugs and those are taken abruptly away from them, they may commit suicide… A country may authorise deportations, but it cannot destroy human beigns… This is intolerable.
Some people stay for a very long time in those closed centres. They should be allowed to learn languages, as there are some who get liberated. This would be very useful.
The document with our demands – I signed it in the folowing name: Sow, the coordinator of the collectif Ebola, member of the International Coalition of Sans-papiers and Migrants, of the Coordination of Sans-papiers in Belgium, trade unionist. Is this the reason why I was relocated to a secured wing in Vottem? That I am in solitary confinement? In Bruges I was assaulted by another detainee. They said they drew by lot who would have to be relocated…
Here in Vottem, you see which medication you get. But I am in solitary confinement and I have no contacts with other detainees. I receive food four times a day, mostly bread, but not for lunch. I may go out for 1h in the morning and 1h in the afternoon.
I need the support of others. They want to break my spirit…”
Attempt to escape 127bis: 27/09 : during the walk time, a man jumped over the 3 fences of the centre: this was followed by a police deployment and a manhunt. They found him and transferred him to a secured wing of the closed centre in Vottem.
Vottem :26/09 : a man jumped over a first fence, and he climbed a second one. He stayed for a while on top of this second fence, the police was waiting for him downstairs. He was finally arrested and transferred to another centre.
« I understand him” says a prisoner, “it’s been seven months that I have been retained here because I am undocumented, this can drive you totally mad”.
General search this 28th of September in one of the wings of 127bis.
Demonstration « Faites du vélo pas des centres fermés » : Repression of free speech
CRER call here: http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2016/09/12/34313886.html
Following the call by CRER against the closed centres, a few dozens of militants gathered in front of the centre. The management had taken measures to prevent any contact with the retainees: 6 retainees had been placed in confinement cells the day before, 3 others the morning after (‘those who could easily speak’ says a detainee). In the women’s wing, they all were taken away from the windows to prevent any contact with the outside. In the men’s wing, we got a contact with one man. The others were standing behind locked windows.
« I was standing at the window, I saw you, but the window was closed. I could not speak to you.”
Visits by family members and friends had been cancelled, and the day walks too.
Frontex collective expulsion to Guinea and the DRC this 28th of September 2016
Update 29/09: In the end, it was a FRONTEX flight with more than 20 Guineans and Congolese who were deported from Brussels! They landed in Conakry in the evening of the 28th where the Belgian ambassador and the Guinean Minister of Home Affairs were expecting them. They directly joined their families who were waiting for them.
The plane then took off for Kinshasa with the Congolese.
One Congolese got one foot broken during the violent push to embark him because he refused to leave.
Three Guineans and two Congolese were not taken to the airport because they were on a ‘reserve list’. They were driven back to Vottem and Merksplas.
We could reach Mamadou Sow by phone. He has been retained since Monday 19th of September in Bruges with 12 other undocumented during a raid by the police in a building in Molenbeek occupied for more than two years by the group “The Voice of the Undocumented”, a group that fights for his rights and campaigns with other groups of undocumented within the “Undocumented coordination”. Sow says that the tough intervention by the police started at 5.30 a.m. with a helicopter, more than 200 policemen arriving with disproportionate brutality and arresting a dozen of inhabitants! After the body search came the handcuffs and the code bar numbers, then the friends were locked in the basement to then be driven to the closed centre in Bruges, obviously passing by the central police casern in Brussels. Handcuffed during hours, they protested but it ended up in them being in confinement cells.
Once integrated in the closed centre, solidarity comes to reinforce the idea that only struggle can make things move in favour of a regularisation.
Update 29 September: In the end it was a FRONTEX flight that deported around 30 Guineans and Congolese from Brussels! They landed in Conakry in the evening of the 28th of September, where the Belgian ambassador and the Guinean Interior Minister were expecting them. They directly left with their families who were there waiting for them.
Then the plane left for Kinshasa with the Congolese.
One Congolese got one of his feet broken during the violent actions to embark him because he refused to leave.
Three Guineans and two Congolese were not driven to the airport because they were on a ‘reserve list’, hence they were driven back to Vottem and Merksplas
Update 26/09
ALERT AT THE 127 BIS At the 127bis, 10 persons from the DRC have been warned that they would be put on a collective flight to the DRC this 28th of September, most likely on the same flight that had been announced for Guinea! Among the Congolese people of the 127bis, six women got notified. Five of them introduced a marriage or cohabitation request or a family reunification request, one an asylum request! Several of them were arrested at their home during the past weeks!
Update 23/09:
A Guinean detainee from a centre got a phone call this morning from the social assistant. She warned him that he was on the list of the people who would be on the collective flight this Wednesday 28th September 2016 to Conakry and that he would be transferred to the 127bis centre near the airport this coming Monday!
CALL/ Once the expulsion machine is on, with a cohort of military and police men, it gets harder even impossible for the deported to resist during a collective expulsion, but other political or supporter initiatives from the outside may prevent the flight. In 2014, the landing of a charter with 34 Guineans on board was refused by the governement in Conakry and the plane was forced to fly back to Brussels! http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/la-guinee-refuse-toute-expulsion-collective-de-ses-nationaux/
Théo Francken clumsily advertised a European collective expulsion to Conakry on Twitter, foreseen for this 28th of September. These flight projects are usually kept secret until the very last minute. Francken’s tweets mainly are propaganda or threats. Sometimes they may be true even though the date may be changed.
Several dozens of Guineans have been retained for months in our closed centres, but until here they could not be deported without let passes, which have to be delivered by the Guinean embassy to allow the expulsion. It seems that an agreement (secret, legal?) was reached between Francken and the ambassador to allow these expulsions.
This information has to be spread and the Guinean people concerned should be rapidly warned.
The people concerned:
The people who got a negative and definitive answer to their asylum request
The undocumented people living on the territory
The undocumented people who have a ‘criminal’ record currently are on the priority list for deportations and they run a heavier risk of arrest and expulsion
The people retained in closed centres Risks of arrests
Arrests still can happen on the street, at home, at the police station or at the Foreigners’ Office
How to avoid an expulsion
Avoid finding yourselves in situations mentioned here above (do not stay at your official residence place, avoid places such as train stations, metro stations, do not answer calls of the Foreigners office, the commune or the police station)
Inform your lawyer who may reintroduce an asylum request or appeal a decision by the courts; which may delay the expulsion
Inform your friends and family and rapidly warn them if you have been arrested
Inform compatriots on the threat of expulsion, politicians (male/female) of our country and of the country of origin
If you are sick, consult your doctor so that he may give you a certificate that might prevent the expulsion
How does a collective explusion happen?
Here is what could be gathered on how a collective expulsion happens.
THE WEEKS BEFORE :
Arrests in public places of undocumented persons with a given nationality, retention in closed centres of these persons,
Maintenance in closed centres of people already retained and/or already having been subject to expulsion attempts
Retention in the Caricole closed centre of the people requesting asylum at the airport and quick analysis of their files
THE DAYS BEFORE :
Transfer from the Belgian closed centres to the closed centre 127bis in Steenokkerzeel of all the candidates selected by the Office.
THE HOURS BEFORE :
Isolation in confinement cells of the candidates to be deported, including an unknown number of ‘reservists’.
FROM 4 TO 5 HOURS BEFORE THE FLIGHT :
People to be deported are gathered in vans and buses, sometimes military. They are handcuffed and escorted by 2 or 3 policemen each, in uniform or plain clothes.
The recalcitrants and those who refused a previous expulsion are considered as dangereous and deserve a special treatment : isolated, undressed, having to bend in presence of the police, tied and accompanied by a special escort http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/cinq-mois-en-centre-ferme/
In general, this takes more than two hours and happens sometimes with violence.
Departure of the caravan to Melsbroek’s military airport in Chaussée de Haecht, boarding on a military plane.
The deported remain handcuffed during one part of the flight.
« Here it is not about closed centre for illegals anymore. It is about illegal prisons, torture and detentions.”
14/09/2016
For more than a year, Theo Francken has been declaring through the press that he is deporting ‘undocumented criminals’.
In the centres, where they are often gathered, repression is impressive for these retainees who cry out at injustice, who often do not understand, who think they paid for their offenses and that they deserve to stay in a country where they have been living for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years, that they have families, children and friends whom they don’t want to leave. They show a lot of solidarity with the codetainees who are declared criminals without reason, with others who have children here, with others whose arrest is ‘illegal’.
A few examples :
Hamid (alias) was a child when he arrived in Belgium with his parents. Between 18 and 20 years old, he was convicted twice. They were celebrating with friends and at the end of the night they were totally drunk and stole a bag and a wallet.
« At that time we were only thinking about the money we didn’t have and which others had in profusion.” When out of jail he realises that he has to live differently, according to the rules, and he searches more serious friends. He lives a normal life, he works and doesn’t drink anymore. One day, they call him at the police station: they make him sign a document certifying that he is ready to return to his country and the police cut his identity card and throw it away. A few months later during a control he is arrested as undocumented and brought to the closed centre! He is 23 years old. His crime: temporarily deviating from our standards without thinking too much.
A man from Somalia in Belgium since 2010 spent one month in prison. From there they take him to the closed centre in Bruges in view of a deportation to Somalia. He spends more than 8 months there and he released. The van of the centre drives him to Bruges train station (thank you!) but 10 minutes later the police control him on the platform: they bring him to the police station and retain him at the Caricole, still in view of deporting him to Somalia. His crime: he cannot be expelled.
A man was accused of theft and arrested. He spent several days in prison and was released because he was acquited by the judge for the facts that were reproached to him. But the police was in front of the prison, waiting to bring him to a closed centre, seen his ‘criminal record’. He spent 4 months there and was transferred to another centre for disciplinary reason: indeed, he never hesitates to make remarks when he witnesses injustice. He spent 13 months there, always quiet. it seems that 13 is the number that brings you to confinement cell and transfer! He got 2 tickets for deportation, each time cancelled because his ‘country of origin’ doesn’t deliver let passes. He has been living here for 22 years and all his frends and family are living here. His crime: a complaint he lodged against policy brutality. Words by prisoners
« I would be ok to pay if I had done something ‘wrong’ but I am being retained here for no reason!’
A young boy from Molenbeek in a closed centre « I arrived here with my parents. I was a child. I did everything to integrate but you who didn’t want to integrate me. Therefore I did what I could to live my life differently.”
« We are here, not knowing why. »
« Stop talking about democracy and human rights. They don’t exist anymore in your country. We no longer have the right to speak, we no longer have the right to tell the truth.”
« Here it’s no longer about closed centres, it’s about illegal torture and retentions”.
« Sometimes I am scared to say things here, to tell the truth because I know it will fall back on me.”
Wednesday 7th September – flight AF386 Paris-Bamako
It is 1.30 p.m. when the police of the administration retention centre of Vincennes come to pick up Sekouba MAREGA to drive him to the airport and put him against his will on a plane to Bamako. Sekouba, a young father, remembers the moments of happiness spent with his girlfriend Aminata and his son Abdoulaye, 3 months old, whom he will never see again. In the deportation premises of PAF at Roissy airport, the police threaten him with prison if he opposes his deportation.
3.30 p.m. the dirty work starts. The police deprive him of his mobile phone and bring out their dehumanisation artillery: handcuffs, straps around the ankles and knees. The plane has to take off at 4.30 p.m. They take him in their vehicle and drive him to the foot of the plane. The passengers are at the boarding gate and still don’t know the horror they will be the witnesses of. Sekouba doesn’t show any resistance in the car because he knows they could drug him to reach their goal. 4 p.m. – the police take him out of the car to get him on the plane before the arrival of the passengers. They are a dozen against one man whose only blame was not to have the right documents in his possession. On the steps that bring him to the door of the plane, Sekouba resists and the police throw him on the ground. One puts one foot on Sekouba’s chest, pushing hardly, whereas another one puts him a boxing helmet. He is totally hampered and can not move. Nevertheless, one police officer violently kicks him on the chest before going to the plane. They have him sit down at the back. As soon as the passengers start to enter the plane, one police officer squeezes his genital parts so as to dissuade him of any resistance, but Sekouba only thinks of his son whom he doesn’t want to be separated from. He starts shouting until passengers notice his presence. Some of them get close to him and question him despite the threats by the policemen and the fact that they are being filmed. Sekouba explains his situation in Bambara and in French. Almost all the passengers then stand up and oppose this deportation. Alerted by the passengers’ cries, the captain realises the chaos and asks the police to disembark Sebouba. Thanks to the passengers’ mobilisation, this young father could go back to the ARC of Vincennes but in a worrying psychological and physical state. What happened on board of this flight may only be conscience-shocking and have one question about the real reasons of such an obstinacy by
Mr Hollande’s government, violating several human rights principles. The legal end of the retention period for Sekouba Marega is foreseen this Saturday (45th day of retention) and it would be a minimum of common sense to definitely put an end to it with his release.
To react on these facts and call for Sekouba’s release:
jean-pierre.jouyet@elysee.fr Secrétaire général Elysée
boris.vallaud@elysee.fr Secrétaire général Adjoint Elysée
thierry.lataste@elysee.fr Dircab Elysée
premier-ministre@pm.gouv.fr Matignon
sebastien.gros@pm.gouv.fr Chef de cab Matignon
Intérieur : 01 40 07 60 60 ask for the immigration adviser
For several weeks the tension has been very high in the centre. Several retainees have gone on hunger strike, rebellions have started etc. Retainees have very few means to resist, each movement being sanctioned. The staff (guards, management, social assistants) then resorts to blackmailing, threats of all kinds, they place the retainees in confinement cells, organise transfers and plan surprise deportations.
A few retainees are calling us from the 127 bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel after the isolation of a man who has been retained for 7 months.
On Sunday, the latter took advantage of the fact that the kitchen was open to grab something to eat and drink outside the authorized hours. They violently took him to confinement. His mates protested but in vain.
They all tell us that they get very few to eat and that the staff treats them like animals.
« It’s a real jungle here”.
« Everybody has had enough.»
« We all get pills to calm down. Some have become zombies after taking too many pills. »
« They (the staff) have a phobia about foreigners, it is discrimination.”
« Why does the staff get cold water in bottles whereas we have to drink water from the tap when the weather is so warm ? »
« We still are human beings! »
Thirty of them have signed a petition, calling to meet the centre management.
They protest against their imprisonment, against their living conditions, and they ask for the release of their friend.
« According to the centre regulations, of which we could get a copy, this man should have received a warning and he shouldn’t have been violently put in a confinement cell.”
In the second wing of the 127bis, one night around 2 a.m., the retainees were concerned for a man who had breathing difficulties. They called the security who wanted to lock the man in a confinement cell while waiting for the doctor the day after. All the retainees refused he’d be locked seen his state. In the end, under pressure, the guards accepted to leave the door of his cell open during the night.
« They keep violating the law”
« It’s hatred »
At the Merksplas closed centre, many who have been retained for 5, 7, 8, sometimes even 11 months.
People in these centres with whom we have contacts at the moment are the so-called ‘criminals’ whom our Secretary of State for Migration, Theo Francken, is hoping to deport. They find themselves in a new prison for an indefinite time in view of a deportation after having served their sentence. Some have been in closed centres for 5, 7, 8, sometimes even 11 months. They say they have been retained without any trial and they find it unfair. They served their sentence, paid their debts, and find themselves in prison again. Those who have been retained for months are coming from countries that refuse to take their nationals back and they do not deliver let passes, which are needed for a deportation. Despite the impossibility to deport them, they are kept in prison during extremely long periods, without any trial… they are extremely angry.
« They are looking for troubles, and they will find them” they say.
At the Caricole, an attempt to escape sadly failed because of another retainee who denounced it!
They were several, during the night of the 29th, who tried to escape through a window cut with a piece of glass. But they had no time to do so
since one of their co-retainees went to warn the guard. Two of them were placed in solitary confinement.
One of them has finally been totally released after the successful appeal by his lawyer against his deportation.
The second one has been transferred to Merksplas after two days in solitary confinement. He may mix with the other retainees during the day
but not during the night.
Wall after wall, brick after brick, window after window, let¹s break down all prisons.
Today 12:45 deportation of 40 Sudanese are rounded up there two days before the center of the Red Cross Ventimiglia towards Sudan (Khartoum), via Turin Airport and the company “EgyptAir”.
They were received by a judge and their deportation was validated in less than 24 hours.
These people have not had the opportunity to seek asylum in that short period, they have been “chosen” in a lot of people refusing to drop their footprint in Italy, in the center of the Red Cross.
It would not be the first deportation of its kind, according to Sudanese friends, another flight from Rome and towards Khartoum took place last week.
These deportations follow the new agreements between Italy and Sudan, authorizing the deportation of Sudanese illegally on Italian soil and be part of the new European agreements on the management of the “migration crisis”: the “migration compact”.
Italian link in an analysis of these agreements: http://dirittiefrontiere.blogs pot.com/2016/04/migration-comp act-renzi-rilancia-il.html
We knew these practices possible through EU agreements / Turkey, but it is now clear that Europe has developed legal means in order to organize the deportations directly from the European soil.
friends (misinformed …) are made today to Milan airport to try to block the departure of the aircraft, they would quarantine, three of them are mounted on an airport pounded to protest against the deportations. they would be now in the hands of the Milanese police,
we do not know what’s befallen others for now.
what responses, what responses ?????
Europe is covered by the blood of the ones it deports !!!
On 17th of August at 6.40 a.m. from Berlin Tegel I embarked on a flight to Douala via Brussels where I landed at 9.15 a.m. to embark on another flight at 11.00 a.m. foreseen at 10.40 a.m. On that flight, there were more than 200 passengers of diverse origins for the same transit flight. My seat was 14 E. Some time later, and seen the delay of the flight, there suddenly were strong noises coming from the second compartment, i.e from the back of the plane. The first scream was the one of a migrant who was being strangled and choked; and the second scream was the one of women, children and men who were protesting against this inhuman treatment on the migrant. Here I come, passing between passengers to witness the facts and put pressure so that this migrant stopped being strangled, denouncing this mistreatment and asking for him to be released from that plane. Besides, I filmed the facts with my phone so as to use them as an evidence (I have videos and pictures). A few minutes later, the captain is requested to put some order back on the plane. He will decide to disembark the migrant (I published a video on my facebook page to prove it) and ask all the passengers to calm down and go back to their seats to be able to leave at last.
A bit later, we are being pointed at randomly (6 persons including myself and a woman, deputy mayor in Camerun who was humiliated by the Belgian police) and brutally taken to the airport police station where they will seize everything we have. The police will take my phone insisting on deleting several files from it. A few minutes later we will be brought to another police station to be auditioned. We will be placed in detention (24 h) waiting for the decision of the prosecutor. Later in the evening, we will be brought two by two to detention. The day after, in the morning of the 18th of August, we are brought to the police station where we had been auditioned and around 11 a.m. I am the first one being called to sign documents in Dutch, which I will not sign. We simply get the notification to go to trial on 1st December 2016, the same for the other 5 people.
To sum up, we are all being accused of rebellion and will have to go to court on 1st of December.
THE FIGHT GOES ON
CISPM/Berlin Voix des Migrants.Tresor.
CISPM/Berlin Voix des Migrants.Tresor.
Facebook vidéo:
Mrs. F., of Guinean origin, has been living for 18 years in the United States. She legally stays there, rents an apartment, and works in New York.
On 03/07, she lands in Belgium with her two daughters aged 11 and 12, to visit her uncle and other members of her family. She has 4000 euros in her pocket, her credit card, her refugee passport released in the United States and all return tickets, expected in early September. Yet the holidays fall short… F. and her two daughters were arrested under the pretext of lack of visa, even though she is in possession of documents proving that she did not need a visa to enter Belgium. But the Border Police did not listen: after 6 hours waiting at the airport, she is taken alone to Caricole, while her uncle takes her daughters at home. The Immigrants Office wants F. to return to the US without her daughters! In addition to this absurd and inhuman confinement, which deprives her daughters (they were able to visit her only once since her detention), she is treated as a criminal, led handcuffed to the hearings in the Palace of Justice… She does not want to be separated from her daughters and has arranged, at her expenses, to change the return ticket for her daughters to return together to the US.
The General Delegate of children’s rights has been warned since the beginning of the arrest of F., and name and phone number of F. have been communicated. One answer on 13/07 states: “The family (mother and children) left the Caricole last week to be transferred back home.” and a second message on 19/07 “I finally managed to get information about this mother and her children. We call the Immigration Department about the situation for more news”. The DG children’s rights have been very ineffective in this case.
And why? Why this eagerness of the Border Police and the Immigration Department, which, despite all good sense, and even beyond all understanding, separates children from their mother and detains a woman who clearly was tourist visiting her family in Belgium. A woman who is about to ask, even this year, the US citizenship: why mistreat her inflicting these degrading treatment, furthermore at the expenses of the Belgian State?!! F. may not have the “right” color, the one needed not to arouse suspicion of Border Police?
Examples of this type (http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/racism-at-our-borders-11072016/) have multiplied in recent months. It is time to end these arbitrary arrests. Is this part of the new “special cell of fraud among asylum seekers”, founded in March 2016 by Mr. Francken, that the Border Police at the airport stops and locks outsiders in order for asylum or regularization and returning from vacation? http://nieuws.vtm.be/binnenland/181159-speciale-cel-tegen-fraude-bij-asielzoekers
For several months, Subsaharian or Maghrebin travellers in transit at Brussels National airport are caught by the police and retained in closed centres.
During the holidays period, some who are legal residents in one of the Schengen countries go back to their home country to see their family and friends. While in transit at Brussels airport they are controlled and caught by the airport police.
We collected several testimonies by people retained in the Caricole closed centre who have been arrested that way at Brussels airport. The pretexts of their arrests are very similar, they are being accused of being in possession of a ‘fake passport’ or of documents not in order and are directly retained at the Caricole, a closed centre directly linked to the no man’s land of the airport, in view of a ‘refoulement’ to their country of departure… The Foreigners Office refute their saying, refuse to believe them, deny their residence permits and retain them for several weeks, even for several months. Then they are released or turned back to their country of origin where, according to the Foreigners Office, they should, through the embassy of their country of residence, settle their situation and take another plane to their country in Europe. Hence, these people, although they have been legal residents in a European country sometimes for more than ten years, are being administratively retained for weeks or months. This gives way to unimaginable hassles for these people and their families. A lot of them will lose their job and their housing following this retention.
Other travellers who live in Subsharian countries or in Maghreb come to our countries to spend holidays with their families settled in Europe. Some of them while in transit at the airport also get arrested by the airport police for various fanciful pretexts. They also find themselves retained in closed centres, sometimes with their children, in view of their ‘refoulement’. Most of them, instead of spending their ‘holidays’ in closed centres, and after having understood the administrtive hassle it takes to get a possible release, prefer to forget about their plan to meet their families installed in Europe and decide to let themselves turn back to their countries.
Other borders
Others get arrested at the border between France and Belgium or in Zeebrugge, mainly Afghans who fled the living conditions and the police repression in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. They are being retained sometimes for several months in the Belgian closed centres, waiting for their deportation…
Racism in all its glory
The administrative retentions of all these travellers reflect the European and Belgian obsession to hunt ‘foreign travellers’ the majority of whom would be travelling with fake passports, according to the Foreigners Office. One would wonder whether the airport police is capable of making a distinction between a real and a fake passport or whether, which seems much more logical, their judgment is not purely racist.
These repressions and deportations of foreigners are the expression of a pure and simple racism towards any person ‘of colour’ and do not have anything to do anymore with the announced migratory controls. Why arrest and retain travellers with a residence permit in a Schengen country for years or travelling to visit their families settled in Europe if not in view of discouraging, intimidating, excluding, pissing off and making money out of the arrests and deportations/refoulements, to reinforce the image of the ‘cheating’ foreigners and apply methods advocated by the far right.
All this happens in a deafening silence: neither the political parties nor the associations, and certainly not the media mention these ignoble acts at the borrders: they all are at the mercy of the power for fear of losing their votes, subsidies, listeners, etc.
‘Third countries’ citizens with whom the EU want to sign readmission and partnership agreements through ‘incentive measures’ are not fooled: it will be dead expensive to sign agreements with these third countries that see the members of their communities being mistreated in EU countries! The European Union is heading for a fall once again with its arrogance and stupidity.
More info:
Europe is trying to buy its way out of the migratory crisis : http://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2016/06/30/europe-tries-buy-its-way-out-migration-crisis
One example of this répression: Mr Sow, still being retained at the Caricole
update 8th of July – the second family is composed of a mother and 3 children legally residing in the US for 10 years. Today the 3 children were brought to friends of the mother in Liège. The mother still is at the Caricole and theyare planning to deport her tomorrow, Sunday, to the United States. She will refuse to leave without her children!
Update 7th July: A second family with three children arrived yesterday; a woman and three children, legal residents in the United States, arrested at the airport. Both families left the centre today but we don’t know where they have been brought to.
URGENT call from the Caricole closed centre 06 July 2016
Several persons retained at the Caricole closed centre inform us today about the presence of a Palestinian family with three children, the youngest being 8 months old.The people retained in the centre are the ones the Foreigners Office ‘chose’ among many others in view of their deportation to the country through which they arrived or to their country of origin.
A lot of retainees are subject to the decisions by the courts and they do not dare to protest against injustice. But when they see children, old people, handicapped people, etc. they cannot help themselves and stir up scandal. They can’t resist.
Retainees are telling us:
« Children should not be retained. »
« It’s a prison here, not a centre. It’s not our place here, and even less the one of kids.”
« We should say it loud, everybody has to know, it is absolutely outrageous”.
Several associations warned of these retentions ask us about the situation of this family before taking any step.
Absolutely no situation may explain the retention in closed centres.
Let’s prevent these retentions, all the more the one of children!
Let us show some solidarity!
Update 12 July 2016 – After one month of retention, two deportation/refoulement attempts, three appearances in court for a release request each time postponed, Mr Sow has been released and may at last join his family in Spain, his country of residence!
Update 30 June 2016 They did not dare. Mr Sow was taken to the airport and he refused his deportation. His escort did not insist and brought him back to the centre. Thanks to all who sent emails and faxes, sometimes it does work!
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On 13th of June 2016, Mr Sow was in transit in Brussels airport to go back to Spain where has been living for 14 years. Unfortunately, he had lost his documents during his travel and was not able to show his residence permit to the airport trafic police. Seen the absence of documents, the Foreigners Office asked the airport police to arrest Mr Sow and to bring him to the Caricole closed centre in Steenokkerzeel in view of his deportation to Guinea.
From the closed centre, Mr Sow got a document by the Spanish consulate in Brussels certifying that he was effectively in possession of a residence permit in Spain valid until 2020 and renewable. The Foreigners Office want to force him to go back to Guinea to ask the Spanish authorities for a new residence permit and buy a new ticket for Europe.
Mr Sow’s right of residence exists even without permit, and the Foreigners Office know it. The retention of Mr Sow is therefore perfectly illegal and his return to Guinea arbitrary.
Mr Sow has been advised to lodge a complaint against the Secretary of State for Immigration for arbitrary retention and violations of the right of freedom of movement of workers within the European Union.
It is totally incomprehensible that the Foreigners Office don’t want to grant him a simple let pass and enable him to rapidly go back to work in Spain. Indeed, the Foreigners Office always find a way to deport an undocumented person with a mere let pass. The Office prefer to cause him lots of troubles, and totally for free!
A release request of Mr Sow has been filed and should be dealth with on Friday morning 1st of July in front of the Judge’s chamber of Brussels. Strangely enough, the Foreigners Office already tried to deport him this Sunday and they plan to try a second time this Thursday 30th of June 2016.
Or how to avoid that a litigant is heard by a judge to complain about the way he is treated.
Write, mail, fax to
A man with a Spanish residence permit deported to Guinea
Retainees in the centres are currently in urgent need of phone recharges.
Some were arrested on their migration road (Zeebruge, Ostende, at the French border) and separated from their family whom they absolutely want to find back and/or warn. Others were arrested at home, on the street, at the Foreigners Office and at the borders (mainly at the airport) and they want to warn their close relatives. Others are going to be deported soon and they want to warn their friends and families back home.
It is more than necessary to warn close relatives and family, hence a recharge is a considerable help to the retainees.
You may support them by buying a 10 euros’ Lycambobile recharge at your grocer’s, in your nightshop or bookshop. You email us (gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net) or text us (0032(0)484026781) the pin code written on the recharge. We will then send this code to the retainees who are asking for it, allowing them to keep a contact with us and outside.
If it is easier for you, you may also pay 5, 10, 20 euros or more on the account:
Collectif Contre Les Expulsions
Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279 BIC: TRIOBEBB
Message Lyca
Please spread the word around you!
We THANK YOU on their behalf
Words by a retainee in a closed centre for more than 4 months:
« The closed centre is a small society in itself: we are getting organised, we discuss with people from all over the world, we have arguments and reconcile ourselves, we share our experiences and above all we welcome newcomers and say farewell to those who are going back home. I will never forget this micro-society experience.”
A few examples of the absurdity of retentions
A woman with a residence permit in France is retained in view of a deportation to “her country of origin”. After endless legal recourses she decides to let them deport her. Once at the airport of her “country of origin’, she takes a flight to Paris with her French residence permit and finds her family back there.
A man of French nationality is arrested on the street but he is without his documents. They bring him to a closed centre. They identify him as being Serbian: “yes indeed, his great grand-father migrated to France almost one century ago.” The time to prove his nationality, after 15 days they deport him to France.
A man with a legal history spent 8 months in a closed centre in view of his deportation. The embassy of his ‘alleged’ country of origin always refused to deliver him a let pass. He was released after 8 months of retention with an order to leave the territory. What is he supposed to do now?
At the 127bis closed centre, a Guinean man, 74 years old, who has been living in Belgium for 11 years has been retained for 7 months now… A second deportation attempt is planned for the 23rd of June 2016.
Controls at the borders:
At the airport, the borders’ police, under the orders of the Foreigners office, arrests with discernment the people who could well come to ‘enjoy our wealth’ (dixit a member of the federal police to an alleged migrant).
A woman arrives to the airport with a visa for Germany and requests asylum in Belgium. She is arrested and brought to a closed centre. They plan to deport her to Germany.
A woman arrives to the airport with a visa for France to see her family members who live in France during her holidays of 3 weeks. She is arrested and brought to a closed centre in view of her deportation to Guinea. After one week, she decides to let herself deport: “I am going back home, this is a shame!”
A man arrives to the airport with a Belgian visa to spend holidays in Europe: he is arrested at the airport, isolated during 5 hours in a room with no food, no drinks, to be finally brought to the closed centre. He decides to go back home instead of spending his holidays in a closed centre!
Small reflexion by the brother of this man: “My brother was in order with all the visa conditions. I think it would be wise to have a service of assistance at the airport to see if everything is in order before bringing them to a closed centre where nothing can be done anymore”.
This being said, the retentions in closed centres for sometimes more than 8 months and the deportations are the rule and the main goal!
However, failure for the Office and the CGRA : many find the way to come back thanks to the more or less caring ‘smugglers’ to join their friends, children, and family or to request asylum again because they are really in danger in their country, contrarily to what CGRA think.
Six of them were retained in a closed centre, two were deported and the others have been released.
H is the last of the crane people who has been in a closed centre since the 18th of November 2015.
H has been in Belgium for 10 years. He took part in several hunger strikes in 2009 and 2011. He got an orange card that was withdrawn from him in 2012. He has a fully equipped apartment in Molenbeek for which he still pays the rent. He got the visit of parliamentarians during the Steenrock festival on 7th May 2016. He showed them a document by a political authority congratulating him for a citizenship action he did.
He has been retained in a closed centre for more than 6 months and he already resisted 3 deportation attempts. He had to go to court on the 30th of May for a release request and a new deportation had been planned for him on the 1st of June. He started a hunger strike with his comrades to claim for their release 27 days ago.
Suddenly this morning (25th of May 2016), the guards of the 127bis closed centre took him out of his room, told him that he was going to be deported tomorrow and placed him into confinement. He started a thirst strike and asks us to prevent his deportation. His health state is extremely worrying.
This tactic by the Foreigners Office to deport by surprise in total illegality seems to be more and more frequent, even with vulnerable people. Last week, a Pakistani who had been on hunger strike for 37 days has been taken away by two policemen, supposedly to bring him to the hospital: he was driven to the airport and deported to Pakistan.
We don’t know the time of the flight, the centre did not inform him about that.
The coordination of the undocumented people has planned a gathering in front of the Foreigners Office this Thursday 26th of May in order to protest against all these deportations, time to be confirmed.
Shame on the Foreigners Office, Shame on the Belgian State!
Strong campaign of faxes, tel and email to the authorities in charge!
On May 19th 2016, an ambulance escorted by three police cars took away a Pakistani who had been on a hunger strike for 37 days. The retainees were shouting at the police, after which several of them ended up placed into confinement.
A lot of retainees are isolated as soon as the guards deem they are not behaving ‘well’. Hence, as soon as someone claims for freedom (which regularly happens since the Steenrock festival against closed centres that took place on the 7th of May in front of the centre), 10 guards appear and take them to a confinement cell.
One testimony:
A young man, with skin disease, was brought to an empty room to be ‘cured’ and then directly taken away for his deportation to Spain. Despite his prayers, he didn’t have the right to get his stuff back (even not his mobile phone) in his room, nor was he allowed to say goodbye to his friends. Fifteen people witnessed this flash deportation.
Another testimony:
“Since the 8 years that I have been living in Belgium I had never seen Belgium like this’. According to B., retainees are treated like animals, ‘worse than in Africa’ he says. When he is searched, he keeps repeating to the guards that he is a human being and that he is not a criminal. He obliged a guard to put his belongings back into his tray after the latter had taken all out in order to search it. The guard didn’t want to do it but one superior came and asked him to put everything back in place.
According to a third testimony, another striker had asked to be isolated because he couldn’t stand the noise anymore. When he was in confinement, the guards were coming every hour 24/24 to switch on the light, wake him up and ask him if he was all right. Isn’t it what they call torture according to human rights standards?
On the opposite, two men who had shared direct testimonies during the Steenrock festival have been released, as well as a woman who had been imprisoned at the Caricole and who had got the visit of a parliamentarian.
Since the general hunger strike started on 28th of April, to express the general exasperation in front of the retentions, a lot of repression has taken place in the centres, with transfers, isolations and deportations. A lot of retainees continue to fight against the bad treatments they receive in the centre and to claim for their release!
In solidarity with the fights in the centres and for the release of everybody!
This Sunday 14/05/2016, suddenly, around 1 p.m., the guards of the 127 bis closed centre decided to search everybody in the wing nr 1.
All prisoners had to gather in the common hall. They were called one by one by their number and separated from the group to be submitted to a full physical search while other guards were searching the rooms, emptying the trays, putting the mattressses upside down.
One of the retainees explains us that these searches are very frequent and done by order of the director who explains the reason for these searches.
On that day, no direction, no reasons explained and, according to certain retainees, the attitudes of the guards were racist and lacking respect.
At the time of the searches this Sunday, the retainees were very nervous and they were calling for support from the outside.
Currently, as far as we know, four men have been on a hunger strike for 15 days. Another one started one three days ago, claiming for his release. He has been living here for 6 years, he is married and he doesn’t see any valid reason to justify his retention.
In the women’s wing, two women are still on hunger strike and one the health of one of her is worrying.One woman in the centre say us “She will dy if we do not do anything”
A majority of the retainees do not understand why they are being detained, they didn’t get any explanation and some have been detained for more than 8 months.
These searches are part of the intimidation and repression strategies caracteristic to all prison environments so as to make them feel that they are the ones holding the supreme power on the retainees and their actions, that the guards are there to mate them!
Call out for support and solidarity with the prisoners
Once again, the visit is harsh and discouraging. The retention conditions of the foreigners who are being watched, behind closed doors, are unacceptable and appalling for anyone with a sound mind. Request to enter with RTBF TV refused. Verification of the names, handing out of our ID cards which we’ll get back only when we come out. Going through a metal detector (gate). If it rings, take out all metal objects and go through it again… Bag deposited in a locker at the entrance – nothing is accepted except paper and pens.
On that day, there were 120 retainee in the centre.
A member of the management team guides us, enabling the access to the ‘wings’ we want to see, and the meeting with hunger strikers.
We walk past rooms of two people called ‘rooms of adapted regime’, for ‘retainees who can not live in the community’.
It is impossible to communicate with one of the hunger strikers seen her obvious dazed state.
They bring us to a common hall. Several women tell us about their disarray and incomprehension about the reasons of their retention. Their stories are edifying. Although she requested asylum, a woman has been retained for several days and doesn’t understand.
A woman of Congolese origin living in Belgium for many years tells us that she fled her country because she was persecuted as a natural child. In 2009 she asked for her regularisation here but it was rejected. She found herself in the middle of a traffic control and was immediately brought to a closed centre. ‘When you don’t have papers, you are nothing’.
A young man tries to communicate with us, which is very difficult because he only speaks Farsi (he must be from Afghanistan). He ends up asking me to follow him to his room, I think it might be to find an interpreter. When he opens the door of his room I am totally stunned. There is a strong smell of urine, an old woman is sitting on the floor in a fallback position, there are 4 beds, the last one being occupied by a man lying down, visibly asleep.
The young man tells me they are his father and mother! As far as I understood, the bed in the middle on which lies a visibly already used adult diaper would be the father’s. The young man would have a sister in Belgium. His eyes full of tears, he feels desperate to see his fathers treated that way. He is calling for urgent help. Later on his mother joins us in the common hall, imploring us.
The visit goes on at the men’s, where many tell us their stories, all humanly dramatic and incomprehensible. They denounce in particular the separation of families. One of them has been in Belgium for 17 years. He arrived when he was minor, in order to study. He has a daughter 8 months old with a woman who has documents from the Netherlands. He is retained in view of his deportation to Morocco. ‘I don’t know that country, I don’t know anyone overthere. I don’t want to be separated from my wife and my daughter.’ But the administration doesn’t seem to care. He was told ‘You came here to study, not to get married’.
A Syrian man in Belgium for 9 months doesn’t understand that he will be deported to Spain whereas he didn’t introduce any asylum request. He was forced to leave his fingerprints there.
Two male hunger strikers share a room with two beds a bit apart.In hunger strike respectively since April 20th and 21st. One, Moroccan, put the pictures of his daughters (1 year and 2 years and a half) on the wall. Their mother is Belgian. He wanted to get married but he didn’t succeed and is now retained before his deportation to Morocco.
The other one is Pakistani. He explains us the serious problems in his country. Members of his family would have been murdered there. He looks very weak.
It seems they haven’t seen a doctor for more than 3 days, only the nurse who passes by daily.
2 or 4 retainees had been placed in confinement cells as a precautionary measure seen the festival going on outside. An internal “risks analysis” concluded it was too risky to eventually let them become troublemakers.
The strongest denunciations go to the Foreigners Office which, according to the retainees, functions in a totally arbitraty, shocking and inhumane way.
Other accusations
the admnistration of tranquilizers (sleeping pills even) by the doctor during any kind of care request. For e.g toothache, tranquilizers are given because it seems the retainee is nervous: retainees tell us they feel in the clouds after the administration of these pills;
the lack of information. for eg. the list of associations that come to visit is not communicated to them; they don’t understand what is expecting them;
the lack of follow-up by the lawyers: no one to accompany them at the court; sometimes no visit at all;
difficulty to understand Dutch ;
the relationship with the social assistant are not helpful at all, on the contary. Their attitude is of someone seeking to convince them to accept deportation, they explicitly say they are there for that reason and not th help them. One sentence one of them would have said: “I don’t help anybody” or “when I enter this centre, I cut my two hands so I may not help anyone”.
a serious problem of medical follow-up: a Guinean man was suffering from hepatitis B cured outside the centre. He didn’t get any medication again since his retention at the centre.
This visit only confirms the revolting functioning of these centres where people are being retained because their documents to live in Belgium are not valid. However these people sometimes have been living here for 10, 15 or even 20 years. Besides, the length of retentions is too long, it can go up to 8 months, through circuitous routes to avoid any release. Retentions administratively and randomly decided. Living conditions are intolerable.
Only one solution : immediately close the centres of shame!
update 8th of May 2016 :Mr D was deported by force, feet and hands tied, with sticky tape on his mouth to prevent him from shouting.
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D has been retained in our centres for 8 months, waiting to be deported to his ‘country of origin’, Tunisia. D took part in the hunger strike movement at the 127bis centre and he continues to support the strikers despite a systematic repression on them and on any kind of support. He would like to be present at the Steenrock https://steenrock.wordpress.com/ this Saturday 7th of May to tell the demonstrators about the treatment they get in the centres and he is asking for our help to prevent his deportation!
He has been living here for 10 years, has worked his way around, he committed a ‘crime’ for which he was condemned, then he got stable and he has been living quietly with his girlfriend in Antwerp for 4 years.
His girlfriend doesn’t want to be separated from him. ‘He is all my life’ she says. She denounces these retentions and speaks of ugly wheeling and dealing and of a real mafia from the management side and the Foreigners Office that manage these closed centres and organise the deportations.
She could not go and visit him in the different centres where he was moved to because she has difficulties to move seen her health state and the finances required for these trips.
D will be deported this Friday through Rome by one of the airlines that actively cooperates to this deportation policy, ALITALIA. He will be taken away from his prison in Steenokkerzeel by his escort this Friday at 8.30 a.m. to be driven to the airport.
It will be extremely difficult to go and speak to the passengers at the check-in seen the ‘security’ measures currently in place, but we call for a fax/mail campaign and phone calls to the persons in charge of these deportations!
in t the 127bis centre in Steenokkerzeel, it has been 6 days that hunger strike movements started to protest against the long and illegal retentions. Some have been retained for more than 8 months waiting for a decision of the Foreigners Office on their fate. A lot have been here in Belgium for years, sometimes for almost 20 years.
Some haven’t eaten for 6 days, others organise rounds in the strikers. In the first wing they are a dozen, in the second the movement goes on too, but with no further information.
On Thursday 28th April, searches were done, body searches, searches in the cupboards, in the bin bags etc. The management is desperately looking for a phone with a camera to find the culprit of the images that were published on the internet. It is indeed forbidden to have a phone with a camera in the closed centres. This phone has become the obsession of the security for several days. Retainees are of course laughing about it and they told us that they would not find it because it does not exist!
Those who are part of the strikes movement are being threatened of confinement, a repressive processus used when protests happen in the centres.
We also learnt that in the centre of Bruges the same movement started a few days ago by around 20 people.
The movement seems to express their fill, with no precise claims, without “heads” nor “responsible”.
What we can hear is “enough”, “let us live our lives”, “enough with prisons”, “acab”.
If you are undocumented and you hear that the police are looking for you in order to talk to you, avoid getting in touch with them. Temporarily disappear from your official address and ask for help to your lawyer, friends, associations or groups supporting undocumented.
Be aware that the police never have good intentions! Never trust what they say.
Currently we get a lot of calls from people who were arrested by the police who use clever strategies to trap undocumented people.
The police come to your address to talk to you. If you are there, they tell you everything and nothing, gently. Then, when having found that you are home, they send a patrol to arrest you. If you are not present, they explain to your cohabitants or neighbours that it is important that they get in touch with them the earliest possible. Confidently, you ring back and the person asks you (always very kindly) where you are. A few mintues later, a super armed patrol comes in and arrests you (unkindly).
All the arguments are good for police forces: an undocumented’s cohabitant gets the visit of the police who say they have to ask a few questions to her cohabitant concerning the terrorist attacks in Brussels. As soon as the undocumented gets back home, he rings back the police, in a panic. A few minutes later, a patrol arrives and arrests him because he is undocumented. Nothing to do with the attacks!
A last warning to Guinean citizens: the calls we get for the moment often come from Guineans. It may be a coincidence and it is not sure that these arrests only concern Guineans, but still, warn your Guinean friends.
They came to Europe 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. They built their lives here, some with documents, others clandestinely. Some have children who were born here. They all worked legally or illegally. Some have been retained for 4, 7 or even 8 months. Some had troubles with their ‘integration’ and committed minor acts of delinquency or resistance for which they were condemned by our courts.
They were arrested at their homes, during a traffic control or in public transports, and brought to the 127bis centre by order of the Foreigners’ Office.
They say it is a complete disaster in the centres, they are ill-treated, like animals, without respect, and threatened with deportation.
Together, they all decided to go on a hunger strike on 22nd of April 2016. They think it is outrageous.
They do not want to be separated from their families and friends and to be sent to a country they barely know, only because Mr Francken chose that country as being their ‘country of origin’ and because some were judged as ‘criminals’.
On the 23rd of April, about 40 of them still were on hunger strike with the support of those who started to feed themselves again.
Here are a few testimonies we got:
‘We want freedom!’
A lot of people say they are shocked to see that families are separated. They think it is unbelievable that mothers/fathers can be separated from their small children. They say that even a criminal doesn’t find himself living in a different country than their children, without being able to know what their children become. They say we must denounce that, and that people will be shocked to know that such a situation is possible in a country like Belgium.
‘Where are the children rights in these forced separations?’
‘Where is the respect of family life?’
‘Retention periods are extremely long. Some of us have been here for months, almost a year, with no decision. One year of our life is taken away from us for no reason’.
‘I have been in the closed centre for 8 months and they will prolong it for 2 months!.
‘We ask the dossiers of everybody to be seriously and deeply reviewed. Currently it is the total chaos.’
‘Belgians have to know what is going on here, we are treated like animals’.
‘It is the authorities that are criminal, not us.’
80 retainees decided today (22nd of April 2016) to start a hunger strike to protest against the retention of women, of parents of Belgian children, of old couples (a couple more than 70 years old), for sometimes more than 7 months.
They protest against a total lack of respect towards some of them.
They call the regime they are submitted to a ‘nazi’ regime.
They call for support and solidarity against migration policies and retentions.
He had been living here for 10 years. He climbed on a crane in 2009. He then jumped into the canal out of despair. He was brought to the hospital several times for depression. He was arrested and taken to the closed centre. As soon as he got there he refused to feed himself so as to protest against his retention. Nobody was aware of it. After 36 days of hunger strike he was RELEASED!
They had planned to deport him to Morocco. His wife came to the centre with their 10 days born baby. She left the centre, leaving the baby in his dad’s arms, saying “if he has to leave, his son is leaving with him”. Panic and general gathering of the centre’s management. After deliberations and (fake) promises, the mother left the centre with the baby. The day after the father was deported.
« I am OK to leave, but not under constraint, like this.”
« Belgians have to be aware of what is going on here. A woman was brought out of the centre by force. She was shouting and fighting. Ten ‘security guards’ took control of her and took her to the van to drive her to the airport. We are all shocked”.
« I crossed the Mediterranean sea on a boat from Morocco to Spain. We were 30 on the boat. I settled in Spain where I felt at ease. I came to Belgium to visit a friend and they arrested me. I am staying in a prison (closed centre).
They identified me as Guinean. A let pass was delivered by the Guinean embassy without them seeing me, without an interview, without any evidence. They want to deport me to Guinea. I don’t need papers to live. To me, my country of origin is not on the agenda. I want to go back to Spain. I have the right to live wherever I want to…”
« In Mali white people used to be acclaimed, but when one wants to go to them!!!!”
UPDATE 12/04: This morning, Mamadou got a ticket for his deportation to Gambia on the following day. The result of an appeal for his release was also due to fall on the same day: the court decided that his retention was illegal and that he had to be released! This decision was apparently ignored by the Office who really had the intention to deport him. This was without counting on Mamadou’s and his lawyer’s fast communication as well as on the alert messages that were spread on the different networks! Mamadou was released today at 6 p.m. Yet… how many are being retained and deported that way by the Foreigners Office, in complete illegality?
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
09/04/2016
M was 15-16 years old when he lived the dramatic events in the North of Mali. He was very young when he lost his parents and brothers in the war in Kidal. Some were killed, others disappeared. He went on living with his eldest brother in Kidal. Then, when his brother got killed by Jihadists he fled the country to Gambia and then to Belgium. He was arrested when arriving in Brussels airport and brought to the Caricole centre almost three months ago. There he celebrated his 19th birthday. His asylum request was refused and he is now retained in the closed centre in view of his deportation.
Being 19, he finds himself stuck between bars and death threats in his country, subject to another injustice from bureaucracy that chose to extend, against its own laws, the retention of this boy which mistake is not to have a unfailing memory. By the way, what about you? what were you doing on the 6th of May 2013?
Here after is his testimony and the one of his lawyer who mentions serious dysfunctions in his retention and the processing of his asylum request.
– You have been retained in the Caricole for more than two months already. Why did you flee to Belgium? Which country are you from?
– I am from Mali. I crossed Gambia to come to Belgium.
– Why did you flee Mali?
– There was a war in the North of Mali. My brothers, my parents, a lot of people were killed by the Jihadists. That’s how my mother died. I don’t know where my brother and father are. I had a brother who was with me, a real family, unfortunately he got in trouble with the terrorists overthere and I took the road to go to Gambia.
– How long did you stay in Gambia?
– I left for Gambia and I stayed more or less, I don’t know the precise dates, but I stayed more or less one year and a few months. I stayed there to work.
– Then you decided to leave. Were you obliged to leave?
– I was working for a man, for him too life was a problem in Gambia. He was working for the administration there and it seemed he was in trouble. Everybody knew I was working for him. He said that I had to leave, and him too with all his family. He asked me whether I wanted to go back to Mali. I said that I was planning to go to Europe. He did everything for me to get here.
– Then you landed at the airport and they arrested you.
– Yes, they arrested me and said that I could not enter the Belgian territory. They took me to the Caricole centre where I requested asylum.
– And for the moment, all the asylum requests are rejected?
– Yes, I requested asylum, I did the interview, the big one with the general commissariat… well… it turned out to be negative. I went to court, it was negative too.
– And what would happen if you went back to Gambia?
– I know that if I go back there they will imprison me, or even kill me because I know how my boss left the country with his whole family, and I know that the way he told me to leave the country would also put me into trouble because of him, that’s why he made me leave the country, to avoid problems. I know Gambia is a dictatorship, I know they will imprison me, hence I don’t want to go back to Gambia.
Transcription testimony lawyer
– So, you are the lawyer of Mamadou, who is retained at the Caricole, right?
– Yes, I am.
– Can you explain the juridical stituation of Mamadou?
– Mamadou is Malian. He arrived in the Caricole on the 27th of January 2016. One should know that they retained him in Caricole as soon as he had arrived in Belgium. He came to Zaventem, planning to request asylum and he was directly retained in a closed centre. This is what we call an asylum procedure at the border.
It caused two juridical issues, the first one from the asylum point of view and the second one from the retention point of view.
As regards retention, there is a European directive that requires from the States who apply this asylum procedure at the border, hence with people in retention, to release them after 4 weeks. However, M is still being retained whereas he should have been released on the 26th of February. This is really problematic because every time we spoke to a judge, the latter avoided the question. He said ‘you are right from the legal point of view, but it is not the right decision. It is not to me you should have come’. Actually we didn’t do anything wrong with the procedures, it is them who made the mistakes. Therefore there is a real problem with the illegaliy of this boy’s retention.
The second issue is that this boy is very young. He just turned 19 a few days ago. He celebrated his birthday at the Caricole. He is very young, he left Mali in very difficult conditions more than a year ago. Since he fled to Gambia, his souvenirs are souvenirs of a young boy, what he rememembers from Mali dates back to the time he was 15-16 years old. And the only thing they blame him for concerning his asylum request is that he doesn’t collaborate enough with the CGRA because he is not able to give them a precise chronology of the events. Mamadou rarely went to school so for him chronology is indeed quite complicated, which doesn’t mean that what he says is not true. Indeed, everything he says about Mali corresponds to what we know about Mali and what is happening there. It is a country at war, France has forces on the ground overthere. Dramatic events took place there. Everything he says corresponds to reality. He is simply not capable of giving us a chronology according to the European way, which doesn’t please the CGRA.
Therefore I think this retention and this asylum request are really extremely problematic.
Vottem : Demonstration Saturday 16th of April 2016 2 p.m.
“At the time when the European Union closes its borders and overrides the right to asymum and freedom of movement, At the time when the Belgian government hunts down the people who seeked refuge here in order to retain and deport them, Let’s protest in numbers!
Vottem, 17 years, I still can not accept it! ”
Demonstration on Saturday the 16th of April 2 p.m.
Gathering Place St Lambert in Liège, Espace Tivoli,
March until the closed centre for foreigners in Vottem
Steenokkerzeel : 7th of May 2016 Steenrock in front of the 127bis closed centre
« We want the suppression of closed centres, the end to deportations, the revision of asylum and migration policies so as to lead them to freedom of movement for all;the only coherent and respectful stance towards human rights, and we condemn police brutality”. https://steenrock.wordpress.com/revendications/
Words by Freddy Roosemont, director of the Foreigners Office, to the members of the undocumented coordination during an interview.
« If there were 1000 places available in the closed centres, we would do our best to occupy them and for more people to be deported.”
Therefore, there is absolutely no political will to regularise, but rather an increase in the capacity of the closed centres. The communual authorities are in charge of picking up the undocumented at their home and to send them to closed centres in view of their deportation.
It is time to react!
Repression is increasing and it is far from being the end of it all! To what extent will we accept all this? Camps within and at the borders of Europe, deportations,and deadly borders, this right to life and death of decision-makers and businessmen, hiding behind a ridiculous populism… the hunt is ongoing and we will not be able to say that we did not know. Will we be able to say that we tried our very best to prevent it from happening?
Last week, a wing of the detention center 127 bis has been emptied on 08/03/2016.
We hear that on 14/03 17 Nigerian women have been brought there. So, we assume that some of them have been brought from other European countries.
It seems that there is a cllective flight to Nigeria being prepared. Note that collective deportations to this country are reagularly carried out.
Last October, two collective flights took place.
GB prepared a collective flight to Nigeria on 22/03/2015, not without problems (see below)
Collective deportation in collaboration with GB from Brussels oon 22/03/2016?.
A good Adress Embassy of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria
Avenue de Tervuren 288
1150 Brussels
Tel: + 32 (0)2 762 5200
Fax: +32 (0)2 762 3763
And action in GB :
https://www.facebook.com/events/1762411670660192/
Following the thousand-strong demonstration at Yarl’s Wood in Nov 2015,
there has been successful collective resistance to stop a mass
deportation to Nigeria by charter flight, and for the first time put the
collusion of the Nigerian government on the public agenda in Nigeria.
As a result of organising coollectively inside YarlsWood to resist and a
mass campaign to get the Nigerian government to refuse to allow the
charter flight to land – out of aproximately 40 women, only 2 were on
the flight.
After the success of the latest Surround YarlsWood demonstration on 12th
March we mst contonue to build ouir movement to end detention and end
these mass deportation charter flights – join us on 17th March at the
Nigerian High Commission – Nigeria can refuse to accept these flights –
we must demand they do so!
The next Nigerian charter is in 9 days (22nd March), and we must
orgainse again to defend our community from being forcibly ‘removed’.
Protesters bang on walls of Yarl’s Wood detention center demanding the immigration prison be shut down as detainees wave from windows and address the gathering via phone. #ShutDownYarlsWood#refugeeswelcome
*Fire in retention : the violence in retention has to end*
Four arsons happened over the last days in the administrative retention centre (CRA) of Mesnil-Amelot. Among the three of them that happened in the CRA n°2, the most violent spread itself on Saturday afternoon. Two fire trucks and one helicopter were requisitioned. At least four people were injured. The other two took place on Sunday night. In the CRA n°3, the fire started on Sunday evening.
The CRA of Mesnil-Amelot is an administrative faction that gathers two centres in the same enclosure, with a relocated court in an adjacent building. It is the biggest CRA in France, strategically located at the feet of Roissy airport runways. All the violence of the retention and deportation politics led by the State towards foreigners is crystallised there.
After the first arson, the women retained in the CRA n°2 were transferred to the CRA of Paris Cité, some men were transferred to the CRA n°3 or to the one in Palaiseau, and some other people were released because the administrative staff didn’t think they would be able to deport them. The more than sixty men who are still detained have now been gathered in the two buildings that are still open and accessible, notably the one of the women-family zone where the heating is not functioning properly.
Two pepole suspected of having started the first fire on Saturday were brought to the hospital. They would have been placed in custody in view of appearing in court following the degradations.
The administration considered appropriate to deprive all the retained people of their rights to have visits since Saturday. They are more isolated than ever although they just lived a traumatic experience that adds to the anxiety-provoking deprivation of liberty. Besides, the personal belongings that remained in the buildings which caught fire are not accessible, including for the few people who were released.
The CRAs regularly catch fire following acts of despair by the retained people [1]
but the later are the first victims of this institutional violence. The Cimade is asking for the immediate release of all the people who are still being retained at the CRA Mesnil-Amelot.
The security obsession that guides the politics led by the government towards foreigners has to end. It only generates violence and despair. A different approach has to be adopted, closing all the retention centres.
[1] The fire notably started in Vincennes in June 2008 (the centre was completely destroyed and then rebuilt), Nantes in July 2008, the old CRA of Mesnil-Amelot n°1 in August 2008, Toulouse
in February 2009, Bordeaux in March 2009 and then in May 2013, Bobigny in September 2010, Marseille in March 2011, Palaiseau in March 2012, Metz in February 2016.
They carry euphemistic names such as “Immigration Removal Centre” in the UK, “Identification and Expulsion Centres” in Italy or “centers for the internment of foreigners” in Spain. Nevertheless, they should be called prisons.
We get a lot of phone calls from the Belgian closed centres about arrests at the airport. Among the people arrested, a lot have documents in France, Italy, Belgium, the US and they were transiting through Belgium with a visa in order. The airport officers remained stuck on a picture, a date and … the colour of the traveller! As a result, many find themselves retained in one of our closed centres, sometimes for several months. Just like this woman who has the right to asylum in France, who is living in France with legal documents and who has been retained here in Caricole for almost 3 months, separated from her 3 years old daughter who stayed in France and who is living at a friend for the moment.
And here is another example of the arbitrariness happening at our borders, a statement sent to the media on 29th February 2016:
New blunder by civil servants at Brussels’ National Airport
A voluntary ambassador for the United Nations arrested and retained in a closed centre
Junior Nzita, Congolese, 32 years old, is a former child soldier. For almost 10 years he has been travelling around Europe to do awareness-raising and educate young people on this problematic that is still relevant in Africa. He is chairing the NGO “Peace for Children in DRC” and takes part in the UN campaign #Enfants Pas Soldats. His book ‘If my life as a child soldier could be told’ was published with the support of the Swiss embassy in Kinshasa. Last year, he gave testimonies in front of the European Parliament in Brussels and he gave a lot of conferences in schools in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland.
He was heading to Switzerland when they arrested him during a stop over in Brussels’ National airport on 28th of February. The city of Geneva had foreseen public interventions in the framework of citizenship promotion and a shooting crew with personalities of the UN and the Swiss government were expecting Junior Nzita, notably the federal advisor of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Helvetic Confederation.
They hadn’t counted on the zeal and silliness of the civil servants of the immigration police at Brussels’ airport who assessed that Junior Nzita’s visa was not valid.
The reason behind this? He would have stayed longer than 90 days during his last stay in the Schengen area.
If these civil servants had not succumbed to illegal foreigners hysteria, they would have learnt that an error of date had caused this so-called problem. Nzita did not arrive in Belgium on 2nd of October 2015 but well on 2nd of November 2015. This digit error was rectified at the Belgian embassy of Kinshasa when it delivered a visa to Nzita for his current tour. That civil servants withdraw a visa that is totally in order at the border witnesses an arbitrary judgement and an obvious incompetence, all the more since Junior Nzita had all the required documents in his possession: invitation of the city of Geneva and the cost acceptance by the organisers.
As a result, Junior Nzita spent two days at the closed centre Caricole in Steenokkerzeel. He missed his flight to Geneva financed by Swiss people as well as his first appointments, and apart from the trauma of this arbitrary retention, he is deeply outraged at his unjustified retention.
Warned of this astounding news, militants against closed centre mobilised themselves, a lawyer introduced an appeal, and Junior Nzita was released on 29th February by order of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Without apologies. Without compensation. Just the advice to wait until he reached the Swiss territory to warn the media! It is really tough to be a foreigner in Belgium nowadays!
So, Junior Nzita is “free” but so many others are still being retained. It is true that they do not enjoy the same support!
Update 02/03: Mrs T was not deported and is back at the centre.
Actions, faxes, emails and an article by RTBF apparently discouraged them.
http://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_sarah-va-etre-expulsee-la-jeune-guinee
nne-refusait-un-mariage-force?id=9228137
Nevertheless, they promised that next time it would happen for sure.
Mrs T fled Guinea and a forced marriage with her brother-in-law two months ago.
She was arrested at her arrival at the airport and driven to the Caricole. There she introduced an asylum request. The CGRA did not believe her and the answer she got as well as the appeal turned out to be negative.
They promised to deport her for the second time with escort this Wednesday 2nd of March to Casablanca and then Monrovia in Liberia (same journey as when she came here).
She cannot and does not want to go back to Guinea where his father is looking for her and she does not know anyone in Liberia.
She says that they will deport her like an animal and that it is unacceptable! She prefers to go back to Guinea in a coffin than alive.
Let’s meet at the airport this Wednesday 2 March at 2.40 p.m. to speak to the passengers of Air Maroc to Casablanca and prevent this deportation.
En stuur NU massaal protestfaxen en -mails naar de uitvoerders van deze criminele praktijken!
Charles Michel
Eerste minister: Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02512 69 52
e-mail:charles.michel@premier.fed.be
Jan Jambon
Vice Premier en Minister binnenlandse zaken tél: 02 504 85 13 Fax:02 504 85 00
email: kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
‘The whole wide world gathers in our closed centre: North Africans, sub-Saharans, Estern Europeans, Russians, Asians, Latin Americans, and even from the United States of America.’ They will be deported thanks to the collegial collaboration of consuls and ambassadors of their countries of origin, which will grant them the necessary let passes to be able to put them on a plane.
Among our retained friends, a few Algerians who hold retention records: until 8 months for some of them! The Algerian consul stands firm on his position and refuses to give let passes! ‘Since I knew that Algeria doesn’t deliver let passes, I thought I would stay here for a few days. It has been 7 months that I have been retained. How long will they still keep me? All this at your costs!’
On the contrary, the Moroccan consulate grants let passes without mercy, in spite of the absence of agreement between Belgium and Morocco. http://www.libe.ma/Une-histoire-belge-pas-drole-du-tout_a71332.html
Fortunately, everything will be sorted out soon: our Ministers Francken, Reynders and Jambon will pay a visit to their Moroccan counterparts on 29th of February 2016 to try and get the political, economic and collaboration agreements they have been trying to obtain with great difficulty for a decade.
‘Migration and security will be at the centre of the discussions’ reads the Moroccan newspaper. Let’s read between the lines: the re-entry agreements that will enable them to use charter flights to send back undocumented Moroccan people and asylum seekers who would have treaded the Moroccan kingdom before reaching Belgium. http://m.hespress.com/politique/295136.html
Translation
‘Prime Minister Charles Michel, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Security and Internal Affairs Jan Jambon and the State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Théo Francken will go to Morocco from 29th February till 1st March. During their stay, the Ministers will meet their Moroccan counterparts. Migration and security will be at the core of the discussions. Field visits are also foreseen.’
The European States
Each State is trying hard to be the most performing in its exclusion policy. Hence, some European countries, including the star of the year, i.e Merkel, are well advanced to get a re-entry agreement with Morocco, a country that she will soon be proud to add on the list of safe countries!http://www.libe.ma/L-Europe-se-bunkerise-Le-Maroc-dit-oui-au-retour-de-ses-migrants-irreguliers-dans-le-cadre-d-accords-bilateraux_a71221.html
The same goes for Algeria in spite of the absence of convention ratified by Algeria on the issue and to the great displeasure of the Algerian Human Rights Defense’s national office (LADDH.
http://www.algeriepatriotique.com/article/expulsion-d-algeriens-d-allemagne-la-laddh-sinquiete-0
‘As a conclusion, the Algerian organisation (LADDH) warns against the threats on the future of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, because of this policy that favours the export of goods from the North to Algeria (assessed at 58,33 billion dollars in 2014) at the expense of man and the Algerian economy’, concludes the press release.
And Europe
The externalisation of borders and the granting of the watch dog role to neighbouring countries, watching European borders in exchange for economic promises and millions of euros taken from the European support grant is in full swing.
The whole European policy, whose priorities today are the protection of borders, the reduction of entries in external borders, the preservation of the Schengen area, the smugglers hunt, the re-entries, the support to EU neighbouring countries in order to better deport, is in the conclusions of the European Summit that took place on February 18-19.
NOT A SINGLE WORD on tragedies at sea nor life-saving activities. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/fr/press/press-releases/2016/02/18-euco-conclusions-migration/
Too tough inside: The inquiry is looking into the need to lock up so many migrants
LONDON, 6 February 2015 (IRIN) – This month, the UK parliament is due to release findings of an inquiry into the detention of migrants and asylum seekers, prompted by high profile incidents of sexual abuse and deaths. Unlimited immigration detention contributes to – and can even cause – lasting mental health problems among detainees, according to IRIN interviews with former detainees, aid and advocacy groups and UK court decisions.
Several studies have examined the impact of immigration detention on mental health. A review of 10 of these studies by specialists who gave evidence to the inquiry found that they all “reported high levels of mental health problems in detainees. Anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder were commonly reported, as were self-harm and suicidal ideation. Time in detention was positively associated with severity of distress.”
In the UK, there are 11Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs), used to hold migrants and asylum-seekers on arrival, pending a decision on their status. Where applications have been rejected, IRCs also hold them prior to deportation.
In the EU, only Greece detains more people in such centres than the UK, according to London-based NGO Detention Action. More than 30,000 people spent time in them in 2013. The government held almost 800 people in prisons under immigration legislation in mid-2014.
The country now has more than 4,000 designated immigration detention beds compared to a few hundred beds 15 years ago and the Home Office, the government department responsible for immigration, plans to further expand its detention capacity in 2015.
Besides the mounting cost to British taxpayers – estimated at US$57,000 per detainee per year – Detention Action’s Executive Director, Jerome Phelps, points to the significant number of detainees who are being harmed “in lasting ways”.
“There is a crisis of mental health in detention,” he told IRIN.
A 2010 study by the Jesuit Refugee Service, which interviewed 685 detainees in 23 EU countries, found that “detention brings very negative consequences for detainees’ mental health” and that prolonged detention “compounds the adverse mental health effects”.
Both international and European law stipulate that migrants and asylum seekers should only be detained as a last resort and for the shortest time possible. The European Union Returns Directive sets a detention limit for irregular migrants of 18 months. Many countries have their own shorter time limits, but the UK has opted out of the directive and is the only member state with no time limit on detention.
Sharif*, who says he fled torture in a north African state he preferred not to name for fear of repercussions, spent a year in detention centres before being released. He told IRIN that conditions inside were oppressive.
“I lost my health in detention, after all this stress and bad feeling,” he said.
“A lot of people self-harm. My friend, he cut his neck with a razor… I wasn’t supposed to see all this.”
Four months after his release, Sharif, who suffers from claustrophobia and had to be heavily medicated during his incarceration, still fears being re-arrested and sent back home. Even the sound of keys in locks puts him on edge.
Hassan Seguya, a Ugandan refugee who spent six months in two different immigration detention centres after his initial asylum claim was refused, told IRIN about one particularly stressful issues for detainees.
“I felt like I was in prison, but it was worse because you don’t know [the length of] your sentence,” he told IRIN.
“I was only waiting to be deported and I thought to die here [in detention] would be better because I knew they’d torture me back home,” said Seguya, who recounted how he spent three years behind bars in Uganda, where he was allegedly beaten and tortured, after being accused of complicity in a coup plot.
Another detainee who gave evidence by phone from a removal centre said he had been held for three years. He said efforts to deport him had failed because he came from a disputed area claimed by both Nigeria and Cameroon and neither state agreed to receive him, arguing it was the other’s responsibility.
He said while in detention he had been treated for previous traumatic stress, but inadequately.
“I tried to use a sheet, my bedding, to stop my breathing,” he told the parliamentary committee. “[Some] days I wake up, I don’t want to wake up. I just want [them] to carry me out in a carrier bag and take me out of this place.”
The Home Office’s own rules are meant to protect “any detained person whose health is likely to be injuriously affected by continued detention.” On-site doctors are supposed to notify managers as well as the Home Office of such cases, in particular those at risk of suicide and survivors of torture.
According to Phelps, these reports are routinely ignored. A 2011 study found that only nine percent of such notifications led to the release of a detainee.
On six occasions over the past three years, UK courts have ruled that the human rights of mentally ill detainees had been violated.
The most recent case concerned a young woman from Guinea who was detained upon her arrival at Heathrow Airport. During 17 months in a detention centre, she suffered a mental collapse and was frequently isolated or hand-cuffed to prevent her harming herself. In July 2014, the High Court ruled that her detention was unlawful and that her human rights were violated.
Phelps said he was “optimistic” the parliamentary inquiry could bring change. While there may be little public sympathy for detained migrants and asylum seekers in the current political climate, “there are powerful efficiency arguments for limiting detention.”
One specific aspect of UK immigration law being examined by the inquiry is the Detained Fast Track (DFT) procedure, which is used for apparently straightforward asylum cases and which often restricts the right of applicants to appeal rulings.
The UN Refugee Agency, in its submission to the inquiry, pointed to “serious shortcomings in the procedure including the lack of clarity in Home Office policy as to the scope and criteria for applying the DFT procedure; the undefined time limit on detention under DFT, leaving open the possibility of applicants being detained well beyond the period of time required to reach a decision; and significant and repeated errors in refugee status determination (RSD) decision-making within the DFT procedure.”
It was under DFT that Sharif had his claim and appeal rejected. He subsequently spent 11 months in detention while the Home Office made several unsuccessful bids to deport him.
One of the main concerns about DFT is that in the 14 years since it was introduced, it has morphed into a system that offers asylum seekers little opportunity to prove their case and that often leads to prolonged detention.
Certain aspects of how DFT works in practice have been ruled unlawful in UK courts.
A Home Office spokesman told IRIN, “DFT is playing a significant role in saving taxpayers’ money by allowing us to remove those with no right to be in the UK at the earliest opportunity.”
The Home Office did not comment on the issue of mental health in immigration detention centres. IRIN was given a statement by Immigration and Security Minister James Brokenshire, which blamed the previous government for many of the current problems.
“The immigration system we inherited was totally dysfunctional with systematic abuse of family, work and student visas and an agency overseeing it all that was completely incapable of the task,” it said.
“Turning around years of mismanagement has taken time, but it is now well underway. We have reformed visa routes to make them more resistant to fraud; cancelled failing contracts; and taken significant steps to deal with the backlogs we inherited.”
I have been in the closed centre of Bruges for two months and ten days. I live in Ninove. The police came to my house but I wasn’t there. My husband was; he said the police had called for me, I asked him why and he answered he thought it was concerning our marriage. To tell you the truth, I said ‘I don’t want to go to the police’, but my husband said ‘We are going together, it is for our marriage file’. So we went to the police. They asked me why I was there so I explained the situation. They said, Ok, there is no problem. So I waited and then someone told me that they needed something from me. My husband didn’t understand. He went to fetch my passport. Then I was told ‘Ok, you are illegal’. I asked them why I was illegal since I had been living in Belgium for six years. I introduced a marriage request, I have my residence address fixed, the agent of my commune knows me, the neighbours know me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I am OK with everyone. He tells me that we are going ot the Foreigners Office and that they will send me to the closed centre of Bruges.
So, here am I now. They told me that I have to go back to Morocco. But if I go back to Morocco what will I do there? I have my life here, my husband, an appartment, everything! I don’t know why I should be going to Morocco, I don’t have a house there, I don’t understand. You have been in the closed centre for more than two months. Does your lawyer do something?
Yes, he says that we are going to do this and that, but I don’t know… I got the ticket to go back to Morocco and what did he do? Did he block the ticket? No he didn’t.
Is it the first time they will try to put you on a plane?
No, it is the third time. The first time I refused.
The second time I didn’t leave because I had requested asylum, but the lawyer said my request was refused. It is always negative for the Moroccans. They do not grant us asylum, I don’t know why. The lawyer said it might be because there is no war in Morocco.
And why did they refuse your marriage?
I asked in Roosdaal. I paid my lawyer. I said the truth. I found the man quite racist with me. My file stayed there for four years and for four years I was going there and they kept telling me to wait and wait and wait. I was told that we could get married and then they said ‘since you are not living in Roosdaal, you can not get married.’ Because of the racist man at the townhall of Roosdaal I can not get married. My lawyer wasn’t doing anything, hence my husband and I we left and introduced our marriage request here in Ninove.I came to Ninove, I pay my lawyer but he doesn’t do anything. My husband was working, now he is unemployed. At the townhall of Ninove they said they needed my file. I went to the commune of Roosdaal to fetch it and I told them that the mayor of Ninove said we could get married because we had been living together for a long time. We already made the Islamic marriage, the one we do in Morocco. Then I was told to make another request, which I did. The commune sent letters but the problem is that we have a lot of mailboxes and that we never got the letters concerning the marriage. Then the marriage was refused. I went to see my lawyer which did not understand why the marriage had been refused. I went to the commune and they said that the marraige had been refused because the letters had been sent to me but I never received them. This is the reason why I am now in the closed centre, I didn’t do anything bad you see, I don’t know why I am here. And how is it in the centre?
What do we do all day? We watch TV. I don’t know, I am sad here. I lost almost 8 kilos, 8 kilos can you imagine! Every day I cry and cry. I am lost, I do not eat, I do not sleep, I have problems, problems.
And how about the food?
I am saying the truth, I do not eat because I don’t feel well. I drink coffee, I eat bread and butter. I don’t eat, I lose weight. When my family looks at me they are shocked! I lost 8 kilos! I am so stressed, so stressed…
And among the detainees, how is it?
Personally, I am sad, for the moment I don’t have any friend. I am saying the truth. I am always alone, and I think, I think. ‘What am I doing? Where am I going?’ That is my problem now. I don’t have the means to go back to Morocco.
Do you still have family in Morocco?
No, I don’t have family there.
Do you mean that everybody is here?
Yes, I have a brother in France, my sister is here. I don’t have no family over there.
A young boy was deported by force: his parents and family are living here. He left his ‘country of origin’, DRC, when he was 7 years old and doesn’t know anything nor anyone there. His crime: he had a period when he was a delinquent and he was part of an urban gang! He had been living with us for 15 years.
Three sisters are in the closed centre in Bruges. They were born in Germany, never treaded their ‘country of origin’, Their crime: when arriving in Belgium, their parents had given a fake identity to get asylum, 16 years ago!
A man is being retained in the closed centre of Merksplas in view of a deportation to his country of origin, Russia. His crime: to save his family from deportation he fled a return centre where he had been brought to by order of the Foreigners office with his wife and three kids. They have been living with us for 9 years.
A man was deported by force to his ‘country of origin’, Egypt. His crime: getting divorced after several years of conjugal life. He had been living with us for 11 years.
All these people had obtained ‘documents’ that were finally taken away from them after several years.
The aim here is not to claim that some people have more rights than others to get documents, but simply to show to what extent State racism (in this case European, and Belgian in particular) gets to aberrant situations, even in view of the respect of its own ‘migration policies’. Deprivation of nationality, increasing number of deportation of people having lived in Belgium for several years… the deportation machine increases its rate.
Documents for everybody or everybody undocumented.
Ils étaient plusieurs à l’aéroport pour parler aux passagers. Les passagers semblaient réceptifs et certains assuraient qu’ils n’allaient pas accepter que Rhama soit expulsée. Rhama était accompagnée de 4 policiers , 3 hommes et une femme; Ils l’ont bloqués sur un siège à l’arrière de l’appareil, 2 policiers étaient placés devant elle, deux derrière elle. Des discussions ont été entamées par les passagers avec le commandant de bord. Suite à cela le commandant est venu voir Rhama à l’arrière de l’avion et a décidé de participer à cette expulsion . A son arrivée à Casablanca Rhama a passé plusieurs heures au commissariat pendant lesquelles les flics marocains l’ont questionné et requestionné. Rhama a été relachée au petit matin.
On 16/11/2015, 8 undocumented people made an action again to claim their access to these bloody papers. They climbed two cranes in Brussels. They were arrested and four of them are still being retained in our closed centres. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/policemen-dressed-up-in-firemen/
Rhama was one of them. She has been living with us for 8 years and has taken part in the undocumented’s fight and was twice on long hunger strikes before trying her luck and climbing the crane. For two months she has been retained in the Bruges closed centre. Her health is really bad and she suffers a lot in the centre because she doesn’t always get the medecine she needs.
The Foreigners Office will try to deport her for the third time to her ‘country of origin’ i.e. Morocco. Even though she will go to court this Monday 25th of January for a release request introduced by her lawyer, the Office planned this third deporattion to Casablanca on that same day on flight AT 833 operated by Royal Air Maroc at 4.40 p.m.
Call to meet at the airport on Monday 25/01/2016 at 2.40 p.m. to inform the passengers about the likely presence of Rhama and her escort on their flight and explain to them that they have the right to oppose to a forced deportation on their flight to the onboard staff.
Seen the possibility that the flight is postponed again (so we hope), and to avoid useless travels, we invite you to follow our updates on gettingthevoiceout.
As for now, please start sending protest faxes and emails to the people responsible for these criminal acts and their collaborators!
M has been living in Europe for more than 10 years, in Belgium for 8 years. He is Egyptian. He built his life here in Belgium. He got married here and was living his life here: house, work, car, etc. …..
Then the marriage failed. The Foreigners Office withdrew his ID because it is unacceptable that a foreigner fails in marriage!
He was arrested in Antwerp at the beginning of December 2015, detained in Merksplas and transferred to Bruges because he tried to escape!
For the second time the Office will try to deport him on a plane to his ‘country of origin’. He is asking for our help to prevent this deportation!
Flight Alitalia to Rome…… and then Cairo
Flight AZ 0157 on 19/01/2015 7 a.m.
Let’s meet at 5 a.m (!) on 19/01 to speak to the passengers or
Even better send LOADS of faxes/emails RIGHT NOW to show our disapproval in front of this deportation!
They are two young Bosnians, 18 and 20 years old, living with their families in the North of France. They crossed the border with Belgium to buy cigarettes. They were caught by the Belgian police and at the request of the Foreigners Office they were brought to the closed centre of Merksplas in view of their deportation to Bosnia, a country they do not know.
Their parents, brothers, sisters and cousins have been living in the North of France for several years. After the decision by the Foreigners Office to deport them to their ‘country of origin’ followed by lots of negotiations, and after two months of retention, they were expelled from the closed centre, thrown out onto the street in a lost corner between Belgium and the Netherlands. They took different buses to finally get back to their family in the North of France. ‘It was prison without having committed no offence’ they told us.
Two months of imprisonment, two months of hell for a pack of cigarettes on the other side of a border!
On October 14th and 15th, there were two FRONTEX deportations to Nigeria: one flight from Amsterdam, coordinated by the Netherlands, with 28 deported from different countries, with one stopover in Madrid, the second from Rome, coordinated by Italy, with 48 deported. Table ici http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5958_en.htm
Five Nigerians retained in Belgium were programmed for this flight. It was not easy to understand the flight itinerary of our two witnesses. One was blindfolded and handcuffed during the various transfers, the other totally ignored where the van with tinted windows was driving him. The secret was extremely well kept and fake information were communicated to us! There was also some confusion because we were thinking of only obne flight and we had warned our friends in Rome. In the end, there were two collective deportations! http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/%EF%BB%BFalerte-vol-special-frontex-vers-le-nigeria-ce-14102015/
Testimony by a man who was deported on a Frontex flight from Belgium to Nigeria.
“On Monday at about 3:30pm the social assistance from closed centre came , he called me to carry my belongings to another centre in Merksplas, he told me probably my flight may be tomorrow night which was 13th of October, 2015. When they brought me to Merksplas Centrum on the 13th
(thuesday). They asked me to pull all my dress, they naked me completely, I asked then a question why are they doing this tome? But they could not be able to answer me, later the security man said to me they do it to all immigrants who don’t have papers, later they gave me a small white short to wear.Before They lock me up, and I ask for shower, they told me is not allow to shower here. And nobody could visit me anymore, the two friends from my church that came to me they did not allow them to see me. It was horrible. What they did to me is against human right and against God and against humanity.
“The two night before they brought me to Nigeria I did not shower. And they told me is only allow to make a telephone call twice in a day. They take every thing from me including my cell phone, I was disorganized and completely tired. No body could visit me anymore.
Is only one security man who was a Christian came to me and pray for me and encourage me to keep my faith no matter what.
Back to on the 13th of October, at about 5:pm the security men and the police came to pick me up without allowed me to say a word, they drag me again from the up stairs to down stairs and lay me on the floor tie my hands around my waist, and slap my head and hit my siderips of which I felt much pain when I came to my country.When it was 5;30pm they brought a bus with dark glasses and nobody could see inside, they drag and push me like their cow inside the bus, they never allowed me to walk myself inside the Bus. From that 5pm my hands were handcuff around my waist why I was still inside the Bus to Rotterdam Airport in Hollands. It was unbelievable and deadly pain I have never witness or experience in my life. And I have never being in prison in my life.
Before the flight came it was 10:30pm while my hands was still handcuff. We check in,, and theFlight departed at about 11: 15pm.There was more than 100 soldiers + Police escourt: Monitoring team leader ,Monitor team, Observator leader, Observatorteam leader, Officer in Command, Backup leader, Backup team leader, Officer in control team leader, Officer in control, Team leader,….. Etc. to mention but a few. The Escourt was more than 50. It was all European leaders who came together for Escourt.
The people in the flight were from Belgium, Nederland’s, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Spain, Finland, Denmark .
That is the only country I can remember because I was asking them questions. Because they arrested other people from all this countries and bring them to Amsterdam including handicap children. and people with families and children, including those who were sick because they were giving them medications while we were flying because their conditions was very bad.
Behold, my hands were still handcuff till we get to Madrid in Spain where we transit. We arrived at about 5 minutes to 1:00 at midnight.
They asked the woman who was the controlleader to lose my hands because each person has two escourt, I was having two escourt man and a woman but the woman said,”not yet”
We were there while some officer get out of the flight and go home. We were there from 1:00 to3:15am,
In 3:30 am the Flight departed. after 20 minutes before they remove handcuffs in my hands, it was a nightmare and horrible night that I will never forget in my life. thanks to God who strengths me and filled me with energy and courage. I could not cry any more and there were no tears in my eyes any more to cry because of pain I was completely dry-up.
I arrived in Nigeria at 8:am something in the morning. the custom and army came to control me they ask me a question “did you thief? did you carry drugs? I said No, and they take my finger prints. they asked me to go since I am not a criminal.”
A lot of repression in the centres. It seems to be the only communication mean for the management. Some of our friends don’t answer the phone anymore. They just disappeared! Transfers, cells, deportations? Do we have to issue a warrant notice?
Ahmed (alias) has been in solitary confinement for 4 days after the hunger strike he started following the suicide of a Congolese man at the closed centre in Vottem. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/suicide-et-greve-de-la-faim-dans-les-centres-fermes-19122015/
In the centre, many others were also placed in solitary confinement. Among the 17 cells of the centre none is empty! The detainees isolated there continue their hunger strike. Very frequently, some of them are transferred from their cell to another centre. Their place is immediately taken by a new ‘troublemaker’ from the same centre or transferred there.
They find new ‘troublemakers’ every day!
Ahmed is telling us:
“We all are troublemakers and leaders, but this is something they can not understand.”
“I am getting nuts in this cell!”
“I lost the notion of time, I don’t know what day is today anymore”
“They have meetings every day to decide on our fate, then they come and tell us ‘we’ll see tomorrow”.
“It is worse than a prison because there are absolutely no rules”.
“Here it is the Northern Africans’hunt, we don’t know why”.
“It is very close to racism.”
“Pressure must be put on embassies.”
Bruges centre:
“Moroccans are all being deported and new ones arrive. It is a real factory.”
“Sixteen people were placed in solitary confinement following the hunger strikes. A police man aggressed one of the detainees and broke his foot. Information not confirmed.
“For the last three days the guards have been making efforts. They improved the communication and are all nice. But everything is so dirty here, it is really disgusting.”
Vottem:
At least 10 people have been transferred to other centres after several days in solitary confinement following the hunger strike.
127bis:
“Transfers in every possible ways. Four are coming from Vottem, one from Bruges, another one from Merksplas.”
“They treat us like animals.”
“Morrocans are very quickly deported, Subsaharians are almost all sent to another Schengen country (Dublin).”
“An Algerian man in isolation cell will be deported to Morocco in 4 days.”
The detainees denounce dysfunctions in the centre: it was displayed that it would not be possible to go to the internet room until the 4th of January. In spite of this, some are being chosen to go to that room. The chosen ones refused to go, saying that “it is everybody or no one”.
Same thing for visits: a lot of visits are refused and some people are being selected for them.
“It smells like racism” they say.
Caricole:
The detainees are outraged at the arrests at the airport. The people are being repelled manu military the day after their arrest, sometimes to a country at war. They are wondering whether this is legal.
One example among many others:
NEW DISCRIMINATION CASE AT ZAVENTEM AIRPORT/ TWO IRAQI WOMEN ARRESTED AND DETAINED IN CARICOLE http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2015/12/18/33086576.html The two women have been deported two days ago.
New strategy : divide and rule?
Northern Africans in the centres feel discriminated against, they feel it is them being currently targeted by the Foreigners Office. This feeling could create conflicts in the centre among the different communities.
Another source of conflicts : filtering on those who deserve internet, visits, etc.
127bis: 17 people still on hunger strike. They met the Director of the Centre this afternoon.
Vottem: 17 people still on hunger strike in the blue wing, several “leaders” as the Office calls them, have been placed in solitary confinement in view of a transfer, among whom Driss, one of the men who had climbed the crane.
Bruges: very few continued the strike. Two women still are striking, ammong whom Rhama.
Merksplas: repression: 5 “leaders” are in solitary confinement. No news on the movement in the different wings! A dozen police officers entered the centre on Monday night and they placed the leaders in solitary confinement.
The two demonstrations in Vottem and Brussels happened smoothly, with a lot of people and a good atmosphere!
Many are from North Africa. The majority have been here for years (some of them for 20 years), they introduced regularisation requests but in vain. They do not understand why they can not continue living here!
SOLIDARITY!
Update:
MANIFESTATION in Vottem this Sunday 20th December at 4 PM (Liege)
GATHERING in front of the Foreign Office this Monday 21st December at 1PM (Brussels)
———————————————————————————————————-
A man of Congolese nationality committed suicide this afternoon in the closed center of Vottem near Liege.
His fellow inmates are in shock.
All inmates of three wings of the center in Vottem decided to begin a hunger strike today. Tension is already present for several weeks in the blue wing of the center in Vottem. There had already been a suicide attempt, an escape attempt, a hunger strike …
Very quickly the information passed in the various detention centers and actions are being prepared to protest against migration policies, and “Franckens'” imprisonments
“These are prisons here.”
“We can not lock up people like this”
“Many of us are in belgium for 10 or 20 years and do not want to leave”
“Me, I do not care, but others have women and children here, and others will return to countries at war, others have maps residences in European countries: where is the freedom of movement ? “
The information turned quickly in the centers stoking the detainees anger
HUNGER STRIKE IN CENTRES 127bis, BRUGGES, VOTTEM, MERKSPLAS
DETAINEES CALL FOR SUPPORT, MEDIA COVERAGE, AND MOBILIZATION
Given the rapid repression of protest movements in closed centers, outside support is URGENT!
A European Border and Coast Guard to protect Europe’s External Borders
Strasbourg, 15 December 2015
A European Border and Coast Guard to protect Europe’s External Borders
The European Commission is today adopting an important set of measures to manage the EU’s external borders and protect our Schengen area without internal borders. Today’s proposals will help to manage migration more effectively, improve the internal security of the European Union, and safeguard the principle of free movement of persons. The Commission is proposing to establish a European Border and Coast Guard to ensure a strong and shared management of the external borders. To further increase security for Europe’s citizens, the Commission is also proposing to introduce systematic checks against relevant databases for all people entering or exiting the Schengen area.
European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: “In an area of free movement without internal borders, managing Europe’s external borders must be a shared responsibility. The crisis has exposed clear weaknesses and gaps in existing mechanisms aimed at making sure that EU standards are upheld. Therefore, it is now time to move to a truly integrated system of border management. The European Border and Coast Guard will bring together a reinforced Agency, with the ability to draw on a reserve pool of people and equipment, and the Member States’ authorities, who will continue to exercise day-to-day border management. The system we propose will allow for an identification of any weaknesses in real time so that they can be remedied quickly, also improving our collective ability to deal effectively with crisis situations where a section of the external border is placed under strong pressure.”
European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos added: “The current migration and security challenges know no borders, and require a truly European approach. Where Frontex used to be limited to supporting Member States in managing their external borders, the new Border Agency will go beyond this. What we are creating today is more Europe: to manage our external borders, to step up returns of irregular migrants, to allow our asylum system to function properly for those in need and to strengthen checks at the external borders of the European Union. The Border Package we are presenting today will increase security for our citizens and ensure high standards of border management.”
A European Border and Coast Guard
The European Border and Coast Guard will bring together a European Border and Coast Guard Agency built from Frontex and the Member States’ authorities responsible for border management, who will continue to exercise the day-to-day management of the external border.
The new European Border and Coast Guard will have:
A rapid reserve pool of border guards and technical equipment: The Agency will be able to draw on at least 1,500 experts that can be deployed in under 3 days. For the first time the Agency will be able to acquire equipment itself and to draw on a pool of technical equipment provided by the Member States. There will no longer be shortages of staff or equipment for European border operations. The new Agency’s human resources will more than double that of Frontex, to reach 1,000 permanent staff, including field operatives, by 2020.
A monitoring and supervisory role: A monitoring and risk analysis centre will be established to monitor migratory flows towards and within the European Union and to carry out risk analysis and mandatoryvulnerability assessments to identify and address weak spots. Liaison officers will be seconded to Member States to ensure presence on the ground where the borders are at risk. The Agency will be able to assess the operational capacity, technical equipment and resources of Member States to face challenges at their external borders and require Member States to take measures to address the situation within a set time-limit in case of vulnerabilities.
The right to intervene: Member States can request joint operations and rapid border interventions, and deployment of the European Border and Coast Guard Teams to support these.Where deficiencies persist or where a Member State is under significant migratory pressure putting in peril the Schengen areaand national action is not forthcoming or not enough, the Commission will be able to adopt an implementing decision determining that the situation at a particular section of the external borders requires urgent action at European level.This will allow the Agency to step in and deploy European Border and Coast Guard Teams to ensure that action is taken on the ground even when a Member State is unable or unwilling to take the necessary measures.
Coast Guard surveillance: National coastguards will be part of the European Border and Coast Guard to the extent that they carry out border control tasks. The mandates of the European Fisheries Control Agency and the European Maritime Safety Agency will be aligned to the new European Border and Coast Guard. The three Agencies will be able to launch joint surveillance operations, for instance by jointly operating Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drones) in the Mediterranean Sea.
A mandate to work in third countries: The Agency will have a new mandate to send liaison officers to and launch joint operations with neighbouring third countries, including operating on their territory.
A stronger role in returns: A European Return Office will be established within the Agency to allow for the deployment of European Return Intervention Teams composed of escorts, monitors and return specialists who will work to effectively return illegally staying third country nationals. A standard European travel document for return will ensure a wider acceptance of returnees by third countries.
Guaranteeing Internal Security: The Agency will include cross-border crime and terrorism in its risk analysisand cooperate with other Union agencies and international organisations on the prevention of terrorism, in full respect of fundamental rights.
Systematic checks of EU citizens at external borders
To increase security within the Schengen area, the Commission is proposing a targeted modification of the Schengen Borders Code to introduce mandatory systematic checks of EU citizens at external land, sea, and air borders. Obligatory checks on EU citizens will be introduced against databases such as the Schengen Information System, the Interpol Stolen and Lost Travel Documents Database and relevant national systems, in order to verify that persons arriving do not represent a threat to public order and internal security. The proposal also reinforces the need to verify the biometric identifiers in the passports of EU citizens in case of doubts on the authenticity of the passport or on the legitimacy of the holder. Checks will now also be mandatory when exiting the European Union.
In principle, since controls on documents and persons can be carried out in parallel, authorities should be able to consult relevant databases without delaying border crossings. The rules provide for flexibility in cases where systematic checks could have a disproportionate impact on the flow of traffic at the border. In such cases Member States can, based on risk assessments, decide to carry out targeted checks at some land and sea borders crossings. The risk assessment shall be communicated to the Agency, which can assess the way the exception is applied in its vulnerability assessment.
The systematic checks in the databases are done on a ‘hit/no hit’ basis. This means that if the person does not present a risk then the check is not registered and no further processing of their data happens. Using the databases in this way means that personal data rights are only impacted to a very limited extent, and justified by the security objectives.
Background
The establishment of a European Border and Coast Guard, as announced by President Juncker in his State of the Union Speech on 9 September, is part of the measures under the European Agenda on Migration to reinforce the management and security of the EU’s external borders. The European Agenda on Migration adopted by the Commission in May 2015 set out the need for a comprehensive approach to migration management. This objective has also been signalled by the European Parliament and endorsed in the clear orientations set out by the European Council on 23 September and 15 October.
In response to the recent tragic attacks in Paris and the growing threat from foreign terrorist fighters, the Commission has swiftly taken action to accelerate work and implementation of measures under the European Security Agenda. Today’s proposal responds to the need to reinforce security controls at the EU’s external borders, as called for by Interior Ministers on 20 November.
Last week, a dozen of releases. Among them, a few Afghans who had been arrested in the context of the Afghans’ hunt announced by Francken.
This week, reopening of the wing for 40 people with a press conference and all the rigmarole at the 127bis. The detainees tried to speak to the media and shouted through their windows.
Listen to the reportage on RTBF ( A 23:20 ) http://www.rtbf.be/video/detail_jt-19h30?id=2065972) Tension is tangible!
These new places were rapidly occupied by the newcomers (25 newcomers these last days, all nationalities mixed). A lot of deportations and isolations.
It seems that workers of the centre strongly discourage prisoners to ring associations, threatening them with sanctions and deportations. Hence, the communication with the outside became almost impossible.
Fear prevails in the centre and each one is living in their corner, trying to avoid any contact, be it inside or outside the centre. Terror paralyses everybody, it is the modus operandi, worth of a fascit State.
Wikipedia: The word ‘terror’, in the meaning of a collective terror that is spread among the population to break their resistance. Terror can be used as a way to govern, “enabling the power to break down those who resist it thanks to extreme measures and collective terror”.
Terrorism is the use of terror for political, religious, ideological or vilanious ends.
Bruges
In the women’s wing, several women are there, retained following a suspicion of marriage of convenience. And the same rhythm again: deportations, newcomers arrested at the Office, at home, in public transports etc.
Merksplas
6 detainees tried to escape on 9th December. They broke bars of their windows and jumped. Guards were alerted by the noise and they called the police who were there, at the foot of the wall, to welcome them. They spent 3 days in confinement and were transferred to several centres.
Here is what they told us:
“Everything is dirty in Merksplas, the food is inedible. One only sees deportations and isolations, only negative answers.”
“They call us dangerous people, but they are the dangerous ones!”.
“They call us illegal, but they are the ones into illegality!”
Still in Merksplas, two very young Bosnians were arrested at the border between Belgium and France one month ago. Their families have been living in the North of France for more than 5 years and they would like them to come back and live with them. The Office wants to send them back to Bosnia, a country that they do not know.
Vottem
More than 15 Afghans are being retained in Vottem, in the context of the Afghans’ hunt announced by the State Secretary Théo Francken; a very worrying fact.
In the blue wing of Vottem, one retainee calls for help; someone went on a hunger strike for 28 days and is currently in the hospital. Another one tried to commit suicide and is also in the hospital. A third one tried to jump over the wall and also landed in the hospital!
A demonstration took place on 12th December 2015, gathering associations, support and undocumented people from Liège and Brussels. http://sanspapiers.be/
Mohamed, one of the persons who climbed on the crane, will endure his second deportation attempt this saturday 05/12. The social assistance from the closed center in Merksplas announced him this 04/12 at 2 PM that a flight is scheduled for him tomorrow at 7 AM.
He is actually transfered from the closed center of Merksplas to the closed center of Steenokkerzeel 127 bis with the aim of being evicted.
He made an asylum seeking as soon as he knew about this deportation, which should cancel the new attempt, this, if the foreign office wishes to take notice of it.
Mohamed is in Belgium for more than 10 years, he is a militant in the struggles of people without papers and has all his friends here. He wants to build his life in Belgium, and asks for help to avoid this deportation…
He was stopped from making a call to us, but the most probable flight is Aie Alitalia to Rome this saturday 05/12/2015 at 7 AM We think that all repressives ways will be used by the foreign office to deport Mohamed, as an example adressed to next activist in the struggle of people without papers!
Be there at the airport at the luggage registration for the Alitalia flight AZ157 to Rome to explain Mohamed’s situation to the passengers at 5 AM !
The passengers can oppose themselves to this deportation by asking to the captain, which is the only master on board and can tell to the police to leave the plane, to evacuate Mohamed from the plane!
Fax and mail campaign to protest against this deportation:
Alitalia 02 5511122
e-mail to customer.relationsBE@alitalia.it
fax to 02 551 11 49
You can contact directly the Alitalia ticket office:
They are thousands those last months to present themselves at the Foreign Office in Brussels, hoping to obtain asylum in our country. They are visible, the media talk daily about them.And as in the entire Schengen area, the filtering is in full swing, filtering based on the decisions and declarations of the mighty man, the State Secretary Theo Francken.
Novelty of this week: Francken address to Afghans deterrence letter about the appliance for asylum in Belgium.This Theo chose Afghans as targets, because they are actually in majority at their door and now he wants to unclog the reception! 2 months ago were the Iraqis. And after…?.http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/collective-deportations-of-78-iraqis-to-bagdad/
Currently there are dozens of Afghans locked in closed centers, some awaiting their interview at the ?(CGRA), others waiting for their expulsions under Dublin for some countries whose the Asylum processing requests raise questions.Press CRER / MRAX: http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2015/11/28/32992570.html
This is not a typically Belgian policy, but a policy of widespread exclusion on all borders of the Schengen area, the strategies of each country being different, always submitted by great formal statement of policy strategies. For example now on the border of Macedonia only the Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians can pass! Other (many Iranians) are parked along the borders and begin protest actions (of the hunger strike …..) http://bordermonitoring.eu/
The states feel obliged to “protect” an “invasion”, using repression, imprisonment and deportation. Europe does not want more refugees.
Borders after borders, nationalities after nationalities, the “flow” is interrupted with repression. The diabolical Europe shuts its doors.
That’s what borders and states are for: register, repress and evict “undesirable”
Here is the spitted speach to the Afghan people, after they endure thousand miles on the road:
And he adds on the facebook page of the ministry to not take any asylum decision for non- accompanied minors anymore. There is also the threat of a forced return!”The Belgian government decided to stop taking asylum decisions for Afghans claiming to be non- accompanied minors, unless certain conditions are fulfilled.”
« A rejection of your asylumclaim will result in an order to leave the country within 30 days. If you don’t leave voluntarily, then Belgium will return you by forceto Kabul. »
On the flip side, here is what is told for the europeans travelers:
« Durant l’été 2015,la guerre a de nouveau éclaté pour de bon en Afghanistan. Des dizaines d’attentats-suicide ont eu lieu à Kaboul, souvent dirigés vers des convois à destination de l’aéroport, des bâtiments officiels, des hôtels et autres cibles occidentales. Outre la prise temporaire de la ville de Kunduz par les Talibans fin septembre 2015, on a relevé des attaques et des attentats dans les provinces de Faryab, Sar-e-Pal, Badakhshan, Baghlan et Jowzjan dans le nord del’Afghanistan, ainsi que dans les provinces de Nangarhar (où l’Etat Islamique est également présent) et Kunar dans l’est,dans la province de Wardak dans le centre, dans la province de Ghazni(sud-est) et la province de Helmand (sud). Cette liste n’est pas exhaustive. Seul l’ouest du pays semble quelque peu épargné. »
On November 24, 2015, the site avocats.be published a text entitled “Message of lawyers to asylum seekers: Welcome to the asylum seekers in Belgium. You should not discourage you.” Written by Patrick Henry and Jean-Marc Picard, president and administrator of this site.http://avocats.be/fr/actualites
The title is encouraging, but for the rest we must ask ourselves what the authors take before going to work? According to them, the difficulty of the course of asylum applications come from a wrong message from the government, Because, apart from the message of the government, Belgium is a “democratic state”, “applicate the international conventions, [which] make people who come to apply for asylum are received with dignity and respect and that their application is processed correctly “. Also: “Lawyers believe that the Commissioner-General for Refugees and Stateless Persons […] and fedasil […] properly fulfill their role.”
So, do not worry ladies and gentlemen asylum–seekers, Belgium is a democracy and your story will be heard and you will be welcomed in dignity. (but beware if you come from Iraq or Afghanistan!) “Many come to seek asylum in Belgium . Belgium has an efficient asylum system where you can submit your request for protection in the best conditions in accordance with European standards. “(We Salute the flexibility of the European standards)
We probably invented that people are more than six months to wait to get an answer to their asylum application, that some people are deported before their asylum application was finished, that people are sent back to countries that will not deal with their asylum claim (eg “Dublin” to Hungary etc …).We probably invented the Immigration Department filter the good and bad asylum seekers, according to the decisions of Théo Francken (Dublin, Afghans, Iraqis, economic / political refugees, countries considered “safe” ….).We probably invented they get some of the asylum seekers in detention centers on the arbitrary decisions of Immigration.We probably invented that CGVS treat the request with a first consideration that they are liars until they prove otherwise, and that the Council of Disputes (where everyone can do appeal against a decision of Foreign office or CGRS) are all profiteers. We have probably found out that it’s not easy to find a lawyer, even more difficult a lawyer who is concerned about the fate of his client .. And when those lawyers exist, we can also imagine how difficult it must be faced to be with a Kafkaesque policy where laws are not even respected. The race against the decisions of Foreign Affairs, tore families, people returned to their own death … yes, we all invented it ..
So thank you lawyers thanks to write about the reality .And thanks for this lesson of optimism and enthusiasm for democracy.
And for those of ill will: Can it not be a call to undocumented and refugees to encourage them to come forward and to be registered by the Foreigners’Office with the consequences thereof?
On 16th of November, 8 undocumented people climbed two cranes in Brussels. Most of them had been on the Belgian territory for more than 10 years. Many have been involved in movements of fight for the undocumented for several years. They acted again to claim for the access to these bloody papers.
Mediations took place during three days. The Foreigners Office proposed them to come to their offices in order to discuss the issue. Out of mistrust they refused and finally asked the Foreigners Office to get a document certifying that their dossier would be reviewed, which the latter refused.
Exhausted after two nights and a third day at the top of the cranes shaken by the wind and the rain, four of them decided to go down willingly. The other four however deciced to stay up the cranes. Firemen then climbed the cranes, but surprise-surprise, they were policemen dressed up in firemen!
The four people were forced to go down and the 8 of them were directly arrested and brought to the police station.
After a contact with the Foreigners Office, two of them were released and the other six brought to our closed centres in view of their deportation out of the country.
Therefore, currently, one woman is being retained in Bruges, three men in the closed centre in Vottem (one of them has been released after almost a week of detention), another one in the closed centre of Merksplas and a last one in the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel. Let’s take good note of the dispersion and organised distance among them to separate them and make visits even more complicated.
Even though this action may seen ‘unprepared’ to many, happening at the ‘wrong time’ or ‘with no concertation’, it reflects the emergency and the need to find a solution for the undocumented and the need of some of them to relaunch the fight to get this piece of paper which would enable them to live.
According to one of our contacts, the 127bis closed centre is overcrowded. A majority of the detainees are of Moroccan or Afghan origin. They were arrested on the street, at home or at the Foreigners Office. Many of them have wives, children, a job for many years here in Belgium and they were living a normal life although underground and limited seen the absence of papers.
Echoes from the closed centres:
‘New people arriving every day, deportations every day, releases very rarely’
19/10/2015 : Sharif , a young Afghan, 17, arrived to Belgium through the Balkans in March 2015. He tried to introduce an asylum request. The Foreigners Office declared him as ‘Dublin’ because he had travelled through Bulgaria. Besides, following a bone test, the Office declared him adult despite the documents certifying his age and the probability of error of those tests recognised by scientists. He was arrested on September 14th 2015 and detained in the 127bis closed centre where, out of despair, he tried to commit suicide.
He was deported with violence to Bulgaria on September 27th 2015. After being arrested and beaten on his arrival to Bulgaria, he spent one week on the streets and came back to Belgium. All this being 17 years old! He is still extremely traumatised and frightened.
Here is his testimony in Pashto with simultaneous translation to French.
Q :For how long has he been here?
C :For 6 months.
Q :What happened? He went to the 127 bis closed centre, they arrested him…
C : When I introduced the asylum request, I said I was minor. I gave the documents certifying I was minor. They did not accept it and had me undergo a medical test. They said I was older than what was written on my Afghan ID card. After 6 months, they gave me several times a date for my interview, I thought I would have these dates for an interview at my convocation here at CGRA. But it wasn’t the case, after 6 months they brought me to the closed centre, they wanted to send me back to Bulgaria.
Q :How was it in the closed centre? Was he feeling bad, depressed?
C : It was extremely difficult, at the closed centre they don’t really pay attention to people. People are badly treated. I feel sad because I did not lie about my age, but they did not take care of me as a minor but rather as an adult. It was extremely hard for me.
Q: It was hard. He cut himself, he self-injured himself, right?
C : – He says: it was too harsh for me at the closed centre. I was extremely bored. I didn’t know what to do. I was in prison although I hadn’t done anything wrong. I only had introduced my first request in Bulgaria. Over there they do not respect refugees. Life is tough there. That’s why I left Bulgaria, to come here, to request asylum here in Belgium. At the centre, I cut my hand because I ignored why I was punished. At the centre, they don’t care about what I did.
-The social assistant of the centre told me, after I had cut my hand, that I could cut it even more, it wouldn’t change anything to the fact thaty they would send me back to Bulgaria.
– After that he was placed in isolation cell where it was totally dark. It was really hard.
Q :Then he was driven to the airport to be deported to Bulgaria?
C ; -He says: I didn’t even know I would be deported the day after. I was in the activity room. They came to ask me to go to the reception room. When I was in that room they took me to the isolation cell and left me there, all alone. He told me that I would be going to Bulgaria the day after. I stayed in the cell the whole night until the morning after when four of them came to pick me up. They tied my feet and my hands.
– The day after they came to pick me up at 4 a.m. I didn’t eat anything and I didn’t sleep the whole night. They drove me to the airport. In the car they untied my feet and my hands. But when we reached the airport I insisited on me not going. I refused to leave, hence they tied me even stronger, the hands, the feet and also the mouth. The four of them carried me to enter the plane.
Q :So, then he got to Bulgaria, and what happened there?
C :- He says: Then they left me with the Bulgarian police at the airport where they kept me in a cell for one night. The day after they came and gave me a paper saying that I did not have the right to stay in Bulgaria. The paper was saying: your case here is closed, you do not deserve anything here, you must leave Bulgaria as soon as possible.
– Then he said there was a second option: if you really want to stay here in Bulgaria, you may rent an appartment and come back to us with all the contracts etc. so that you may reintroduce an asylum request and wait to see whether it is accepted or not. I didn’t have any money there, it was really tough.
Q : In Bulgaria, they didn’t see you as a minor either, did they?
C :He says: when I arrived to Bulgaria, I didn’t have my ID card with me anymore. I told them my age but my interpreter translated wrongrly: he changed the Afghan year into the European calendar year so there too I was considered as an adult.
Q :What did he do after that in Bulgaria, considering both proposals, did he consider leaving or renting an appartment?
C :He says that, regarding the second proposal, he didn’t have money left to find an appartment. He spent one week outside on the street. From there he took the road once more. He came back here. Because as he already said it, he has an uncle here, a member of his family.
Q :Does-he have something else to add?
C :He says: yes, my health is very bad now, I can not think properly anymore. The things I listen to etc, I forget them the day after. I am really not peaceful. I really can not accept to be rejected as a minor whereas I gave them the documents, the real ID card etc. I feel so sad that they did not accept them. He is extremely moved by that.
Q: He is extremely traumatised…
C :He says: in Bulgaria I don’t have anyone. Here I have a family, I have an uncle who is like a father to me. I thought I could go to school, learn the language to progress in my life. But I did not expect they would call me a liar. My dream was to live here at my uncle’s, and to continue my studies. I am very sad that it doesn’t work.
14th October:Confirmation that the collective flight to Nigeria will be a military flight departing from Melsbroek¹s military airport (Chaussée de Haecht). It would supposedly take off in the beginning of the evening, to be confirmed
13th October: two days mobilisation in Rome to prevent this flight. Seen the number of Nigerians who were transferred to the same centre lately (Ponte Galera in Rome), they think that the charter flight will come to pick up all of them in Rome. Resistance! ttp://hurriya.noblogs.org/ <http://hurriya.noblogs.org/>
13/10/2015: A call from Rome: more than 40 Nigerians, mostly women, are retained in the centre in Rome. They fear that the deportation flight goes their way!
At least five detainees, four from Merksplas closed center and one from Vottem closed center will be gathered together at the 127bis in order to be sent to Nigeria through a special flight on this 14/10/2015.
The flight will stop over in different European cities to pick up unwanted asylum candidates.
As Europe promised it,collective deportations are increasing!
Hassan who had been retained in the closed centre for two months and a half was deported by the State this morning. During his imprisonment, Hassan never let himself be pushed around. First, he tried to escape from the closed centre in Bruges; which resulted in him being beaten and transferred to the 127bis centre. Then he kept disobeying the guards; these dogs who earn their living the ugliest way possible. Thirdly, at the 127bis when trying to encourage rebellion, increasing the pressure, even spending one day and one night on the roof of the prison, on 20th of September. Lastly, shouting his hatred for imprisonment, borders, States, the police and everything that places bars around his life, our lives.
After spending the night on the roof of the 127bis closed centre, he was transferred to Merksplas by the Office. After a few days he got a plane ticket for Tunisia, flight foreseen on Wednesday 30th of September. In the meantime he was kept in solitary confinement, isolated from the other detainees, out of fear that his rage would again contaminate the others. Yesterday, the police drove him to the airport, but Hassan resisted once more, cutting himself with a razor blade. He was told they would drive him back to Merksplas. But things did not happen that way. Last night, the guards barged into his cell, they tied him and took him to the airport for a new flight, after beating him again.
Hassan is our companion. The path he chose is the only one that can really endanger the routine of imprisonment and deportation of travellers with no visa, borders’ burners. We don’t have anything to expect from the politicians and the state who only try to make their deportation system more efficient, faster and more successful. It is through our own impulsions, insubordinations, and revolts that the closed centres will perhaps be brought down one day.
To end with this news item, here are some sentences our friend used to chant, and that should be heard much more often in these infamous prisons that the State calls closed centres: States, murderers, Politicians, murderers, Police, murderers, Borders, murderers, F.. capitalist system, murderers ACAB, For Freedom! Long live anarchy!
Following the repression of the “trouble makers” of last week,the calm in the 127bis detention centre is supposed to be back and this for good reasons:
some detainees have been transferred toother centres and put in isolation. At least two are still inisolation cells at Bruges and Merksplas.
So-called “Dublin” deportation are being organised, quickly and neatly done. To be noted at this point that at least one detainee was supposed to return to Hungary….!!
Others are quickly deported to their “countries of origin” such as Tunisia or Morocco…http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/the-office-of-shame-never-so-aptly-beared-its-name/
AND !!!! ten Iraqis of 127bis have been released and sent to open centres for analysis of their asylum application. This clearly shows that they were NOT asking a “voluntary” return and were NOT Dublin cases as was lied by T. Francken via the brave media that rarely come investigate themselves!
Detainees of the 127bis tell us:
“Thanks to the demonstrators who came 3 times to support us, thank you to all detainees who took part in our movement, thank you to the LDH (human right league) and the MRAX (Movement against racism) that made pression through their visit in the centre on Wednesday, thank you to our Tunisian friend who climbed on the roof and thus alerted the media who are just running for sensationalisms. Ten friends have been released, it is a victory, the fight goes on! . FREEDOM! “
How not to be ashamed to be Belgian when seeing the practices by our government and its administration?
In front of this refugees crisis, no humankind, no justice; only a policy that is as hypocritical as abject.
Its main and only goal – that seems to justify the most repugnant methods- is to spread the message across our borders: ‘Don’t come to Belgium, you will be persecuted the same as your brothers and sisters. Go somewhere else!’.
How does this policy translate into facts, how does this terror campaign, invisible in the media, organise itself?
Several dozens of Iraqis were arrested at the Foreigners Office and directly sent behind the bars of the 127bis and Caricole closed centres. Isolation, the harshness of imprisonment and the detention conditions there have been denounced for a long time by lots of associations, notably the Comitee for the Prevention of Torture.
The CGRA announced the freezing of decisions related to Iraqis’ asylum requests following the installation of lots of asylum seekers, mainly Iraqis, in the Maximilien Parc.
At the same time, the Minister Francken and his administration were launching a campaign on the theme ‘Bagdad seems to be safe again, we should be able to send back refugees there’.
Other communications by the governement and the Office or the CGRA also insisted on alleged ‘voluntary returns’ and on deportations of Iraqi refugees according to the Dublin convention, with the aim of terrorising the refugees, letting them think that may be soon they could be sent back to the hell they fled.
What could be more deterrent to all those who would not yet have introduced their asylum request with the Office?
Outraged at their arbitrary and inexplicable imprisonment, put under pressure and fooled by the democratic image of our government, the detained Iraqis stood up. We can but understand them.
A movement of protest arose in the closed centres, and the Iraqis were very quickly joined by other detainees, some imprisoned for long periods (up to 8 months), sometimes with their wife and/or child(ren) in Belgium. They grained a certain anger, too often dull, that is still roaring in closed centres. A hunger strike was started, rebellion moves too, like the refusal to regain their cells after the walk hour.
Here again, the Foreigners Office, helped by the management of the centres, has shown methods that can only be called a banana regime.
Simply disgusting…
Our administration also showed an alleged ‘comprehension’ of the Iraqis’ situation, and then, seen the spreading of the movement, they proposed each community to appoint a spokesperson in order to ‘facilitate dialogue’.
These spokespersons could express themselves in front of the few demonstrators and cameras present.
But don’t see any evidence of openmindedness in this behaviour, it is only about manipulation: ALL the spokespersons of the Iraqis, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Syrians, etc. were then placed in confinement cells and transferred to other cells, in other closed centres.
As far as we know, this concerns (at least) the centres of Bruges and Merksplas.
Their phone access is limited to 30 minutes a day. Caring? No. Fear of condemnation in front of the European Court of Human Rights? Probably…
Our government conducts an odious and barbaric policy towards all the so-called democratic values.
Its administration uses immoral methods, worthy of totalitarian regimes.
Most of the media merely interpret their polished communications, renouncing to the least work of investigation that is the basis of journalism though. It is time it stopped. It is time we acted for it to stop, and for those odious practices and manipulations to be denounced. It is time we stood up like the detainees who dared doing it in the centre. If we don’t do anything, we too will have blood on our hands.
Mr R was arrested at the airport 4 months ago. He is Congolese. He came from South Africa and arrived to Belgium through Germany. Since his arrival, he has been retained at the Caricole closed centre. He introduced an asylum request that was rejected. The Foreigners Office want to deport him to Bangkok for the simple reason that his mobile phone comes from Bangkok so they are sure he was there!! He tells us that since he has been at the Caricole centre he could notice that most of the Congolese people are turned back upon their arrival because they don’t have any address, place of residence etc in Belgium. He says this is to be blamed on the racism against ‘black’ people.
One of his Congolese co-detainees was also deported to Bangkok. He was beaten violently by the police at the airport. He finally got to Bangkok where he would have been sentenced to one year in prison because of illegation immigration.
Mr R is really scared to find himself in Bangkok, a country he doesn’t know. Exhausted, he is asking the Foreigners Office to deport him to the DRC.
They will try to deport him for the second time this Thursday 24th of September to Bangkok. He is ready to do anything to prevent his deportation.
24/09, direct flight to Bangkok 1.30 p.m. TG 935 and SN8601
Let’s gather at the airport at 11.30 a.m to speak to the passengers!
Mail and fax of protest to the 2 airline companies that are very well known for their collaboration to deportations.
We were very few in front of the 127bis closed centre to encourage the detainees among whom 30 are on hunger strike. Quite sad, all the more since the detainees had organised themselves and were expecting us. In the backyard of the first building, they were over 50 with their banners, shouting for liberty, expressing their anger and incomprehension of their arbitrary imprisonment. The management had allowed them to stay there until 2.30 p.m. Then they refused to go back inside, and long exchanges were possible between the demonstrators and the detainees. They told us about the absurdity of their detention, the violence in the centre, their arrests etc. Many Iraqis were arrested at the Foreigners Office when introducing their asylum requests. One may wonder if it is a deliberate policy aiming at discouraging Iraqi refugees – notably those who are still present in the Maximilien parc- from requesting asylum in Belgium. In any case, these massive detentions will have that effect. Is it a decision by the Minister Francken, or by a very powerful administration that no one controls anymore? It is to be clarified, but the process followed is iniquitous.
The detainees are either asking for their transfer to an open centre for their asylum request to be dealt with, or for an Order to leave the territory to be able to leave this “bullshit country” that doesn’t want to welcome them and “treats them like animals”. Others have been in Belgium for 10 years sometimes and they have wives and/or children here. They all tell us that the centre is a real prison and that it should not exist, that it is a place of lawlessness. Others say that they will continue their hunger strike, that they will not give up the fight. One man climbed on the roof of the centre with banners and he was shouting “Anarchia, Liberta!”.
A police cordon prevented us from meeting the prisoners in the second wing. They told us that the tension was too high there and that it could degenerate into a riot inside the centre. Seen the number of policemen and demonstrators, we had to renounce, and we stayed there in front of the cordon cooking under the sun.
The detainees want to speak with the media. They also want to meet a representative of the Foreigners Office as well as Theo Francken who apparently hastened to say he refused!
At 9 p.m. the detainees were stil in the backyard, and the one on the roof threatened to jump and commit suicide. A very large “security” cordon was established around the centre. Three friends who wanted to enter were arrested.
They could get close to the centre before their arrest. Several detainees of the second wing were in the backyard and they were all shouting for freedom, happy to see new people coming to support them. These detinees were forced to go back inside around 11 p.m. by the “police special forces”. This morning, the three militants who had been arrested were released and the detainee who was on the roof was arrested and placed in a confinement cell.
We also heard that 2 Somalians have been on hunger strike since their arrival at the centre and that they are in a very bad state. Their co-detainees are extremely concerned. They say that they are letting them die in silence! Other (bad) news, “plane tickets are being distributed” to the “Dublin” people and the deportations are increasing, one of the means they use to get rid of these killjoy!
Update 20/09: Detainees were waiting for us in the backyard of the centre with banners, shouting for freedom.A man climbed on the roof with many banners.
In a second wing we could not get close to the tension was extremely high. They are all furious and ask us to continue to support them. At 9 p.m. the detainees were still in the backyard, refusing to go back inside, and the man on the roof was threatening to jump. A large security perimeter was established by the police and three friends got arrested.
HUNGER STRIKE at the 127bis and Caricole closed centres
On September 18th 2015, more than 60 detainees started a hunger strike at the 127bis closed centre, and 15 at the Caricole centre!
For the last 15 days, Iraqis are being arrested at the Foreigners office when introducing their asylum request and detained in our closed centres. They would currently be over 30 in the 127bis closed centre and a dozen at the Caricole centre.
They started a hunger strike to claim for their regularisation and release. ‘We are asylum seekers and don’t have anything to do in a prison’ they said.
The flemish media, through Theo Francken’s own words on 17th of September, announced the voluntary return of 78 Iraqis. According to our contacts in the centre, it seems that NO Iraqi has signed a request for voluntary return; These Iraqis’ arrests at the Foreigners Office seem to be part of a strategy to discourage the people present in the Parc Maximilien from introducing asylum requests.
Most of the other Syrian, Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian detainees at the 127bis and Caricole closed centres are solidary with the Iraqis, and many joined the hunger strike. As it is often the case, some of them told us that they have been living for years in Belgium, that they have wives and children here.
They all protest against the racism prevailing in the centres and they are claiming for their release!
We ask for the elimination of all closed centres and that deportations be halted.
CRER (Coordination against raids and deportations), MRAX, CRACPE, LDH
We heard through the Flemish media that the Office was busy organising the ‘voluntary return’ of 78 Iraqis. 40 will be put on a plane this Friday 18th of September 2015 and 38 on Wednesday 23rd of September 2015.
The CGRA had announced the temporary freezing of the decisions related to Iraqis’ asylum requests; on the CGRA website one could read on September 3rd 2015: ‘After a first analysis of the asylum requests recently introduced by people from Bagdad (Iraq) it appears that a certain number evoke rather similar facts, in a rather stereotyped manner, and that they do not submit enough credible evidence of the real risk they would incur in case of return. Besides, other sources report that the current security conditions in Bagdad are not the same anymore as those which prevailed in 2014 and that the situation does not justify anymore the assertion according to which any person from Bagdad was running a real risk of serious violation in case of return.’ See more: http://www.cgra.be/fr/actualite/gel-provisoire-des-decisions-demandes-dasile-irakiennes
No more news since then. None of them wanted to speak to us anymore. NGOs were alerted and tried to get in touch with the centre and the detainees but in vain.
And rightly so! the Flemish media informed us that 78 Iraqis ‘have accepted’ a voluntary return and that they will be put on a plane on Friday 18th of September and Wednesday 23rd of September 2015 respectively.
But why are the Iraqis concerned- the ones who accepted a voluntary return- being detained? And why aren’t they willing to speak to anyone anymore?
What do these immediate deportations organised by CGRA and the Foreigners Office mean, 15 days only after the decisions on the freezing, with no clear view on the situation overthere?
It seems obvious that the majority of the people concerned was put under pressure and they have been forbidden any contact with the outside.
For us, the expression ‘voluntary return’ announced by the decision-makers equals to collective deportations by charter and under threat of violence.
Nothing will stop our Belgian and European authorities refusing or ejecting, be it at the borders or in European countries, to pursue their war against migrants, migrants who have been declared for several years.
On 14th September 2015 we learnt that 25 Iraqis were being detained in one of the wings of the 127bis closed centre. Most of them were arrested at the Foreigners Office after being convened. They were told that they have to stay there before getting the confirmation that they are no “Dublin” (i.e that they did not pass by another Schengen country where they would have left their fingerprints, and where the Office would be glad to deport them to). In recent years, it was not frequent to hear about Iraqis being detained in closed centres, and now within 15 days they are 25!
The Foreigners Office, organising the detentions and deportations of the ‘unwanted’, has as a bad habit to regulary select one category of persons, one nationality, in view of exerting pressure and intimidating the targeted group (Afghans, Congolese, Albanians, Guineans, etc.).
Since many Iraqis have arrived to the Maximilien camp to introduce an asylum request, the Foreigners Office has chosen to put the pressure on this community in particular.
The Iraqis in the closed centre are outraged. They say that they are badly treated, they feel abandoned, without any juridical assistance. They are calling for help!
And they need ticket for their phone: so we repeat:
“You may also support the detainees by buying a 5 or 10 EUR call-credit card with Lycamobil at your grocer’s, in a nightshop or a bookshop. Send us the pin code that is written on it by email at gettingthevoice(at)riseup.net. We will send it to the detainees who need a recharge, which enables them to keep the contact with us and the outside world.
If it is easier for you, you may also pay or even better a standing order of 2, 5, 10, 20 EUR or more (!) to the account “Collectif Contre Les Expulsions”
Banque Triodos BE58 5230 8016 1279” BIC: TRIOBEBB
“The arrival of refugees to the EU is often chaotic and messy. But when it comes to getting rid of those who aren’t wanted, the system is extremely efficient.”
Question : Hi, how are you? Answer : How can I be OK? I’m not OK at all.
Q : Where did they arrest you? A : I was selling cigarettes at the slaugherhouses’ market. I spent one night at the police station and they day after they retained me in Bruges.
Q : Were you detained alone? A : When I arrived to the closed centre, I found myself in a wing with 30 people.
. Q : How do you live the incarceration? A : Well, the agents pretend to treat us well but one can see behind their smiles that they hate us. For example, this morning we had cheese which date had expired three days ago. If you protest, you end up in solitary confinement. You don’t have the right to use your phone after 10 p.m., everything is regulated like in a prison. We are 30 to sleep in the same room. It is just like in the prisons in our countries of origin.
In the morning they give us breakfast, then we go to a small yard for an hour. Then we have to go back to a room that doesn’t even fit everybody. Some of us have to remain standing. You may only have a shower if you do fitness. If you don’t do fitness you don’t have the right to have a shower. Once per day.
Q : Can you explain how you arrived to Europe? A : I arrived in Italy in 2005, I worked in the black economy doing farming. I got fooled by people who asked me for money to get a residence permit.
After that I fell into drug addiction. I got arrested once and although the police did not find anything on me apart from 3 mobile phones, I was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
Q : How long did you stay in prison? A : 4 years and 4 months.
Q : And after that? A : I was lost, hanging aroud during one year before I came to live with friends here in Brussels.
Q : And you were selling cigarettes in order to survive. A : Yes, and I was not the only one, others were doing that before me. I thought it was not that serious.
Q : Were other people selling cigarettes when you got arrested?
A : Yes, 7 or 8 people, but they were all immediately released because they had papers. The police really harrassed me because I had a conflict once with a policeman, I was even beaten and ended up at the emergency.
Q : How did it go at the police station? A : I don’t even want to talk about the police. I was feeling intimidated. Each time you say something you risk their violence. I am angry at them.
You must find a solution to take us out of here. We can not stand it anymore. We can not accept that but most of the people resign themselves. Besides, we are several nationalities here therefore it is not easy to communicate among ourselves in order to get organised.
Personally, I didn’t do anything wrong here in Belgium. The lawyer who was assigned to me says that it is my past in Italy that is playing against me.
Q : Would you like to add something?
A: Daily life is really not easy here. You may not rest properly, there is a lot of tension because of stress and tiredness.
On September 4th, we heard that 2 Iraqis had been detained. On September 8th we hear that they are more than 15 in the 127bis closed centre, mainly coming from Bagdad, and most of them arrested at the Foreigners Office when depositing their asylum request!
Please warn your Iraqi friends at the Parc Maximilien!
The emergency has been declared; the so-called ‘humanitarian’ emergency. However, the concept of ’emergency’ implies that it can only be answered with short term solutions, hence preventing any longer term solutions and even ‘forgetting’ about the political origins of these emergencies…
Nevertheless, more than half of the refugees who are now camping in the Parc Marximilien, while waiting for the authorisation to submit their asylum request to the Foreigners Office, will get a negative answer from the CGRA.
Several nationalities are currently in the CGRA’s top 10 (notably the Syrians), but others run the risk of being sent back to their country (50% of the Iraqis for example). They will be deported or they will have to live in custody, become ‘undocumented’ carrying an order to leave the territory in their pocket. On September 4th 2015, we’ve learnt that a few Iraqis had recently been brought to a closed centre! http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1734/Irak/article/detail/2444325/2015/09/03/Gel-provisoire-des-decisions-pour-les-demandes-d-asile-des-Irakiens-de-Bagdad.dhtml
An asylum seeker will be accepted only if he runs a ‘real’ danger once back in his native country and also under the condition that he did not go through another Schengen country (Dublin3) where he will be sent back to without further delay!
Therefore, many of these asyluum seekers in the parc Maximilien are more than likely to live new nightmares in the near future: deportations, custody, etc. because of more restrictive norms dictated by administrations (UNHCR, CGRA, Foreigners Office, etc.).
European migration policies firstly prevent the arrival of these migrants, blocking them at the borders, and then, those who manage to pass through are being ‘filtered’ and divided between the ‘good’, the ‘real’ and the ‘bad’, ‘fake’ refugees. Not to mention the refugees who will be categorised as ‘economic’ refugees (question: does economy have absolutely nothing to do with politics?), or those who come from a ‘safe’ country according to the CGRA and whose asylum request will be refused within 15 days.
Besides the current urgent citizens’ assistance, many other actions are and will be necessary in order to support these people who are excluded from our migration policies and who can not/do not want to go back to their home countries!
Many other actions and initiatives are necessary to eradicate this system (that is by the way not only used on migrants)of exclusion and borders that are prevailing in our current societies.
Many scientists, anthropologists, sociologists etc assert that the opening of borders is beneficial for all.
Our fight against these policies, the fights of the excluded, the refugees, the undocumented etc. is complementary with humanitarian assitance. If we do not support these fights, we may be doing humanitarian aid for centuries to come and… in an emergency!
After a long silence from our side because of a lack of candidates ready to listen to the detainees in the centres, we are back again (two of us, so any other candidate is welcome!).
Our first impressions since our little break. A lot of transfers. Several detainees are constantly being transferred from one centre to another because they are ‘disturbing the community life in the centre’, i.e they are seen as rebellious. One of them was severely beaten by the guards at the closed centre of Bruges before his transfer.
One detainee has been waiting for almost 8 months that they made a DNA test on him to prove that his son who lives in Belgium is actually really is son. He has been living in Belgium for 5 years. He committed an offence and served the sentence that had been decided by the courts, but the Office decided to apply the double penalty to him who did not obey our laws, hence they persist and keep him detained.
A man who had been living in Belgium for 16 years was arrested 3 weeks ago, again because of his judicial past! He also has three kids here and has to prove it in order not be deported! He categorically refuses to be separated from his children.
A young boy of 17 years old is being retained in the 127bis closed centre. The codetainees think this is absolutely unacceptable. The children’s rights authorities have been warned but they remain silent. The boy is waiting for a bone examination in order to determine his age; which will give an approximative age with a probability of a 2 years error. If the bone examination reveals that he is for e.g between 17 and 19 years old, they will declare him as major!
A man has been on hunger strike at the 127bis since August 28th, according to his codetainees. He was driven to the airport on September 1st 2015 for a flight to Marseille. He refused it and was placed in solitary confinement to then be brought back to the 127bis.
The detainees in the 127bis think it is inadmissible that some of their codetainees are recognised as psychiatrically ill and that ‘they should not be there’, that they are in a real prison, and they are really outraged with the incarceration of a young boy.
Several detainees of the closed centre have started a hunger strike, some of them 5 days ago.
They are claiming for the treatment of their files. Some of them have been there for several months and they didn’t get any news.
Others do not have a lawyer and are not able to defend themselves, the management telling them that ‘a lawyer would be useless, for their case is much too serious’.
They are constantly being told that they should go back home.
Others were driven several times to the airport but they were not allowed on the plane because their embassy refused to grant them any let pass. They are wondering why they have been retained like this for several months.
They tell us:
« I won’t give up my rights”.
« They must respect the law.”
“They should not make fools out of us!”
“I’d rather leave in a coffin”.
The management is threatening them of isolation cell if they continue their action!
They need support!
The Centre for illegal immigrants of Bruges has 112 places – approximately 750 persons per year) Zandstraat 150, B-8200 Bruges Tél. +32 50451040 Fax. +32 50315956
Update: The son was deported. He is now in Belgrade. They will try to deport the parents for the third time this Friday 31st of July 2015. ‘We will show no resistance; it is impossible to resist in front of these escorts. We had no luck. We are leaving.’
The family N, father, mother and 25 years old son have been in Belgium since 2009. They were arrested on April 14th 2015 and have since then been detained in the Caricole closed centre.
They are Serbian, of the Albanian minority. They introduced an asylum request, a regularisation request and a 9ter regularisation request for the mother who is psychiccally and physically very ill.
Their lawyer made an appeal against the orders to leave the territory, against detentions and against deportation attempts.
On May 8th, the Court of appeal of Brussels even set a precedent, ‘forbidding the Belgian State to take them away from the territory against their will before the Council Chamber and/or the Indictment division had taken a decision on the current appeals.”
The lawyer denounces a diabolical administrative and judicial carousel the family is submitted to.
This Tuesday July 28th, the Office will try to deport the son alone, under escort, despite the fact that the file always was dealt with for the whole family together. The son doesn’t want to leave his parents in the closed centre and is asking for our help to prevent his deportation.
It is to be noted that an appeal procedure towards the court of cassation is still foreseen on August 19th 2015 but the court informed that if the son is deported, the case will be null and void!
Flight JU301 Air Serrbia to Belgrade at 10.25 a.m.
Let’s meet at the airport this Tuesday 8.25 a.m to warn the passengers of the likely presence of the young man on the plane wih his escort at the rear of the plane.
– Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
PPrime Minister Charles Michel
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52 e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
Monsieur Jan Jambon Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
and
Mr Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Tél: 02 206 14 21 – theo.francken@n-va.be , kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
Two Congolese men will undergo new eviction attempts. For one it will be the first attempt after he have receive 5 times a deportation ticket who were canceled, for the other the second attempt!
Since the organisation of 2 collective flights to the Democratic Republic of Congo on 17/06 and 04/06, many Congolese who have “missed the flight” have been deported by commercial flights in recent weeks, their appeals to prevent their evictions have always received negative answers from the CEC, despite common sense evidence that, in the context of their political activism,arrests by the Congolese authorities on their arrival in Kinshasa will be unavoidable.
For some of those who arrived in Kinshasa with previous collective flights we are still without any news.They are probably still in the hands of the secret services! The two people that the Office of shame will try to deport on the same flight this Wednesday the 08-07-2015 urge us to assist them in order to prevent their deportation!
Flight Kinshasa Wednesday, 08 July 10:40 SN 357
Meeting at the airport this Wednesday at 8:40 to inform passengers of the presence of deported persons on their flight
Let us be efficient !
Also to express your disgust to those in charge, call, send emails, faxes and letters of protest to:
Brussels Airlines (ask your message to be transmitted to the the plane captain)
Email :customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
We heard some news about the collective deportation of this 17th of June.
Information is not easy to get seen the obvious traumatism of the people deported after the violence they could feel during the deportation, and the bad welcoming by the Congolese authorities, and also the danger it is to express oneself in DRC.
Following some sources, they were 16 Congolose, some from other European countries, and 2 or 3 women. Three or four others where taken out of the plane following appeals by their lawyers.
One of our witnesses tells us that he was placed into solitary confinement at the 127bis centre during 3 days, without phone and not a single opportunity to get in touch with others. On Wednesday the police came to fetch them, they handcuffed them and drove them to Melsbroek. They were taken to the plane and remained handcuffed for a long time. They all were accompanied with their escort (2 policemen each) and they had no freedom of movement in the plane, they could not talk to each other. They were even escorted to go to the toilet.
Once in Kinshasa, one of them was urgently droven to the hospital.
Some others were questioned and then released. One of them is extremely angry and insists on us saying it here, because he was called names by one of the Belgian policemen who was there. On the opposite, he is very happy to be under the sun in his country after being imprisoned for such a long time, so many months in the Belgian closed centres…
For others, fate is much darker: they got arrested as soon as they landed and brought to one prison whose name and location must remain hidden according to one of our witnesses. They were insulted, called bandits and criminals. They were placed in cells with no food no drink, not allowed to seat or lie down. ‘We had to sleep upright’.
Our witness was released 24 hours later. He is currently hiding and prepares his departure to another African country. ‘It is too dangerours to stay in this country.’
Unfortunately, he did not hear any news from the other detainees who were with him in Kinshasa.
If others have heard news from these persons (notably the person who had to go to the hospital upon arrival, or from those who would still be detained) we would appreciate if you would let us know in order to continue denouncing these deportations that remain killing State secrets.
The Ritabaga invites you on July 4th for a solidarity evening with the group Getting The Voice out (www.gettingthevoiceout.org)
Start: 5 p.m
Le ritabaga: Rue de Châtillon 65 à 5310 Liernu (sortie 12 E411)
– projection of videos, presentation of the group Getting The Voice Out and exchange on the fight against closed centres and detention
– Press and InfoKiosque (bring the texts you want to share!)
– Dinner and drinks for the benefit of Getting The Voice Out
– Concerts René Binamé:http://www.aredje.net/biname/ EmmaPils (fr): http://www.emmapils.org/ Nasty Candy & Coco Lipstick: electro-punk-pop
And the fanfare “GOGOLGOTHA” de Liège
This Sunday 14th of June, the persons who wanted to visit close friends or family members in the 127bis closed centre were told that visits would not be possible during 3 days. They insisted in knowing why this wouldn’t be possible and they were told that a very important collective flight was being planned. Some Congolese people in the different closed centres got a ticket for a deportation this Wednesday. Some otheres were told that they would be on the ‘reserve’ list for that same flight.
Currently there are lots of transfers and going back and forth at the 127 bis centre. They are being told that these transfers happen in view of the Ramadan starting this week and that Muslims would be gathered at the 127bis during that period, in addition to the transfers of the Congolese people in view of the collective flight!
Our prognosis:
There will effectively be a FRONTEX flight this Wednesday 17th of June (departure foreseen: 10 a.m. from Melsbroek airport), hence visits are impossible to deal with for the staff. Congolese from several Belgian centres and from other European countries as well will progressively be gathered these days in the 127bis closed centre close to the airport for a big flight coordinated and supervised by FRONTEX, the European agency dealing with the cooperation at the outside borders of the EU Member States, created in 2004 and based in Warsaw.
Not to mention the risk that persons are deported without any let passes which are legally required, but with a mysterious safe conduct delivered
by a member of the Immigration Ministry in Kinshasa! Among the deported persons, some are opponents to the current regime whose life could be
threatened upon arrival!
Accoridng to FRONTEX statistics, in 2014 there were 69,014 forced deportations from Europe, among which 1,968 during joint operations by Schengen countries.
According to the Foreigners Office statistics for Belgium in 2014:
5,602 detentions, 4,360 estrangement (returns or repatriations), among which 101 people would have been deported on Belgian secured flights, and 39 Congolese people on 3 secured flights.
Besides, these statistics NEVER mention the fate of the deported people!
In favour of a world of migarations! Welcome everybody! Noborder ! Action !
« Joint Return Operation
One of Frontex’s tasks stipulated in the founding regulation is to provide Member States with the necessary support, including, upon request, coordination or organisation of joint return operations.
Frontex-coordinated returns by air group together non-EU nationals from several Member States for a flight. Returnees are transported from several Member States to the Member State organising the flight,where they embark an aircraft and travel together to the destination airport in a third country.
Frontex acts as an intermediary, coordinating with the various national authorities that want to participate in a joint return flight. However, Frontex does not have any background information about the individual cases of the returnees. Personal data processed by the agency is strictly limited to those personal data which are required for the purpose of a joint return operation and is deleted no later than 10 days after the end of the operation. »
Good to know: since 2014 FRONTEX have been coordinating “collective joint return operations”, i.e operations where the native country of the repatriated persons is in charge of one part of the operation (‘collect’ their natives in one EU Member state to bring them back ‘home’). The first countries that took part in this new form of externalisation of the migration control policies were Albania and Georgia.
More info: http://frontex.europa.eu/feature-stories/self-collection-a-new-way-of-returns-P4dpos
On Thursday 4th of June, a group deportation by military flight had been announced to 20 Congolese detainees in the closed centres.
We heard from one of the deported who got to Kinshasa that they were 4 deported, 3 men and a woman, accompanied with 20 policemen, in a big military plane. They were handcuffed to be brought to the plane. They were not well received in Kinshasa, with long interrogations. The person who contactd us was finally released and found refuge with friends. We did not hear from the other 3.
According to the person who contacted us, 2 of them had let passes delivered by he embassy, two others had a safe conduct, the embassy having refused to deliver a let pass, that seem to be fake ones.
They were again told that those who could not be deported on the 4th would be on a Frontex flight on the 17th of June.
This testimony confirms another testimony you can listen to here:
Notice to our Congolese friends: Be careful, the Office des Etrangers(Foreigners office) will do everything as a good student of Europe as it is to nab the most possible Congolese people in order to fill this flight of 06/04/2015 and especially for the Frontex flight 06/17/2015 !!!!!!!!!!!!
A new collective deportation has been announced to certain detained Congolese for the 04/06/2015. The military plane would take off at 10 am from the Melsbroek military airport with twenty people to be deported. They will be brought gradually these days to 127bis closed centre to be put on buses andin the military plane on 04/06.
Most of these people planed to be deported have not been presented to the DRC embassy, that currently refuses to issue the laissez-passers needed for a deportation according to “the rules” and which are frequently missing. Our authorities seem to use “safe-conducts” that they get through the immigration service in Kinshasa.
Since the collective 2 flights of 28/04 and 05/06/2015 that did not leave,many were deported by commercial flight in recent weeks, others werefreed thanks to actions of support committees or appeals. It remains 20 people they could not deport with the previous planes and they plan to return them by means of “secured flight” as they call it.
Among them political opponents still in juridical procedures, a sick man for whom the doctor had refused Airport deportation for health reasons ( last minute: he is free!), a woman who has been in Belgium for 10 years etc ..…
The Office des Etrangers continues to harp on the Congolese to seek allmeans and subterfuges to deport at any price those people theymanaged to trap in public transport during raids or during appointments at the Immigration Office.
Another flight, this time called Frontex might be expected this 17.6.2015,
Hereafter,the testimony of a man who puts expelled the “safe conduct”in question.
Notice to our Congolese friends: Be careful, the Office des Etrangers(Foreigners office) will do everything as a good student of Europe as it is to nab the most possible Congolese people in order to fill this flight of 06/04/2015 and especially for the Frontex flight 06/17/2015 !!!!!!!!!!!!
1) Shocking: the Foreigners Office and the local authorities after a woman victim of domestic abuse
In Belgium for 8 years, she was married to a Belgian man who was beating her. She found refuge in a shelter for battered women. While she was working as article 60, his husband asked for divorce. The authorities deprived her of her ID card and gave her an Order to Leave the Territory.
On March 27th, she was arrested at her workplace. She was taken to the closed centre in Bruges. She will go through a first deportation attempt tomorrow.
In brief: a woman victim of domestic abuse is denounced by her commune, arrested and detained by Foreigners Office who want to deport her against her will. She is thus a double victim: being a woman and being undocumented. Punished by a State that should on the contrary protect her. Friday May 15th
Flight SN357 10.40 a.m to Kinshasa
Let’s meet at the airport at 7.40 a.m to speak to the passengers
Contact: 0485 21 32 06
2) Another woman who was living peacefully with her husband also got arrested and detained. After getting married at the church, the couple was preparing for the civil marriage. The Belgian authorities interfered. Monday May 18th
Flight SN357 10.40 a.m to Kinshasa
Let’s meet at the airport at 7.40 a.m to speak to the passengers
Contact: 0485 21 32 06 All this is made possible thanks to the untiring collaboration by Brussels Airlines. We call on the women’s rights associations to put pressure on the Belgian authorities for these two women to be released.
Please send your emails, faxes and letters of protest to the people responsible, and express your disgust!
Brussels Airlines (ask your message to be forwarded to the aircraft captain)
Email : customer.relations@brusselsairlines.com
Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362 F. Roosemont
Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 Charles Michel
Premier Ministre
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52
e-mail: info@premier.fed.be Jan Jambon
Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur
Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: secretariaat.kabinet@ibz.fgov.be Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et la Migration
Tél: 02 206 14 21 –
theo.francken@n-va.be
kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
NON aux expulsions!
LIBERTÉ pour toutes et pour tous!
Since the collective deportation attempts that had been foreseen and then cancelled at the end of May and the beginning of April, our Office of Shame seems to be short-circuiting the aborted deportations of the Congolese people retained in the Beligan closed centres through deportations on regular flights from Zaventem airport.
Some of them do not have a passport, they were not introduced to the embassy and they don’t have any let pass during the deportations. Already in the past, irregularities vitiated deportations that would be deemed illegal according to law.
Some of these deported people are important political opponents and they are being ‘surrendered’ without mercy to dictatorial regimes. For example deportation of opponent, detentioned in the Netherlands and deprotated by the Belgium state and SNAirlines: http://aprodec.blog4ever.com/expulsion-de-mathieu-ngudjolo-la-procureur-pres-la-cpi-et-letat-hollandais-complices-de-joseph-kabila
Other deportation attempts of Nigerians persecuted by Boko Haram have been planned for this week: they could not prove these persecutions in front of the CGRA!
Hence, systematic repressions of exiled people continue through the closing of borders, the smugglers’ hunting and the deportation of men and women who have been living here for years and who chose to continue living here, or of others who fled their countries to ask for protection.
This way, Europe and Belgium apply the European guidelines:
Continue achieving this ‘development aid’; the deportations being partly subsidised by the Development Assistance Fund.
Collaborate with dictatorial regimes, surrendering their opponents in view of maintaining interested and interesting diplomatic relationships.
Recolonise Libya, notably by proposing the ‘constitution of a national union government’.
Not forgetting to feed their propaganda message of racism and rejection of the ‘alien’.
A lot of deportation attempts are being planned for this week. A call is being launched by the CRER this week in order to prevent these deportations at the airport.
« DEPORTATIONS THIS WEEK
A lot of deportations are being planned from Zaventem this week. Some will be done under police escort and with violence because these people already resisted the previous repatriation attempts.
If you are available for an awareness-raising actions with the passengers at the airport, call 0485 21 32 06.
TUESDAY 12/5
– A Congolese man whose wife is living in Belgium, detained for 2 months at the 127bis.
Flight SN357 10:40 a.m to Kinshasa
Let’s meet at the airport to speak to the passengers at 7:40 a.m.
– A Nigerian woman who fled Boko Haram, detained in the Caricole Centre since March 1st, will be the subject of her third deportation attempt tomorrow.
Flight Royal Air Maroc AT833 5:40 p.m.
Let’s meet at the airport to speak to the passengers at 2:40 p.m.
WEDNESDAY 13/5
– Another Congolese man, in Belgium for 4 years, arrested in March, for two months in the closed centre in Bruges.
Flight SN357 10:40 a.m to Kinshasa
Let’s meet at the airport to speak to the passengers at 7:40 a.m.
THURSDAY 14/5
– A Nigerian catholic priest, persecuted by Boko Haram. He arrived in Zaventem on February 27th, requested asylum, was immediately detained (welcome to Belgium!). His request was rejected because he could not prove that he was personnally persecuted by Boko Haram (but the CGRA acknowledge that Christians are effectively persecuted by Boko Haram…). He will go through his 3rd deportation attempt.
Flight SN251 2:55 p.m to Lomé (Togo)
Let’s meet at the airport to speak to the passengers at 12h00 a.m. »
One more attempt for collective deportation to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) CANCELED
Some Congolese detainees in the 127bis closed centre have been notified of their scheduled deportation for the 07/05/2015 09 p.m., leaving from the
Melsbroek military airport by military aircraft for Kinshasa.
And on 06/05 they were notified that the flight is canceled What happens? Diplomatics problems? To much pression from the congolees diaspora?
Among the detained Congolese there are currently five political opponents and a majority of women and men that have been living in Belgium for 5 to 15 years.
Their application for asylum, their demand for regularisation or requests for marriage or cohabitation were denied.
In most cases, their requests were rejected by the Office for foreingers(Office des Etrangers) or the CGRA (commissariat général pour réfugiés et apatrides), on the grounds of “false” statements, “fake” marriage, “fake” papers, without any further consideration …
For example one woman has been in Belgium for 8 years. She married and was beaten by her husband. She spent a year in a shelter for beaten-up women. Her husband filed for divorce. As a result of the divorce, she lost her right to stay and she is planed to be deported.
No eviction is meaningful. All those people have been here for years,their life is here, their friends are here, they have no more people waiting for them in their home countries and some risk their lives upon return.
Let us remind here of the the top secret document published by the Guardian,revealing the fate of the deportees from the UK and other countries such as Belgium, on their arrival in Kinshasa:http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article3432
Four prisonners held in the shameful Vottem detention center reclaimed their freedom by escaping.
During the night of the 1st to the 2nd of May, they left their cell through the window, climbed the fences and disappeared into nature.
“Everything went perfectly as planned”.
The center’s authorities have promised a general search on the 3rd of May.
Freedom for All!
Returns: their lives are here!
A lot of people who get deported to a country where they transited and who are called “Dublin migrants” are returning back here: they have their life here, their wife, children, work and life ties, sometimes for several years. They will continue living here in clandestinity.
D. who had been expelled on a collective flight to the DRC in 2014 came back after a family reunification request. He had been expelled despite his family ties here. He is a political opponent. He was imprisoned for several days directly after landing in Kinshasa and had to hide after his release. He got his papers following a family reunification request.
Hunger strikers: anticipated disappearances
We hear a lot about hunger strikes in all the centres. Syrians, Pakistanis. In general, hunger strikers are placed into solitary confinement. The codetainees lose all contacts with them, and then they disappear, not a single trace of them anymore: were they deported or transferred??
There is no wanted notice for ‘illegals’!
Suicides or suicide attempts : total neglection of mental suffering because they are ‘illegal’
The mental suffering of the exiled people is enormous. Besides the two suicides known and advertised after the demonstrations of the different collectives for undocumented, other suicide attempts are frequent among this weakened population and they are trivialised by the authorities. A lot of codetainees also tell us about people who are deeply disturbed in the centres, who are walking in the corridors talking to themselves. ‘It’s not his place here, madam, he needs a medical treatment.’ No medical consideration for your suffering at all if you are illegal!
Release: Order to Leave the Territory 100% guranteed
We were very happy to hear about the release of several of our contacts in the closed centres, after several months of detention: one Palestinian whom the Office didn’t know where to send back to: disgusted, he left Belgium very quickly and is pursuing his migration path. Another man who had a Belgian daughter here and who resisted several deportation attempts was taken to the solitary confinement cell in the Vottem centre because of his resistance. He was released and could join his family but with an Order to Leave the Territory without delay in his pocket! After six months detention, a Tunisian man was released for no apparent reason except his resistance: ‘They put my life upside down, I lost my appartment, I lost my job,…’.
On the contrary, no Order to Leave the Territory for a Congolese man and a Congolese young woman six months pregnant for whom the CCE rejected the negative decision by the CGRA, after 5 months imprisonment for the woman. They will have to restart the whole asylum request procedure.
Arranged marriages and cohabitation forbidden to ‘illegal migrants’
A lot of men and/or women are imprisoned because they are suspected of marriages or cohabitations ‘of convenience’. They need to provide evidence that they are in love! Because it is clear that marriages have always happened on the basis of love? Does the officer who performs a marriage ceremony ask you if you really are in love?
It seems that marriages of convenience are forbidden to undocumented people!
Public order offences: double standards
We heard about several women/men who were placed in closed centres in view of their deportation after a ‘public order offence’. For example:
One woman was accused of shoplifting. A guard called the police and the Office decided to imprison her for ‘public order offence’. She was deported quickly after with no other trial.
A man wanted to put himself between two people fighting on the street: he got arrested and has been detained for 4 months in a closed centre waiting for his deportation because of a ‘public order offence’. His lawyer is trying to prove that he didn’t have anything to do with the fighting.
The ‘public order offences’ deserve many other treatments if you are illegal!
Deportations: at any price
Deportations keep going on. The ‘entries’ and ‘exits’ in and out the centres happen daily. The new victims of deportation arrive, replacing those who got deported. Many ‘accept’ their deportation because of fake promises of possible return with no delays made by the social assistants or following blackmail and violence.
A man from Latin America who was arrested while in transit here before going to Spain was the object of 5 deportation attempts (non violent he says…). He simply wanted to go to Spain and didn’t understand why they would prevent him from doing so. He finally gave up and accepted his return. His health was deteriorating (he lost 12kg during his detention) and he didn’t want to die in our Belgian prisons.
Criminals : double penalty
The governement is proud to announce that thanks to their action we will get rid of all these evil criminals detained in our prisons! Very few possibilities of appeal are open to them. They are taken from the prison to the airport to be deported. Many have their families, women or children here. Some of them refuse the deportation and are taken to closed centres, their new prison. This period of time enables them to introduce appeals and assert their rights, others accept to be deported under pression and blackmail.A noter que des charters de criminels annoncés par Francken n’ont plus eu lieu à notre connaissance. Seraient ils tous expulsés? Valait la peine dans faire tout un fromage. ET Certains sont déjà revenus…….!
Testimony man from Irak detained in closed centre Audio Here lawyers
My name is Mr Ibrahim.I’m an asylum applicant from Iraq and on 27th March 2015 Icame to the 127bis closed centre.
On the way they deported me to France, it was a Belgian decision, in commissariat under theDublin law to send me back to France anyway.
On the 3rd ofApril 2015 my lawyer was assigned to me by the Legal Aid Council which they get paid by the boss, and my social assistant she assigned this lawyer for me.
He accepted my case and my social assistant Nathalie sent him my documents, and I’m not satisfied for the points below:
1/ The centre and the lawyer confirmed that he accepted my case, meaning a lawyer was assigned to me. They told me I have a lawyer after 8 days I had been staying in the closed centre, which is not normal.
2/ The lawyer sent an appeal to the court after 12 days and it was not an urgent appeal because the regulation here in the closed centre says if you have 10 days,
before that 10 days the lawyer can apply for an urgent appeal, but he didn’t do it.
3/ The request was very weak and did not involve the main reasons for my appeal, it doesn’t include my full story.
4/ The lawyer was not involved to review my case and there was no strong communication between me and him about my total story. He just came one day, I just saw him, he did not even talk about my story or anything, he just saw the papers he got from my social aasistant and that’s it.
5/The lawyer confirmed to my social assistant that he had sent an appeal to the court on 7th of April 2015, which was only one day before my first flight on 8th April 2015, for sure this is not normal. This has happened to all the people here in this closed centre.
6/ The lawyer didn’t show himself in the centre before my flight to communicate with me or at least call me to tell me : you’re refused, you should do this ordo that, he never told me. Before, all this time I just called him and he was out of office, I found the voicemail, I left messages but nothing …
7/ I’m very disappointed at the way it was in general to treat my life.
8/ My human rights were not respected over the whole line since the start of my detention.
The social assistant says she is just working here and she is just my contact with the lawyer;she is not helping nor trying to help. She says she can not do anything. she just follows the orders and makes her job. She never cares about you, if yo want to pay her to stay here, or to ask help from her; she says she just works here and cannot help you.
The only person that can help you is the lawyer, she does her job and only that. That’s it.
We heard that a new grouped deportation to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been planned for 28th April 2015. Congolese people living in Belgium or in other European countries will be escorted by the federal police to the Melsbroek’s airport to put into a military aircraft.
It would be a flight organised by Belgium or in collaboration with other European countries, possibly coordinated by FRONTEX.
We invite you to warn your Congolose friends who might be registered on these flights, they might be arrested during controls in public transports, on the street, at home or at the Foreigners Office in the coming days.
Testimony by a Congolese man. The CGRA rejected his asylum request.
‘At the (Kinshasa) airport I will be arrested and immediately… I am not an isolated case! I am calling you today to warn you that my life is in danger. If today the CGRA or the Conseil du Contencieux (Foreigners Litigation Council) persist in sending me back to my country, it is death for sure that is expecting me. I am convinced that the security services, since they regularly consult our website, even though they do not have my name, they have photos on which I’m to be seen in the airports and everywhere! If I go back there, I’m a dead person.’
The last grouped flight to the DRC took place on November 4th 2014, with 19 ‘illegal’ people from Belgium and 3 from Romania and Finland.
Let’s also remember the top secret document published by the Guardian, highlighting the fate of the people expelled from the United Kingdom and other countries as Belgium when arriving at Kinshasa. http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article3432
Each year, thousands of people are imprisoned and deported by the Office des Etrangers (Foreigners Office). We refuse repressive policies and we are opposed to the very existence of these closed centres.
We invite you to act, warn your friends, be vigilant and support the people imprisoned and deported in their fight, and to react during possible raids.
NO to deportations
NO to closed centres
YES to a world with no borders
Our authorities are deporting people to Pakistan despite repeated alert calls on the future of the deported people in their home country since more than a year: testimonies here: xxxxx
Sabir can not leave and doesn’t want to: she says that if they send her back to her country she will either be imprisoned during 5 years or killed by her family. She is asking for help to prevent this deportation. She is still expecting the result of her asylum request but they are going to deport her anyway!! See her story here below.
Let’s meet at the Zaventem airport at 4.30 on April 17th to speak to the passengers of the KLM flight to Amsterdam. Friends will be in Amsterdam to speak to the passengers of the flight to Abu Dhabi.
Send email, fax or phone:
KLM in the Netherlands mediarelations@klm.com,https://www.facebook.com/KLM?ref=ts&fref=ts Blijf ze bellen. 020-5459780 KLM NV Persvoorlichters Corporate Communicatie Mediarelaties (AMS/DR) Postbus 7700 1117 ZL Luchthaven Schiphol Tel.: +31 (0) 20 649 45 45 Fax: +31 (0) 20 648 80 92 KLM belge tel 070222466, 070225335,FAX 070222480KLM
Et à nos responsables de cet assassinat – Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
PPrime Minister Charles Michel
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52 e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
Monsieur Jan Jambon Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: kabinet.jambon@ibz.fgov.be
and
Mr Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Tél: 02 206 14 21 – theo.francken@n-va.be , kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
——————————————————————————————————————–
This 04/15/2015 at 17 hours, Ms. Sabir Nosheen , a pakistani from Peshawar, was taken away from her closed center in Bruges where she was imprisoned since November 2014, and was put in isolation. She was informed about a flight in two days! She was also informed that she would be transferred to the detention center Caricole the 16.04.2015 at 7:00 for her expulsion the next day!
These are her friends from the center who have warned us . They are very shocked . They believed , because of the way they came to take her (” take your stuff, give us your telephone, you are leaving…. “) that she was going to be expelled immediately.
An application for asylum is pending. The Immigration Office said that the response of the CGRA ( Office of the Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless persons) will “fall” tomorrow and that, after that, a flight is scheduled tomorrow in case the answer is negative. The lawyer intends to appeal against a negative answer, but these actions are not always suspensive of eviction.
It seems that the embassy refused to issue a laissez-passer for this lady.
The Office can be very determined and effective and seems to find pleasure in deporting to hell, or even death.
For our very lady it would be extremely risky to return in his country, she fled an arranged marriage against the will of her parents.
Let us be alert and attentive !!!!!!!!!!!!!! .
If there would be an attempt of eviction, that would be the Friday 17.04 at 6:15 in the morning to Amsterdam, flight KL1720, and then KL 437 at 11:35 to Abu Dhabi !
A petition is on internet and a press release was issued on 07.04.2015 by Amnesty International following a first threat of eviction on 08 /04/ 2015, expressing ” serious concerns regarding the situation of the Pakistani girl . ”
Here the petition with the story of Ms. Sabir Nosheen !
8th April 2015
They are in love and are expecting a happy event. They naturally decided to get married. The date had been set to April 17th 2015. They were convened for an ‘interview’ this morning, 8th of April 2015, at 9 a.m.
On the street, near the town hall, an unmarked car drives close to them, with a revolving light. Four men in plain clothes get out of the car and take the future husband away. They take him and disappear.
The woman, extremely shocked, goes to meet the magistrate.
Indeed, the latter confesses that he was part of the ‘kidnapping’ plot, but that he did so for her own sake only, to ‘avoid her doing something wrong’.
The woman is 39 years old, she already has a 5 years old daughter (who witnessed the kidnapping of her second dad) and she tells us that she is mature enough to take her own decisions and that this decision belongs to her anyway!
No one would tell her where they took her future husband away. His crime: being undocumented!
The identifications andthecollaborationsare underway, thecamps arethere,and the planesare ready, “ for our safety“
Mr A, detained for several months in several closed centres, has spent 15 days in the secured wing of Vottem. He finally released with an “Order to Leave the Territory without delay”.
Audiotestimony here (Fr) You are in the secured wing, the ‘green wing’ as they call it in the closed centre of Vottem, ‘a prison within the prison’.
No, it is worse than that Madam, I know prison, in a prison you have several privileges; you may go for a walk with the other detainees, you are alone in your cell, you can’t really feel that you are being watched 24 hours a day.
Every hour, they come to switch on the light
I will tell you how it is like in the cell.
Here in the cell, everything is shielded, even the television is shielded. There is a mirror in one corner, the guards may see where you exactly are through a small booth in the corner. Every evening and every hour at night they switch on the light. Every hour they come and switch on the light, since the very first day. They say “sorry, but it is our job, we must check every hour if you are in your bed or not by switching on the light. We have to watch.’ It is psychologically exhausting, you wake up every hour, you sleep, you wake up, you sleep, you wake up again…
It is just to annoy you. Your cell seems normal but everything is shielded, you have no contact with anyone. Everybody is locked up. The guards walk around with the keys. You can not even feel the air circulating in the cells. Windows are locked with keys too. They only open them a bit in the evening.
Alone with three guards
As for the rest, they ask you if you want to go out for one hour walk. You either say yes or no. But, going out with three guards who are watching you all the time, you don’t want that, you feel like someone dangerous, alone with three guards. Apart from that, they come to bring you food like to anyone else, with a trolley: would you like this or that, you either say yes or no.
Sharing is forbidden here
At 1 p.m. they come and ask you if you want to buy something. If you don’t have money, if you have a friend who wants to send you something, they say that it is sharing and that sharing is forbidden. I have the internal regulations in front of me, I read them, nowhere is sharing mentioned. But if you ask a guard, if you tell him ‘ok, I am undocumented, I don’t have a family here, I don’t have cigaretttes, I don’t have filters. And in another section there is someone, and even my neighbour in the green section who wants to give me something: they tell you ‘No Sir, sharing is forbidden here’. So, I am here in the closed centre, I can not move, I have no contact with anyone, I don’t have money, what can I do??
The guard tells me ‘if you want you can work’. What kind of work? ‘You clean the corridors and we give you one euro’.
So it means that I’ll work for a week in order to be able to pay me a pack of cigarettes with filters! If I want to smoke right now, one of my neighbours can give me a cigarette through the window, we could share. Even in prison it is not forbidden, Madam! No, they refuse. So, only through this they make you feel that you are a very dangerous person.
It is worse than in the prisons of St Gilles or Forest in Brussels. Sharing is not forbidden there. If someone sends you something, the guards check it first and then they give it to you. Here in the centre it is illegal! Why? to make you feel that you are dangerous.
They tell me: ‘We know that you have family outside’. Yes I do, but they don’t have any money! ‘Then you can work for one euro!’.
We’re going to hassle and fluster the guy
They play with your moral, they hassle you to push you to finally do something bad.
They use the people for whom they’ve tried for long to get a plane ticket and for whom they do not manage through the ambassador. So they try their best. They tell themselves that this guy we’re going to hassle him and fluster him so that he signs the papers, until he says Ok I want to leave…’. This cell is the worst, it is worse than a prison, without cigarettes, with nothing… You may ask for anything, the answer is always no.
Like small children…
Sometimes they say that you may go for one hour in the offices where there is a Playstation and a babyfoot. But whom are you going to play with? For one hour you feel handicapped, with a woman wearing a very tight jeans and a tight t-shirt in front of you, and you think you’re going to play Playstation or babyfoot alone? Just like small children… Morally, you can feel they consider you like a small kid. Honestly, since I have been here I did not got out, no walk, nothing, I don’t want to. Because if I do it hurts me even more. I can see the people passing by etc and it hurts me, sometimes I really feel useless.
Sometimes they give you a lighter in your cell, they hand it to you, and this is a real problem.
In the sections where there are 50 persons, there is only one lighter that is underneath the cameras, which means that it is being watched by the guards. No one may go to their cell with a lighter. And here in your cell there is a special lighter for you, why so? well, they hassled you so much, you are so nervous and you have a lighter in your cell, you’re going to burn your mattress and: goal! you are now a dangerous person…
How many people are there in the green wing?
Normally they are 8 people.
One has been there for 7 months. Another one for 3 weeks, another one for one month and a half. I have noticed that there are 3 Tunisians here. They are asking for let passes for Tunisians and it can take 4 or 5 months. That is why they detain them here, to annoy them (to finally have them accepting a ‘voluntary return’).
What I understood is that they want someone to make a big fuss here one day so that they can add in there file that they are dangerous.
I have spent 12 days here and I have had enough. I am starting to have nightmares, I even start to get angry with guards who are nice to me… I feel obliged to speak to myself at night. At 2 a.m. I am still here, the window is closed, I need a cigarette.
For the people here, the situation is really crazy…
I understood that they play with the moral of the people for them to bring chaos here, so that their file says they are dangerous…
UPDATE: 7 April 2015 A lot of calls from the closed centres. Many people are placed in solitary confinement, sometimes for several days. Others are transferred from one centre to the other. Intimidation and threats are ongoing. The solution for loads of the detainees is to be as discreet as possible, to remain silent and to wait with fear. All the centres are full. A demonstration of hundreds of people is taking place in Brussels, in memory of the two migrants who died because of this murderous migration policies.
4 April 2015 Update Merksplas: several detainees placed in solitary confinement have been transferred to other centres. Two of them still are in solitary confinement in Merksplas.
127bis: They stopped their hunger strike because of the long Easter week-end. A lot of incidents and tensions in the centre. This Saturday, a rumour said that journalists and support would come to speak to them during their walk from 1 to 3 p.m. They waited but in vain. The management is investigating to find the ‘leaders’.
O3/04/2015
Following the suicide by hanging in the closed centre in Merksplas and following the announcement today by the prosecution service of the death by immolation of the young Guinean at Fedasil, followiong an attempt of hunger strike in Merksplas that was nipped in the bud by the solitary confinement of a dozen of ‘killjoy’, all the detainees of the 127bis closed centre have started a hunger strike today, April 3rd 2015.
They are claiming for FREEDOM. They keep repeating that no one may be imprisoned without a trial and only for a piece of paper. They are denouncing the racism that is prevailing in the centre. They want to denounce the imprisonment of certain codetainees who are seriously ill and should be taken care of in a hospital.
Prisoners are speaking of committing suicide in turn, anger is huge. Some are complaining about their lack of access to a lawyer, that social assistants are delaying the procedures and let them intentionally with no means of defence so that in the end they will not be able to avoid deportation. Several groups supporting undocumented migrants are on the alert and they are organising demonstrations in Brussels to protest against these murderous migration policies.
The Belgian State want to chase the criminals? They’d better start with themselves (and leave the rest of the world in peace)!
SUICIDE AT THE CLOSED CENTRE IN MERKSPLAS
A Moroccan man who had been detained in the closed centre of Merksplas for two months was found dead this morning by his codetainees of block n°4. He hanged himself.
It had been a week already since he hadn’t fed himself and he was not feeling well at all.
The management of the closed centre tried to calm the situation, even to play the matter down. The man had left a letter that the management refused to show to the detainees. The latter are furious with this censorship and accuse the centre because no one intervened while they perfectly knew that the man was feeling very bad and that he was not feeding himself anymore.
They refuse to eat today April 2nd 2015 and ask for contacts with the outside, especially with journalists.
« They treat us like animals”.
« Nobody worries about us”.
« He was right. There is no solution, I also want to die!”
Since 1 p.m. the detainees of Merksplas no longer answer the phone… to be continued…
IMMOLATION IN FRONT OF THE FOREIGNERS OFFICE
This morning also, at the headquarters of FEDASIL in the Foreigners Office, a man set fire to himself.
This Guinean man, 25 years old, had introduced his request in 2008.
He headed to the place around 11 a.m. He went to the toilet, he sprayed himself with essence and came out in fire.
He is still alive but in a very critical condition, his days are numbered.
One year ago already, a dead body was discovered in strange and shady circumstances. As regards immolations, it must have been at least the third attempt since one year.
That is how the world is rotten and twisted.
That is how bureaucracy has the authority over people’s life and death. That is how Belgium (and all her EU colleagues) grabs hundreds of thousands of people by the throat. She grabs them by the throat, bleeds themselves dry to get a single euro (215 euros per regularisation request), treats them like cattle for a cost-effective productivity (who can still believe that the State doesn’t take advantage of undeclared work??), squeezes the very last drop out of them, spins their head on the citrus press while injecting them a very deep and constant fear. Day after day, year after year, each second passing by brings the fear of being controled, arrested, imprisoned, deported, tortured, murdered… When each seconds brings all this, how not to go nuts? Besides, all this psychological torture, all this misery, all this pressure those people have to go through is just to obtain a piece of paper.
That is how the world is decayed and twisted. It is a simple stamp on a sheet of paper (with all the repressive state apparatus mingled in the ink of that stamp) that will grant or not the right to breathe rather than to suffocate, the right to live rather than to survive.
And if one wants to take fresh air by themselves, like the two detainees of Vottem who tried to escape last night, they directly bring you to solitary confinement.
How could one be surprised that people are not cracking in the middle of all this?
The time for astonishment is over, it is time for anger now.
Loads of calls from Steenokkerzeel, Bruges, Vottem
Loads of different stories, sometimes shocking.
A lot of hatred, a lot of tears, and tiny or huge rebellions nipped in the bud.
A lot of intimidation and repression: don’t know anything about vegeterians. You open your mouth: solitary confinement. You try to speak with your codetainees: solitary confinement! You argue with someone: solitary confinement!
Inexplicable detentions only, each one having their reason to be here, to stay here, each one wanting to ‘live’.
Some have been detained for weeks, some even for months.
White ” Marriage, “Black” Work, “criminal”, “fals” asylum: any reason is worth imprisonment, oppression, breaking.
Any release in front of a court is denied; the Office systematically appealing any decision by a court in order to keep you warm in the closed centre while waiting for…..! It’s good for the figures, it’s good for the voters.
If you can not get a laissez passer, they keep you while waiting for…..
A Palestinian man has been detained for more than 4 months: they do not know where to send him back to, so in the meantime they keep him while waiting for…
A Rwandese man had come to visit his children. He didn’t request asylum, he wanted to sort out the situation of his children who are illegal here, and go back. He has been detained in Caricole for almost three months while waiting for…. (what?)
Several people are being detained in the secured wing in Vottem because they are sick or too ‘turbulent’, or because they rebel against these detentions. Therefore, they represent a ‘danger for the life in the centre’ and they are placed in ‘solitary confinement’. One of them has been in full confinement for more than 7 months; a real torture!
A woman has been detained in Bruges for 4 months for no specific reason.
A woman from Congo, six months pregnant, has been detained for almost 5 months! What a pregnancy! She will name her little boy ‘Caricole’!
Another Maroccan women in the same situation . They do’nt like pregnant woman!Her testimony here
There is a lot of Moroccan women. One of them has had a Spanish residence permit since 2008 ! The social assistant tells her that she’ll go back to Morocco and that there is nothing to discuss about!
Daily deportations, some of them forced, to a country where you’d better disappear: a political opponent was deported to the Ivory Coast, he is hiding there with his wife and lost everything here AND in his country. He has no future there anymore and considers coming back to Europe! His history here
And other news, always pleasant: the ‘Dublin’ people: men and women who were sent back to the Schengen country where they first landed to arrive here, they very quickly come back to us! Very nice encounters!
All that to say that we are overworked and that we need help! Solidarity for calls, transcriptions, …
Please send us an email if you are ready to give us a hand! Financial solidarity as well :
One of the problems we are confronted with is the requests by detainees to send them phone credit recharges. You may help those detainees by buying a 5 EUR recharge (Lycamobil) at your grocer’s, in a nightshop or papershop. You just have to send us the pin code indicated on the recharge to our email address gettingthevoiceout(a)riseup.net. We will then send the code to the detainees who need a recharge and it will help them keep the contact with us and the outside world.
You may also deposit or even better make a standing order of 2, 5, 10, 20 euros or more (!)on the account : Collectif Contre Les Expulsions Banque Triodos BE585230 8016 1279
Please spread the word to your friends and acquaintances, to all who might feel concerned!
After a long energetic march that gathered hundreds of people on 22/03/2015, and after moving speeches and testimonies, we headed to the grid of the centre where messages of solidarity with the prisoners can be transmitted and where some usually express their fury against these imprisonments.
But not this time: A series of drums had been placed in front of the grid. The drums made a dreadful noise during the whole length of the gathering, preventing any shouting, any slogan or any approach to the grid. We stayed there, as stupid as one can be in front of unexpected situations, saying nor doing nothing…
Were these drums that had been placed in a strategic point a disguised censorship? Or were they a wrong calculation by the people with the best intentions who had not understood that there were prisoners behind these grids, and that people had come there to express their outrage with the detainees, and not to listen to the drums masking all the messages that each and everyone wanted to share?
Bands (such as samba) in demonstrations are often very helpful: for the atmosphere, the motivation, diversion… and this because the bands pay attention to the people surrounding them, intensifying and feeding the different actions and reactions. Unfortunately, this principle apparently didn’t inhabit the steady drums’ band who wanted to show off until the last demonstrator had left the place, not leaving a single space for anger, for exchange with the prisoners or even among the demonstrators. It was called to stop playing to listen to the speeches and testimonies foreseen by the organisers, but when the demonstration could have taken another step, where it would have been possible to enter in contact with the detainees, to show solidarity and rage, a group of brave troubadours interfered to play a role that is usually played by henchmen!
Little by little, people left, some probably very happy that everything happened smoothly, others very frustrated because they were not allowed to express themselves. The chemical fire engines etc left the place, happy to be released so quickly, happy that they could count on very efficient show and order intermittents.
From inside the centre, text and distress messages went on.
Text message: Thank you to all, but here no detainee could do anything because the guards threatened us with solitary confinement if we dared say anything.
Inside: repression and threats; outside: censorship.
The grid that the drummers prevented us to reach had already been mistreated several times (for the last 16 years during gatherings against the closed centre) , even broken after strong shots by noisy demonstrators. This grid will remain the symbol (or target?) of this demonstration despite censorship and sabotage.
THE FIGHT GOES ON, LET’S DESTROY CLOSED CENTRES, LONG LIVE FREEDOM!
International solidarity with the detainees on hunger strike in the United Kingdom’s detention centres
Currently, hundreds of persons are on hunger strike in more than half of the UK’s detention centres. It is the biggest insurrection against the racist detention system in the UK since the last decade.
The detainees call for FREEDOM AND JUSTICE.
Demonstrations of solidarity happen daily around these centres.
To put international pressure on the British government, we need you to show your solidarity: demonstrate in front of British embassies, high commissions and consulates in your countries.
Undertake actions EVERYWHERE!
Gathering in Liège, Espace Tivoli (Place Saint-Lambert) from 2 p.m.
The measures announced by the Secretary of State for Asylum and Immigration Théo Franken, and the current government are once again stigmatising foreigners. The discourse is very clear: asylum and residence permits seekers are fraudsters, they sould be penalised and dissuaded. On the agenda: hunt for cohabitations and mariages of convenience, creation of 100 places more in closed centres, forecasting of 1,000 forced repatriations more per year with a collective flight each month, limitation of the number of asylum requests that may be introduced, etc.
And above all, creation of new wings in the 127bis closed centre to imprison again families with children; which did not exist since 2009, and this although Belgium has already been condemned three times by the European Court of Human Rights for the detention of minors.
Closed centres remain prisons that hide their names; they exert daily violence towards the people who are detained in them. Indeed, the detention aims at breaking the opposition to deportation. This violence reaches its peak when the person is brought to the plane: handcuffed, tied up, blows, insults, etc. Complaints have been lodged.
Since July 2014, following a decision by the former government, a ‘special’ wing has been opened for detainees considered as ‘unmanageable’: those who rebel, those who come out of jail who get a dual penalty, sick people who should be taken care of in relevant institutions, etc. This section enables to maintain people in isolation for weeks without rules; it is a kind of hidden cell, a prison inside the prison.
More than ever, let’s remind our claims and support the undocumented who resumed fighting for their dignity!
No more closed centres for foreigners Immediate stop of deportations For an asylum and migration policy that supports human rights For a regularisation of the undocumented
Warning : Francken’s targets for the coming weeks will be North-Africans, mainly Moroccans.
Mr Francken, alias the anti migration Minister, will soon visit his counterparts in Morocco. He will keep his promises and prepare the deportation of our Moroccans with a lot of media attention!
After the ‘criminals’, the Albanians and the Kosovars, it is now the turn of Moroccans. According to Eurostat, there were 2,970 Moroccans residing illegally in Belgium in 2013.
His strategy consists in chosing a specific population, imprison them, go on a little journey to their country of origin in order to meet his counterparts, announce a deportation charter flight wih much fanfare, insisting on the fact that most of them are criminals! To go faster and get more he sent a letter to Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons Mr Dirk Van Den Bulckof in which he asks to expand the list of “safe” countries. The files of asylum seekers from Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Senegal, Cameroon and Tunisia would therefore now be processed within 15 days.
But if his wish is to empty our country of all these foreigners, it is in vain! He will need dozens or even hundreds of charter flights to do that, since other ‘foreigners’ come and will keep coming!
All this noise would be part of a strategy to gain popularity with his electorate and assert the crude radicalism by the NVA. This is an intolerable way to stir up hatred in designating these foreigners! It is manipulation of public opinion.
It seems, according to rumours among the instances, that Mr Francken’s unilateral decisions are not too well appreciated. But no one speaks!
The fight goes on on the street and in the closed centres!
Other news
The arrests of Moroccans seem to happen mainly on the street, sometimes by police in plaincothes, sometimes by the federal police.
Caricole :
A lot of whereabouts, a lot of arrests at the airport, sometimes extremely aberrant.
A few examples:
-an 84 years old woman,
-a woman more than 8 months pregnant,
-a couple visiting their parents who have been living in Belgium for 30 years who got rejected and repatriated because they didn’t have any hotel booking!
Some have been there for months and one is wondering why!?
-A man in transit at the airport was arrested with a Spnaish residence permit in order and he has now been detained for one month, without knowing what they are preparing for him.
-A woman almost 6 months pregnant has been detained for 4 months. She already had to go through 2 deportation attempts and introduced another asylum request since the CCE rejected the negative decision by the CGRA on her previous asylum request.
-A Cameroonian man who has been living in Belgium for 5 years was deported with violence to Spain, being placed in the so-called ‘Dublin’ category. When in Spain, he got a document certifying that he is not ‘Dublin’ and that Spain may not accept his asylum request! He must leave the Spanish territory!
127bis :
A lot of people, mainly North-Africans.
A man was released after 5 months at the 127 bis. The Court of Appeal asked for his release because of a let pass that would be fake, cheated by the Foreigners Office! For once, the Office did not appeal the release decision, which is strange! This is what we call forgery and use of forged documents!
About the mysteries of migration policies:
A collective flight happened on 26th February, says Francken, with 8 Kosovars. Other information had reached us that dozens of Albanians had been brought to the 127bis and taken on a bus to the airport on the same day! Seen the lack of information on this second flight, it could have been a collective Frontex flight; Frontex that are usually really discreet and lack transparency.
During two weeks, two wings of the 127bis centre remained empty with no special reason, no works, no arrangements, nothing.
There are no women in the 127bis centre anymore. No one knows what’s behind this decision. They now are at the closed centres in Bruges and in Caricole.
And how is it that you lose track of a person until the day you learn that she was evicted?
A little Belgian story
Mr Larbaoui, of French nationality and deported to Algeria after having spent 15 years in Belgian prisons and 5 months at the closed centre in Vottem went to the Belgian consulate in Algiers where the consul told him that “there is no trace of your presence in Belgium”.
They are around a hundred to walk 14 km to the closed centre in order to protest againt the imprisonment of some of their friends in the closed centres.
The call had been launched by MRAX and the Front des Migrants.
Once on the spot,the usual police cordon, reinfored by the robocops seen the pressure of the demonstrators and their strong will to get close to the entrance of the centre. Forbidden to go further than the first wing of the centre. Intimidation by the police in number and their dogs.
Inside, detainees had prepared a banner and tried to communicate. Inside the centre, the guards did everything possible to avoid the communication between the demosntrators and the detainees.
Many undocumented were extremely moved, there were men and women crying.
After two hours of shouting and singing, they walked 14km again to the centre of town!
We are disappointed by the little support, apart from the usual people present during this very bold adventure by the undocumented!
DESTRUCTION OF THE CLOSED CENTRES8
Stop to the repression on all!
Solidarity?! It concerns us all!
Reminder: yearly demonstration at the Vottem closed centre in Liège on March 22nd 2015
Mass protest inside Harmondsworth immigration detention centre
8 March 2015, 7.25pm
e: detaineesriseup@riseup.net
More than 200 people detained in Harmondsworth immigration detention centre are mobilising a hunger strike from 8.00am tomorrow, following a noise demonstration inside the centre today.
They are protesting for an end to:
• indefinite deprivation of liberty and human rights
• the use of “Detained Fast Track” [1]
• bias and incompetence in case-handling by the Home Office
• unlawful forced removals
• stressful and degrading conditions which they describe as “mental torture” and which lead many to self-harm
• overcrowded accommodation “comparable to animal cages”
• refusals to return those who want to go back to their countries of origin
Similar protests have taken place this week by women inside Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre. The resistance follows this week’s release of undercover film footage of Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth by Channel 4 [2], and a parliamentary inquiry report into detention [3].
One protester said of the treatment by Harmondsworth staff: “It’s like we are animals. They are not giving us help or proper food. if anyone came inside and see conditions here they would see and release us.” Another said detention was “mentally torturing” them.
Protesters say staff are threatening them with prison if they do not stop protesting.
“It is a clear signal that the only good way to come and settle in our country is the legal way”, highlighted M. Francken in a press release!………………….
An 84 years old woman was arrested in the evening of the 1st of March 2015 at Brussels airport. She came from Montenegro to greet for the last time her children and grand-children who are living and some of them were even born in Belgium! She had never left her country before.
She was questioned for long by the airport police, they suspected her of being a ‘terrorist’ and accused her of illegal immigration. Actually, she did not have a return ticket because the family was hoping to find a last minute ticket for her return foreseen in one month! It would partly be for that reason that our authorities are speaking of ‘illegal immigration’ and ‘terrorism’. She was brought to the Caricole closed centre!
At the airport, every day, dozens of people are being arrested and imprisoned for they are suspected of ‘illegal immigration’. Some are only in transit at Brussels airport, others have a ‘suspicious’ visa, others a ‘suspicious’ passport, others a ‘suspicious’ face, others do not yet have a return ticket, others introduce an asylum request. They are questioned by the airport police, sometimes without translators, and are arrested on the basis of a very subjective appreciation and brought, handcuffed, to a closed centre in view of a rapid organised repatriation!
After 24 hours, the woman was released following heavy pressure on politicians, announcements to the media, and a notice by the doctor of the Caricole centre!
Audio here: A_arrivée_madrid_25fev_(FR) -How are you?
I am not fine -Where are you now?
I am in Madrid, the policemen, they killed me, they hit me a lot! They were 10 policemen on me, 10!
They were 3 policemen who took me on the plane to Madrid, 3 policemen.
Ten policemen took me to the plane, ten! They hit me before, they tied me up the two feet, they tied me up the two hands, tied me up in the plane. No one protested, no one! I screamed and screamed and there was no one! And when I was screaming, they lowered down my head until they hurt my back, as if my back would break. I have never seen that. The policemen from Spain… it’s the policemen from Spain who carried me. They gave me a paper, I must leave the Spanish territory in 15 days.
Let’s prevent a second deportation attempt (under escort!) to the Ivory Coast on February 27th 2015!
Achille Gnapi is an Ivorian political opponent against the current regime. He had to flee the country with all his family because their lives were threatened. Some are in Ghana under subsidiary protection, another one introduced an asylum request in China.
Achille arrived to Belgium at the end of 2006 and requested asylum. After his 4th request that had been rejected for a denial of his refugee status, an appeal had been introduced to the Aliens Litigation Council (ALC). The appeal was reviewed on January 29th 2015 by the ALE, despite the fact that neither the lawyer nor M. Gnapi had been warned on time about that audience.
The same day, he got an order to leave the territory for the Ivory Coast whilst the answer by the ALE had not been given yet. His return has been planned for Saturday January 31st at 2 p.m. M. Gnapi refused this deportation attempt.
The situation of so-called ‘pro-Gbagbo’ political prisoners in the Ivory Coast is extremely tricky and was the subject of many reports by ONG such as HRW, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL and even the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, which all conclude to inhuman and degrading treatments, and to a justice of the ‘winners’ that are targeting only one camp.
Since his asylum request was rejected, after his return M. Gnapi may be faced with serious prejudices hardly difficult to remedy.
Report by Amnesty drafted in 2013, called ‘the winners’ law’ which denounces the repression political opponents (or any other person deemed to be one) are being submitted to :
A second deportation attempt to the Ivory Coast has been planned for Friday February 27th. Departure from Zaventem at 11.35 a.m.
His friends and family refuse that Achille be expelled, giving evidence of all the obvious dangers he may incur in the Ivory coast.
Let’s meet this Friday February 27th at the airport at 9.30 a.m. to warn the passengers about the likely presence of Achille and his escort at the back of the plane.
Flight SN255 to Abidjan at 11.35 a.m.
Fax and email campaign to the contributors and responsible for this deportation:
and the people responsible for these decisions:
– Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
Premier ministre Charles Michel
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52 e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
Monsieur Jan Jambon Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: secretariaat.kabinet@ibz.fgov.be
and to
Monsieur Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et
la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Tél: 02 206 14 21 – theo.francken@n-va.be
Update02/24/2015: Many newcomers, all Albanian,in the detention center127bis. We do not knowexactlywhere they comefrom? And what wehave cometoknow: The majority of peoplelocked in theCRAinCalais andLilleare from Albanie: FrontexJointdeportation?
Update 23/02/2015 : 42Albaniansregistered for theflight, butfor the moment noAlbaniansinthe127bisbut manyfree sites! There are somealbanesenin otherdetention centers.They shouldbe moved tothe detention centerin the coming days. One questionremains:Frontexflight?
Be careful: yetpossiblearrestsfor this flight
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AND FOUR!
Following the mass deportation of 38 Albanians on 17th December 2014, the Frontex flight expelling 50 Albanians from Europe on 29th January 2015- among whom 8 from Belgium, and the mass flight expelling 8 Albanians from our country on 30th January 2015, we are being informed that a new mass deportation is planned on Thursday 26th of February 2015. Read here
it seems very clear that these mass deportations only are window dressing, other candidates are on the road to join their friends or families in Europe and to look for a better life. 10 gone, 100 found back!
It is to be noted that the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel has been emptied of one part of its residents one week ago during the week-end of the march Brussels-Antwerp and that many places still are ‘available’!
12/02/2015
Mr A is Cameroonian. He has been living in Belgium for 5 years. He is seriously ill and went through two serious throat surgeries. He still has difficulties to speak. The Office want to send him back to Spain. (Dublin).http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2015/02/08/31490223.html
He went through a second deportation attempt on the 9th of February 2015. He refused again and was beaten by the police at the airport.
Here is the transcription of Mr A’s interview on 12/02/2015.
How is it going on with the doctor now at the Caricole centre?
When I arrived to Caricole, I had a medical card which proves that I had a surgical operation and was hospitalised. I have all the papers, all the evidence, and I showed them at the Caricole. I told them that I am disabled, that I should not be here normally because I got a surgery. They didn’t take it into consideration. They left me here, and when they tried to expel me to Spain, I resisted. The policemen beat me, they trampled over my neck, my head and my chest, where I got the surgery. They sent me back to Caricole. No doctor took care of me. The day after (10th of February), I asked to see a doctor, I consulted one and told him everything, how I was beaten at the airport. The doctor didn’t give me anything to relieve the pain. Hence, since Monday I haven’t even eaten because the pain was too strong. The same for today, I tried to eat but this morning I had too much pain so I couldn’t eat. Since they beat me on Monday, it is only yesterday that the doctor gave me pain killers. I have been living here (in Belgium) for 5 years, I follow my treatment here, I had two surgeries. I don’t know anything about Spain. Why do they want to expel me to Spain? If they beat me to bring me there, it means that when I arrive there they will perhpas already have arranged everything for people to kill me? I don’t know what to think.
Do you also see a social assistant in the centre?
I asked to see one yesterday but I didn’t see any. She didn’t pass by to check the situation, to see how I was since I have been back from the airport. When I arrived to the centre, they told me that if I had a problem, if I was sick or anything I could go and see her. But she never came since I’ve been back from the airport. I asked to meet her yesterday but I was not allowed to.
Did you tell the doctor that you would like someone from outside the centre to come and consult you?
They refused. Some people are telling you that you are cured, that you may go back, but it is not true! If they can beat you and after three days no one comes to consult you it simply means that they want you to die. Since how many days have I been beaten at the airport, explained everything to the doctor etc… they didn’t give me any medicine. They did not give me anything, it means that they don’t care, they absolutely don’t care!! I suffer so much…
Update 13/02/2015: Martine has been deported. She landed in Kinshasa this afternoon on an Ethiopian Airlines flight departing from Amsterdam. She was brought to the hospital. She is exhausted and broken into pieces. She was tied and gagged at every deportation attempt during three days. Other info on this deportation and the obstinacy of the Office will follow.
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Update : 12/02 16 h: Martine would currently be at Schiphol airport where she had to go through new deportation attempts. It seems that they were surrounded with violence. She would have to be brought back to Belgium. LET’S CLAIM MARTINE’s RELEASE!
——————————————————————————————————–
Update : 12/02/ 2015: Martine would always be ‘on the point to be deported”. No one got news from her, neither in Kinshasa nor in Brussels. It’s been 48 hours that we lost track of her.
Update 11/02/2015 1 p.m. According to the media info, Martine would be brought back to Belgium after a turbulent stopover in Paris. However, we lost track of Martine. At the closed centre, his boyfriend was told that she was placed on an Ethiopian Airlines flight! To be noted also in the article: the lies of the Foreigners Office: Martine was in the process of being regularised following a cohabitation demand with her boyfriend. She was studying at a nursing school and had been living in Belgium for 5 years.
A young woman named Martine had to be deported this Tuesday 10th of February 2015 on a flight to Kinshasa. She revolted on the plane and several passengers supported her and were taken out of the plane by the police. They currently all are at the airport prison. The police have apparently foreseen another flight for Martine tonight or tomorrow.
Here are some news from the situation in the centres. The number of deportations is huge, so are the refusals to be deported, hence the privilege to benefit from a second, third, or even fourth deportation attempt, under escort and with violence !
On a less negative note, it is to be noted that some detainees were released or even escaped !
Dublin
– A Syrian woman detained since January 20th 2015 should be expelled (Dublin3) to Spain. She has family here and knows no one in Spain. She was in Belgium for four months. Following the bombings she lived in Syria, she is now traumatised by planes, be it inside a plane or by the planes that constantly fly over the closed centre. She is sick and traumatised.
– A Cameroonian man who is seriously ill went through his second deportation attempt to Spain. He had surgery several times here in Belgium where he has been living for several years. He still needs a lot of care. He was beaten during this second deportation attempt and is now in a very bad state! http://regularisation.canalblog.com/archives/2015/02/08/31490223.html
Four pregnant women at the 127bis closed centre
– One of them has been living in Belgium for five years. They tried to expell her for the second time : 12 police men took it out on her in her cell at the airport : blackmail, intimidation, insults, harrassment. They finally brought her back to the centre. ‘It was real torture ‘, she said.
– Another Moroccan asylum-seeker, three months pregnant, feels dizzy and bleeds. They took her to the hospital but when coming back to the centre, the centre’s doctor refused to give her the prescribed medicine because he thought she had written the prescription herself.
Double penalty
Two imprisoned men are telling us : ‘They came to pick us up in prison to bring us to the airport with no prior warning. We refused because both of us have children here’.
They tried to deport one of them two days later but it was cancelled thanks to the fast intervention by a lawyer. The second one will have a second deportation attempt with escort on February 17th. He will refuse it.
Asylum request
A man from the Ivory Coast may have huge problems in case of deportation, as an opponent to the current regime in his country. The CGRA does not believe him, he already went through two deportation attempts. His whole family fled the regime. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/against-the-use-of-local-administrations-by-the-immigration-office-en/
– A young Congolese woman has been detained for almost 4 months. She has been living in Belgium for 5 years and was in the process of cohabiting with her boyfriend. She had a miscarriage at the beginning of her detention in the centre. She already had to go through two deportation attempts and her third one is underway !http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/mais-ou-est-martine-plus-de-nouvelles-depuis-48-heures/
– Another man has been at the closed centre for 4 months. He went through two deportation attempts and the third one to his ‘country of origin’ is planned for February 16th.
A few words by detainees -‘You implement dictatorships in our countries to steal our wealth and still you are welcomed, but here we are unwanted. This can not go on like this. One day we will all kick you out !’ – ‘There is no more humanity at your place. Well done Belgium, the capital of Europe !’ -‘You go and give lessons elsewhere, but you violate human rights in your own country !’ -‘Law is NOT the same for everyone.’ -‘Did you say Freedom of movement and settlement ? It might be the case for you, but certainly NOT for us !’
Achille Gnapi is an Ivorian political opponent to the current regime. He had to flee the country with his family because their lifes were threatened. Some of them are now in Ghana under subsidiary protection, another one requested asylum in China.
Achille came to Belgium at the end of 2006 to request asylum. After his 4th request which had been refused because his status of refugee had been questioned, an appeal had been introduced in front of the Aliens Litigation Council (ALC). The appeal was reviewed by the latter on January 29th 2015, despite the fact that neither the lawyer nor M. Gnapi had been noticed on time about this hearing.
On the same day, he got an order to leave the territory for the Ivory Coast, although the ALC had not yet reacted on it. His return had been planned for Saturday January 31st at 2 p.m. M. Gnapi refused this second deportation attempt.
The situation of so-called ‘pro-Gbagbo’ political prisoners in the Ivory Coast is one of the trickiest and it was the object of many NGO reports such as HRW, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL and even the Special UN Rapporteur on Human Rights, which all concluded to inhuman and degrading treatments, and to a justice of the ‘winners’ that only targets one and only camp.
The return of M. Gnapi as rejected asylum seeker might cause severe or irreversible harm.
Here is an excerpt of a report by Amnesty International drafted in 2013, entitled ‘the winners’ law’, which denounces the repression of political opponents (or any other person deemed as one):
‘These persons have been detained sometimes for long periods of time in detention centres not recognised as such, where many were victims of torture and mistreatments. Some of them were convicted, often on the basis of confessions extracted under duress, of an endless list of similar charges, notably offenses against national defense, attacks or plot against the State authority and constitution of armed bands. Others were released without charges after several weeks of arbitrary detention and sometimes after having paid ransoms to their jailers.’ http://www.amnesty.org/fr/library/asset/AFR31/001/2013/fr/028f70d7-8f37-4a40-ad71-71c9e8369a41/afr310012013fr.pdf
He will have been at the Bruges closed centre for 4 months and a half. When being asked about what happens in the centre, here is what he answers: ‘Here, you have no right, you are always wrong because you are a prisoner, a foreigner. This destroys your mind.’
His family and acquaintances refuse that Achille be deported, all testifying about the obvious dangers he’ll be exposed to in the Ivory Coast.
Once again, the Foreigners Office and the Commissionner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA) abuse a power of life and death over the people, seeing to it that they are totally destroyed.
Between the children deprived of their mother, the Congolese doomed to the same fate as M. Gnapi, M. Larbaoui with is double penalty that became a triple and even a quadruple penalty, between all those people who tried to commit suicide in the closed centres and those who succeeded, between those who died when going back home like Aref, a young Afghan… the Foreigners Office and the CGRA are not yet at the end of their accomplishments.
After the 12 escapes on January 7th 2015, other detainees gave it a try again.
On Monday February 2nd 2015, five detainees escaped through the window at night. Two of them managed to regain freedom whereas the other three were less lucky and got caught.
On February 5th, one detainee took advantage of an error of the guards and passed the portal that they had opened by mistake. Unfortunately, he got caught by the police.
The European Union just released the results of Mos Maiorum, a huge raid operation carried out by 27 countries throughout Europe between October 13th and 26th under the supervision of FRONTEX. More here.
The report by the Council of Europe is available here (in English)
In total, 19,234 people were arrested, controlled and questioned during this operation whose objective was to gather various information on immigrants and ‘new migration routes’ so as to strenghten anti immigration policies. 257 people considered as ‘smugglers’ were also arrested.
More than 6,002 controls took place these last two weeks, among which 1,538 at the external borders, leading to the arrest of 9,890 people; and 4,464 inside the European territory, during which 9,344 people were arrested. The model pupils of the war against migrants are Italy (5,954 people controlled), Germany (3,683 people controlled), Hungary (3,075 people controlled), Austria (1,219 people controlled) and the United Kingdom (995 people controlled). Countries where the least controls took place were Latvia, Estonia and Switzerland (which doesn’t mean that they are more ‘welcoming’ than the others).
The number of people controlled is much more important than in previous operations: in 2013, during the Perkunas operation (two weeks in September-October) 10,459 people had been arrested, and in 2012, during the Aprhodite operation, 5,298.
A major part of the people arrested are coming from countries at war or in conflict; countries or regions where Western powers went and wreaked havoc over the past years in the name of capitalism or colonialist domination: Syria, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Erythrea, Somalia, etc. Today, a few thousands of refugees find themselves unwanted in Europe, chased by the police and living in disastrous conditions.
In France, 958 people were controlled, mainly from Syria, Erythrea and Albania (371 people). In Paris, a lot of controls were made around Gare du Nord where train depart for Calais and its region, border zone with England where loads of migrants are going to, hoping to cross the Channel or head towards the north of Europe.
Several initiatives around Europe tried to inform on this operation and sometimes to prevent it: spreading of multilingual flyers, putting up posters, gatherings, resistance to controls. An interactive map of the different controls was put in place, locating the control zones on the European level.
Mos Maiorum was of an exceptional nature due to the scale of the system, but raids happen daily all over Europe to fill detention centres and charter flights, and to prevent anyone to go where they want to, above all when coming from poor countries. Let’s hope that the soldiarity movements that arose in reaction to this operation will continue to build up and that we will be capable of blocking the deportation machine with concrete measures.
The Belgo-European deportation machine struck hard again this week. Europe has no frontiers whent it comes to racits policies and the hunt for immigrants.
Let’s remind in that context that Albania had introduced their application for membership to the European Union in 2009 but the status of official candidate was only recommended in October 2012. The reasons: “unstabilised democracy” and non-compliance with 12 points that the EU considered absolutely necessary. Among those, the judiciary and the fundamental rights; points for which (even) the EU considers that considerable efforts remain to be made. The same goes for the strand ‘Justice, freedom and security’. And if so says the EU… Would things have changed that radically in a few years?
FRONTEX: The flight took place on January 29th, coordinated and co-financed by the European Agency FRONTEX, deporting 50 people to Albania.
“French and German embassies: “Repatriations will continue”
After repatriating 50 Albanian citizens who had not respected the Schengen area rules, the German and French embassies published a joint press release, saying that their countries will not stop that process. The number of these joint repatriation flights has not been reduced, and, according to the declaration, it will not decrease because these citizens with illegal residence permits are trying to immigrate for economic reasons, which neither of these two countries can accept.
The declaration says that “the asylum request should not be misused. It is strictly reserved to the real political refugees. The refugee status will not be given for economic reasons”.The French and German embassies say they cannot accept that these procedures are avoided, since it damages most of the Albanian citizens, who respect them.” http://www.top-channel.tv/lajme/english/artikull.php?id=13484&ref=fp#.VMzK-mMWVWU
One thing to be noted is that subsidiary protection for example seems purely and simply non existent. Besides, it is not surprising to find out that States which are ready to spend billions to save banks refuse any collusion between economic and political reasons when it is about the life of immigrants.
They were gathered as usual at the 127bis closed centre on the days before, they were placed in solitary confinement and brought handcuffed under escort to the airport of Melsbroek to then take a military flight to Albania.
Francken, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Immigration in Belgium declares:
“Eight Albanian criminals accompanied by 16 police officers have been deported to Albania.”
In his communiqué, Francken adds juicy details on their perfect integration here: “the Albanians who were repatriated were living illegally in our country and they all had been involved in facts of burglary, shoplifting or offenses against honour” (see the excerpts of the article published in Het Laatste Niews here below).
We can see that they are again using a strategy of divide and rule: the good who respect the rules and the others, the bad, the ‘criminals’. We may incidentally wonder whether the use of the term ‘criminal’ is relevant. A crime being a breach of the law which usually requires more than 5 years imprisonment and depends on the criminal court?
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/922/Nieuws/article/detail/2201576/2015/01/31/Achterstand-in-dossiers-vreemdelingen-explodeert.dhtml
“Francken informs us, through Het Laatste Nieuws, that he allowed the departure of two charters to Tirana with ‘illegal Albanians’ on board. On Friday, an Embraer of the Belgian army landed in the Albanian capital city. On board, 8 Albanian criminals and 16 pollice officers. The repatriated Albanians were living illegally in our country and were all involved in facts of burglary, shoplifting or offences against honour. On Thursday also, the Foreigners Office put 8 illegal Albanians on a plane in view of their repatriation to their home country!’
After the collective flight organised on December 17th 2014 to deport 38 Albanians, a new collective expulsion to Albania has been planned for this Friday 30th of January.
But no worries, the future deported are mainly ‘criminals’; those who disturbed public order for various reasons… They were condemned by our courts and are the object of a second penalty: expulsion.
The double penalty:
« Article 20 of the law of December 15th 1980 on access to the territory, residence, establishment and expulsion of foreigners enables the explusion of immigrants who have seriously disturbed the public order.”
This measure is felt by many as a double penalty and in the years 2000 it gave rise to a lot of hectic debates, an awareness-raising campaign and actions on this topic:
Knowing Mr Francken and the Foreigners Office’s judgement capacities, it is obvious that for any person who was convicted by our courts one day of a ‘serious breach in public order’, their motto was “All out!”
Besides, no matter what the deported have built up here for 10 or 20 years, no matter if they leave a wife, a mother, a father, children and sometimes grandchildren behind, the Office and Francken brush that aside.
Knowing that public order equals tranquility of the richest and that being the ‘first, second and third generation, we all are potential double penalties’, the time is short before Belgium will have deported all its inhabitants!
And no financial worries:
These flights are paid 80% by the European Return Fund, dixit Mr Francken.
The European Return Fund is one of the four financial instruments of the general European programme called ‘Solidarity and Management of Migration Flows”.
Monsieur B. subira une deuxième tentative d’expulsion ce lundi 19 janvier à 16h40 sur le vol AT833 Bruxelles-Casablanca de Royal Air Maroc.
Rendez-vous donc à 15h00 à l’aéroport au check-in Royal Air Maroc!
ALERTE EXPULSION
Deuxième tentative ce lundi 19 janvier
pour Monsieur B, militant pour le peuple Sahraoui
Monsieur B, 37 ans, est en Belgique depuis 2007. Il a la nationalité marocaine mais vient de la région du Sahara Occidental. La situation de cette zone est très précaire, la violence réelle. Les Sahraouis sont mal considérés par les marocains. Monsieur B a fui le Maroc car il était actif dans des associations pour la paix au Sahara occidental. Il court donc de graves risques en rentrant là-bas.La répression des Sahsouiriens au Maroc est aveugle. Beaucoup se retrouvent en prison.
http://www.spsrasd.info/fr/content/la-police-marocaine-empêche-une-manifestation-pacifique-à-la-ville-d’el-aaiun-occupée
http://www.spsrasd.info/fr/content/un-prisonnier-politique-sahraoui-entame-une-gr%C3%A8ve-de-la-faim-0
Les autorités belges veulent le renvoyer à Casablanca, où il ne connait personne. Il a encore un peu de famille dans le sud du Maroc. Ces attaches sont ici en Belgique, où il vit depuis sept ans et où il a une compagne qu’il n’a pu épouser du fait de sa situation administrative.
Il a subi une première tentative d’expulsion vendredi dernier. La deuxième tentative est prévue pour ce lundi 19 janvier.
Il demande notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion !
1) RENDEZ-VOUS À L’AÉROPORT
Vol Royal Air Maroc AT833 Bruxelles-Casablanca de 16h40
Rendez-vous à 15h00 au check-in Royal Air Maroc
SOYONS NOMBREUX POUR PREVENIR LES PASSAGERS !
2) DENONCEZ L’EXPULSION
Campagne de téléphone, fax et mails aux responsables :
Royal Air Maroc
TEL : 027215050
FAX : 027256292
infobru@royalairmaroc.com
F. Roosemont
Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40
Charles Michel
Premier Ministre
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52
e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
Jan Jambon
Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur
Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: secretariaat.kabinet@ibz.fgov.be
Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et la Migration
Tél: 02 206 14 21 –
theo.francken@n-va.be
kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
In the night of 17th of January, three detainees tried to escape. They broke the windowns of their cell and found themselves in the courtyard, trying to climb the fences surrounding the centre. The guards called the police that arrived in force and arrested the fugitive before they managed to climb the fences. They were sent to solitary confinement. One of them was about to be deported, another had arrived to the centre several days before, and the third one would be a former convict of our national prisons.
Update 17/01:
S. was presumably deported but he DISAPPEARED. His family and friends in Belgium are extremely worried. They had given him all the means to recontact them as soon as he would reach Armenia. Since his deportation on January 13th 2015, S. hasn’t given any news to anyone. All the scenari can be imagnied seen the violence of those deportations, seen the fragility of the man, and also the welcome conditions in Armenia or the transit country, i.e. Russia! Calls must be launched to all the relevant authorities so as to clarify this disappearance, and S.’s friends are calling for help.
——————————————————————————————-
A l’image des politiques d’immigration aveugles, L’OE continue à harceler Monsieur S qui ne veut et ne peut pas retourner en Arménie. Il nous dit qu’il a moins peur de se faire maltraiter dans l’avion lors de sa prochaine expulsion que de se retrouver dans les hôpitaux psychiatriques en Arménie.
Il demande à nouveau notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion !
Vol SU 2169 vers Moscou ce mardi 13/01/2014 , 12h30
Et campagne de fax, mails aux responsables de ces expulsions assassines
Inonder les boites mail et fax des organisateurs de cette expulsion (adresses ci-dessous)avec ce message ou vos messages personnels pour protester contre l’expulsion de Monsieur S.
Mesdames, Messieurs,
Par cette lettre, je vous supplie d’interrompre la quatrième tentative d’expulsion de Monsieur S que vous allez essayer de déporter vers l’Arménie par le vol Vol SU 2169 vers Moscou ce mardi 13/01/2014 , 12h30 .
Monsieur S réside en Belgique depuis 2007. Il avait fui les hôpitaux psychiatriques d’Arménie où il avait subi les pires traitements à 6 reprises. Depuis qu’il est en Belgique, il a gardé un équilibre psychologique plus ou moins stable grâce à un environnement stabilisant. Il est évident qu’ une expulsion vers l’Arménie provoquera une décompensation psychiatrique grave et un retour dans son pays à des hospitalisations sous contrainte.
Des amis qui le connaissent bien nous disent :
« Nous estimons que S n’est pas quelqu’un de dangereux. Au contraire, il crée des liens sociaux positifs et se montrerait plus un défenseur des plus faibles, de l’environnement et de la nature (par exemple : de façon cachée, il nettoie les chemins de halage, …, de Charleroi). Il a un sens aigu de la justice et de l’injustice. Lorsque S peut se rendre utile et bénéficie de relations sociales stables, son état psychiatrique s’en trouve grandement amélioré. »
Nous vous prions d’arrêter de participer à l’expulsion de Monsieur S, et de le considérer comme une personne « vulnérable » qui court d’énormes dangers de maltraitance dans son pays d’origine.
En espérant une prise en considération de sa situation de votre part.
Bien à vous
«Aeroflot»
Vertegenwoordiging van de «Aeroflot»
Alexandre Karataev
Adres: Koloniënstraat 58, 1000 Brussel
Tel.: +32 (0) 2 513-65-38 , 2 513-60-66
Aéroflot Moscou tel +7 (495) 258 4089
+7 (499) 500 6760
Mail : corporate@aeroflot.ru et callcenter@aeroflot.ru
Et à ceux qui prennent ces décisions :
– Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
Premier ministre Charles Michel
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52 e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
ET à
Monsieur Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et
la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Tél: 02 206 14 21 – theo.francken@n-va.be
We’ve learnt by the Dutch media that 12 detainees of the Bruges closed centre escaped the centre on January 7th 2015! They are of twelve different nationalities. They escaped through the window!
They vanished into thin air..
The ugly face of the hideous beast: no one may imagine that human rights are violated to such an extent in the prison institutions called ‘closed centres’ by the Belgian State, and ruled with an iron fist by the Foreigners Office; a repressive instrument at the service of an imperialist migration policy.
The ugly face of the hideous beast: no one may imagine that human rights are violated to such an extent in the prison institutions called ‘closed centres’ by the Belgian State, and ruled with an iron fist by the Foreigners Office; a repressive instrument at the service of an imperialist migration policy.
This repressive instrument is immensely effective and wants to systematically regulate these camps without being perceived as illegal in view of the international law, and notably the labour law. All things considered, in its daily practices, Vottem, where I currently stay, looks like a concentration camp, given the constant psychological and mental constraints in each one of its corners.
This repressive instrument is immensely effective and wants to systematically regulate these camps without being perceived as illegal in view of the international law, and notably the labour law. All things considered, in its daily practices, Vottem, where I currently stay, looks like a concentration camp, given the constant psychological and mental constraints in each one of its corners.
The presence of agents is meant to be a challenge and obstacle to transgression so as to cause a kind of mental self-harm in the detainees. Their presence is a wound of the soul, it contributes to eliminate any attempt to demand or revolt. As a matter of fact, the assessment is obvious: few people dare to dispute or criticize the retention conditions, the lack of hygiene, the communication with the media, the social assistants etc or other recurring problems which damage the daily life of the detainees.
The presence of agents is meant to be a challenge and obstacle to transgression so as to cause a kind of mental self-harm in the detainees. Their presence is a wound of the soul, it contributes to eliminate any attempt to demand or revolt. As a matter of fact, the assessment is obvious: few people dare to dispute or criticize the retention conditions, the lack of hygiene, the communication with the media, the social assistants etc or other recurring problems which damage the daily life of the detainees.
The fact remains however that the pressure exerted is similar to torture in the criminal sense. Under the pretext of ‘security’, they manage to take away men’s dignity, depriving them of their personal belongins among other things, no need to enter obscene and scandalous details. Migrants are detained for simple administrative reasons and seen the physical constraint they are prevented from enjoying freedom of movement, and sometimes are victims of bad treatments. Someone who doesn’t master the ‘Belgian’ language can feel the pain of imprisonment even more deeply. Currently, a Chinese man who only speaks the Han language is deprived of communication since the camp doesn’t have any interpreter at his disposal.
The fact remains however that the pressure exerted is similar to torture in the criminal sense. Under the pretext of ‘security’, they manage to take away men’s dignity, depriving them of their personal belongins among other things, no need to enter obscene and scandalous details. Migrants are detained for simple administrative reasons and seen the physical constraint they are prevented from enjoying freedom of movement, and sometimes are victims of bad treatments. Someone who doesn’t master the ‘Belgian’ language can feel the pain of imprisonment even more deeply. Currently, a Chinese man who only speaks the Han language is deprived of communication since the camp doesn’t have any interpreter at his disposal.
In this establishment, one may feel the ambient tension, confronted with the general gloom of the detainees who are resigned and designed with the pompous word ‘residents’. This is disgrace! The word ‘resident’ actually conceals the full magnitude of the carceral reality, within a context of the global domestication of workers seen as a perspective of containment by the State’s terrorist strength. Let’s speak of its every right to imprison women, children and men so as to create an illusion around the transparency of binding humanitarian rules.
In this establishment, one may feel the ambient tension, confronted with the general gloom of the detainees who are resigned and designed with the pompous word ‘residents’. This is disgrace! The word ‘resident’ actually conceals the full magnitude of the carceral reality, within a context of the global domestication of workers seen as a perspective of containment by the State’s terrorist strength. Let’s speak of its every right to imprison women, children and men so as to create an illusion around the transparency of binding humanitarian rules.
Treat human beings as insignificant quantities so as to fill statistics and make the numbers, isn’t it a renouncement of the Rule of the law principles which democracy wants to be proud of? Call a spade a spade. A detainee can not be called a ‘resident’ even if forced. One is detained with no motive corresponding to the standards of international conventions in matter of detention. In principle, one can not imprison anyone for whom they are or not, but for what they did, according to the judicial treatment having the competence to order detentions.
Treat human beings as insignificant quantities so as to fill statistics and make the numbers, isn’t it a renouncement of the Rule of the law principles which democracy wants to be proud of? Call a spade a spade. A detainee can not be called a ‘resident’ even if forced. One is detained with no motive corresponding to the standards of international conventions in matter of detention. In principle, one can not imprison anyone for whom they are or not, but for what they did, according to the judicial treatment having the competence to order detentions.
However, the Foreigners Office, a State within the State, secure themselves the right to dispose of the human being and if needed imprison them without having to legally report. Those are particularly heinous practices. Need we point out that this institution (in a way, the secular arm, and very curiously, a repressive instrument having a certain closeness, sinister memory, with the High Commission for Jewish Questions under Vichy’s government, in charge of grouping and selecting individuals before sending them to a certain death. Here we are not totally in the same context. Nevertheless the process is almost the same. It is about methodical industrial efficiency, several times condemned by the ECHR for acts of torture and barbarism.
However, the Foreigners Office, a State within the State, secure themselves the right to dispose of the human being and if needed imprison them without having to legally report. Those are particularly heinous practices. Need we point out that this institution (in a way, the secular arm, and very curiously, a repressive instrument having a certain closeness, sinister memory, with the High Commission for Jewish Questions under Vichy’s government, in charge of grouping and selecting individuals before sending them to a certain death. Here we are not totally in the same context. Nevertheless the process is almost the same. It is about methodical industrial efficiency, several times condemned by the ECHR for acts of torture and barbarism.
Immigrants locked up in Vottem are deemed equivalent to battering rams, that one has to stuff from dawn to dusk, four snacks a day, mainly slices of bread with cheese or chocolate paste, in a purely occupational purpose, and also to the contrary seen the lack of liberty and the inherent constraints so that the repressive instrument doesn’t have to be afflicted by the pitiful image of idleness it offers.
Immigrants locked up in Vottem are deemed equivalent to battering rams, that one has to stuff from dawn to dusk, four snacks a day, mainly slices of bread with cheese or chocolate paste, in a purely occupational purpose, and also to the contrary seen the lack of liberty and the inherent constraints so that the repressive instrument doesn’t have to be afflicted by the pitiful image of idleness it offers.
It is the case, no one can remain unmoved in front of this kind of imprisonment generating tears flows linked to the loss of a job, to family and social breakdowns, and to the principles of equality in front of the law.
It is the case, no one can remain unmoved in front of this kind of imprisonment generating tears flows linked to the loss of a job, to family and social breakdowns, and to the principles of equality in front of the law.
What about the persons responsible for this kind of crual and shameful practices? Politicians or servants of this politics launched as a normative regulatory methodology of immigrants in a global calculation process, considered as a machine that grinds men with no mercy. Politicians and subordinates have a great time. Belgium, Rule of the Law state, only has the label of it because how can one otherwise explain that women and men, often with children, are deported by force when their rights are being reviewed and despite the effective appeals in front of courts?
What about the persons responsible for this kind of crual and shameful practices? Politicians or servants of this politics launched as a normative regulatory methodology of immigrants in a global calculation process, considered as a machine that grinds men with no mercy. Politicians and subordinates have a great time. Belgium, Rule of the Law state, only has the label of it because how can one otherwise explain that women and men, often with children, are deported by force when their rights are being reviewed and despite the effective appeals in front of courts?
It is complete non sense; I was told that Belgium was the country of surrealism but it obviously is the State where this very notion is outdated. Here, all the steps leading to opprobrium have been happily crossed since when the dissolution of responsibilities enables everything and nothing in a system that is self-governed and that, in the case of the Foreigners Office that avoids the authority of the tutorship, it is a totalitarian State in miniature… of course!
It is complete non sense; I was told that Belgium was the country of surrealism but it obviously is the State where this very notion is outdated. Here, all the steps leading to opprobrium have been happily crossed since when the dissolution of responsibilities enables everything and nothing in a system that is self-governed and that, in the case of the Foreigners Office that avoids the authority of the tutorship, it is a totalitarian State in miniature… of course!
Larbaoui Mohamed
Secured wing of the closed centre for immigrants in Vottem
He spends two months in the prisons of Mons and Lantin and spends three weeks in solitary confinement in Mons without any specific reason. It was one of the most difficult periods for him: no contact with the outside world, complete isolation. A deportation to Algeria is planned for December 22nd but it is cancelled for ADMINISTRATIVE REASONS.
On December 19th he is being told that he will be brought back to Vottem. The date is then postponed until December 24th, for ADMINISTRATIVE REASONS! When reaching the centre’s gates, the management of the centre refuses to let the van in! They had to wait for almost an hour in front of the door, for ADMINISTRATIVE REASONS!
The successive transfers always happen under heavy security, in a ‘highly secured’ van used for the transfer of detainees, with two police cars, a dozen of police officers wearing bulletproof vests and sub-machine guns. Karim is hooded, handcuffed and tied up. He can not see anything. He can only hear the siren during the whole trip and the sound of screeching tyres, he can not move. The van never stops, even for red traffic lights.
The Foreigners Office want to deport him to Algeria at all costs. Being Franco-Algerian, Karim wants to join his wife and son in Paris. The consulate of Algeria is reluctant to deliver him a let-pass to allow his deportation.
On December 29th, he is brought to the airport for a deportation attempt. He had resigned himself and was ready to accept it, hoping he would be free to move at last.
On the airport tarmac, ready to board, he is being told that the deportation is being postponed for ADMINISTRATIVE REASONS again. He is brought back to the closed centre of Vottem. Later on he learns that the Office could not reach the Algerian embassy and that therefore he will not get any let-pass.
On January 5th, he is going to the Court of Appeal to request his release. The judge orders his release for the third time and… the Office appeals the decision for the third time!
Karim will be represented in front of the Chambre de mise en accusation within 15 days… and will remain in his cell in the secured wing in Vottem.
For several days he has been showing some resistance in the centre: he doesn’t leave his cell anymore, not even for the ‘Sunday walk’ and he refuses to talk to anyone.
‘The way they treat you put you in an unbearable social, affective, and relational disorder. I finally ask myself what could relieve me..
This night two very young serbians were able to escape from the 127bis. Incarcerated since three days, they lifted their window out after the last contrôle of midnight and found their freedom.
Update 27/12:
S. opposed his deportation. He was taken to the back of the plane handcuffed, with an important escort. When he entered the plane they told him that his latest asylum request was rejected. He refused to sign the paper that was presented to him, ignoring what was written on it. His head was held down between his knees so that he wouldn’t shout. He thought he was going to suffocate. Suddenly he managed to shout very loudly. A few Russian passengers who had been warned of his likely presence on the plane during their boarding at the airport and also a few hostesses could not stand the situation and asked that he would be taken out of the plane. He was brought back to the closed centre of Merksplas.
S. said it was awful, his whole body is hurting. It felt like at the psychiatric hospital in Armenia, with their straitjackets and other chemical straitjackets. He doesn’t want to go through all this anymore. “The World is Violence” he says.
Mr S. lived in Armenia until 2007.Since he was 25 years old, he was locked up six times in a psychiatric hospital in Armenia, each time under constraint and brought there by the police. According to what he told us, his confinement and treatment conditions were extremely difficult and traumatic. See the report of the CPT on Armenia here:
http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/arm/2011-08-17-fra.htm
Mr S. fled the psychiatric hospitals of Armenia and reached Belgium in 2007. He introduced several asylum and regularisation requests.
In Belgium, Mr S. got papers and then a work permit that was very quickly withdrawn when he was awarded the ‘door opener’ of the undocumented in 2013: an Order to leave the territory.
Here is what an association that knows him well told us:
« We believe Mr S. is not a dangerous person. On the contrary, he would create positive social links and would rather act as an advocate of the weakest, of the environment and of nature (for e.g. he was cleaning the haulage routes in Charleroi in a covert manner). He has a keen sense (sometimes out of sync) of justice and injustice. When S. can be helpful and has stable social relationships, and his psychiatric behaviour can tremendously improve.
During the European raid campaign against illegal immigrants, S. was arrested in Charleroi and transfered to the closed centre of Bruges on October 15th and then to Merksplas.
He was brought a first time to Zaventem for a repatriation and following his refusal he was brought back to the Centre. He then introduced an appeal against the Order to leave the territory and was questioned by the Foreigners Office. He was taken for a second time to Zaventem despite the appeal. He had to be brought back to the Centre when someone discovered that the appeal procedure did not allow any repatriation. A third repatriation attempt to Armenia (Yerevan) via Moscow is foreseen for this Friday December 26th. Depature from Zaventem at 12.30 a.m. Mr S. does not want to go back to Armenia where he fears he will again be placed in the hands of torture psychiatrists. He is begging for our help to prevent this deportation.
Let’s meet at the airport this Friday December 26th at 10.30 a.m to warn the passengers of the likely presence of Mr S. with his escort at the back of the plane.
Flight SU2169 to Moscow at 12.30 a.m.
Fax and emails campaign to the persons in charge of this deportation:
«Aeroflot»
Vertegenwoordiging van de «Aeroflot»
Alexandre Karataev
Adres: Koloniënstraat 58, 1000 Brussel
Tel.: +32 (0) 2 513-65-38 , 2 513-60-66
Aéroflot Moscou tel +7 (495) 258 4089
+7 (499) 500 6760
Mail : corporate@aeroflot.ru et callcenter@aeroflot.ru
And to our Ministers:
– Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
Premier ministre Charles Michel
Tél: 02 501 02 11 Fax: 02 512 69 52 e-mail: info@premier.fed.be
Monsieur Jan Jambon Vice Premier Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur Tél: 02 504 85 13
email: secretariaat.kabinet@ibz.fgov.be
and to:
Monsieur Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et
la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Tél: 02 206 14 21 –
theo.francken@n-va.be
kab.francken@ibz.fgov.be
J’étais sur un vol d’expulsion vers la RDC….19 personnes étaient expulsées…nous étions 8 de la défense…. Toutes les autres places étaient occupées par des “accompagnateurs”….A l’embarquement il nous a été dit qu’il était interdit de prendre des photos à bord…Nos stewards n’étaient pas heureux du comportement du personnel Fed Pol…..Leur comportement pendant le vol laissait à désirer…comme nous étions obligés de nous habiller en civil ils n’ont pas tout de suite compris que nous ne faisions pas partie d’eux….Ils ont fait des déclarations telles que ” aller faire la fête dans un hotel en RDC sur le compte de l’état” ..J’étais dégouté et honteux après ce vol…..Et faites seulement le calcul du coût de ce vol Airbus…
She had chosen in September 2014 to settle in Belgium for a while with her two daughters of 4 and 9 years old. The three of them had a Schengen visa that was valid for two years. They were living in Brussels where the two girls were going to school. The mother had to make a round trip to Morocco on a week-end and she had left her girls with a friend.
On her return, on November 24th 2014, the mother was arrested at Brussels’ airport because both the officer in charge at the airport and the Foreigners’ Office deemed her intentions to come to Belgium to be ‘unclear’. At the airport, she stated that her two children were waiting for her and that she had to go and join them. She gave the address where the children were staying to the Foreigners’ Office.
She was brought to the Caricole closed centre. After a few days, she managed to warn a network on the situation of her daughters who found themselves alone in the apartment where they stayed because the friend was not able to take care of them anymore and on the Office that did not worry about their fate.
Following this call, the girls were taken care of by militants, and the authorities in charge were warned. The contacts between the mother and her daughters were maintained through daily phone calls and visits at the closed centre.
The mother asked to be released in order to be with her children or for them to be brought next to her. She asked to be allowed to live with her kids in Belgium or to leave the country with them.
According to the Office, she would be unwanted on the territory whereas the daughters were legal, hence she should be repatriated whereas her children could stay!
Her lawyer, the General Council on Children Rights and the Youth Service System started to put pressure on Mr Théo Francken, State secretary for Asylum and Immigration and on the Foreigners office, in order to enable the mother to be with her children and for this Kafkaesque situation to end.
Following this pressure, the Office announced on Friday December 5th at 6 p.m. that the mother and the girls would be deported the morning after at 8 a.m. The mother would be brought to the airport and the children to the airport federal police with their passport at 8 a.m. Seen the lack of transparency on the deportation of ‘legal’ children, the short notice to be able to prepare the girls, the absence of passports, and also the terms of this deportation announced by the Foreigners Office, the mother decided to reject the deportation and she refused that her children be presented to the airport federal police.
After 15 days of imprisonment, the separation from her daughters and seen the very few alternatives possible, the mother -totally exhausted and disgusted- decided to go back to Morocco and to pay the journey for the three of them herself.
The flight would be on Thursday December 12th at noon, the social assistan of the centre asserting that this way she and her daughters could continue moving and travelling freely with their visas remaining valid.
The terms of this return were painfully discussed between the social assistant of the centre and the Office, so that the children would be handled carefully and put in the plane next to their mother without having to go through the federal police seen it was not a deportation but a voluntary return financed by the mother herself.
New dirty trick by the Foreigners office:
However, rather than letting the family leave without a care, the Foreigners Office was again picking on them. Without warning anyone, they decided to bypass the will of the mother to pay for the trip, and they paid for the tickets of the girls whereas the ticket of the mother was paid by the airline, with the intention to transform this ‘voluntary return’ into a ‘deportation’ and to seal the passports of the mother and children, denying them the right to enter the Schengen area for a period of five years.
During the stopover in Casablanca, the mother was questioned by the Moroccan police on the reasons of this ‘deportation’ and she had all the difficulties to take another flight to her final destination, Tangiers, because the tickets had not been registered by the Office.
They finally reached Tangiers the morning after around 4 a.m. They will not be allowed to come back to the Schengen area for five years and they are now filed at the Moroccan police.
CHECKMATE!
With this deportation, the Office managed to dismiss a problem outright, getting rid at the same time of the ongoing pressure by the different associations for children rights that were pointing at their obvious negligence, not worried on the fate of these little girls left alone after her mother had been arrested.
Through a subterfuge they really are excelling in, the Office succeded in transforming a (forced) voluntary return into a forced deportation of a woman with a visa in order but deemed ‘suspicious’ and in deporting her two children who were previously ‘legal’ on the territory.
Once again, the Office managed to apply their fundamental objective: repressive restriction of the freedom of movement and settlement: they call it ‘control of the migratory flows’.
She was already doing return trips between Algiers and Brussels for several months with a visa valid for two years, without any problem. Her two daughters were going to school in Brussels. One day, when back to Brussels airport, a policeman thought her visa was “dubious”.
They contacted the Foreigners Office, she was brought to the Caricole closed centre in view of a deportation to Morocco because the Office deemed there were good reasons to doubt about the real intentions of the woman. The people with whom she had left her children in Brussels were no longer available to take care of them, so the alert was given because the children were left alone, their mother being retained in a closed centre.
They rang the general delegate to Children’s Rights who is managing the youth services. Since it was on a Friday afternoon, the answer given was “bring them to the police, they will be safe there!”. The mother had absolutely no trust in this solution and she wanted to avoid that the children were traumatised, hence ‘friends’ of her proposed to welcome and take care of the children before a better solution could be found.
An urgent appeal to the CCE to try and suspend the deportation of the mother was refused and the Foreigners Office decided to expel her, well aware of the fact that both children have been separated from their mother and are somewhere left alone.
This is the situation on 4th of December. Mother in closed centre, two children extremely traumatised by the separation from their mum, and a “deportation” foreseen only for the mother!
Calls are being made towards all the authorities which guarantee the well-being of children and towards the Foreigners Office, but they remain unanswered…
Mrs L, Congolese, 60 years old, had been called to the Foreigners Office. She thought she would get news of her asylum and 9ter regularisation requests, but the Office arrested her on the spot and drove her, handcuffed, to the 127bis closed centre: her asylum and regularisation requests had been rejected. The Office takes the initiative to deem that she is not sick enough in spite of her cardiac, hypertension and psychological problems, and her old age.
Two years ago, she had been welcomed by a niece who is living in Belgium. Her house had been burnt down in DRC and she had no one left there to take care of her. Her niece was proud to be able to welcome her and she didn’t want any help from the State to provide for her needs. She is proud to say that she could assume all the expenses of her welcoming her aunt, even the medical costs.
Hence, more than a month ago, Mrs L joined the 6 other Congolese women retained in the closed centre. Since she arrived, one of the women of her age already was deported, and another was released.
On 28th November, Mrs L received an eviction notice to Kinshasa for Wednesday December 3rd 2014, the notice mentioning that the deportation would happen under police escort (hancuffed and tied with a belt) since it will be the second deportation attempt on her!
She will be on the flight SN 357 to Kinshasa at 10.25 a.m. on Wednesday 3 December.
There is no doubt that the Foreigners Office and their Francken Minister do not hesitate to deport without mercy.
Mrs L is asking for our help to prevent this deportation.
Let’s meet in number at the airport this Wednesday 3rd December at 08.25 a.m where the passengers have their luggage checked in. There you can inform them on the presence of this woman at the back of the plane, explain that she will be accompanied by a few policemen in plain clothes. This way, you may inform them on their right to oppose their participation to a deportation. Passengers may refuse to sit down and fasten their seatbelts, and they can talk to the cabin crew to explain that they refuse the plane to take off with the lady on board, handcuffed and attached.
You may also send faxes or emails to the airline that collaborates with these deportations, Brussels Airlines, and the Ministers concerned, to show your outrage in face of these deportations.
and to
Monsieur Theo Francken
Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et
la Migration, chargé de la Simplification administrative, adjoint
au Ministre de la Sécurité et de l’Intérieur.
Humane : no – Fair: no – Efficient : yes – Made by Francken !
They are currently four women between 60 and 70 years old who have been retained in the 127 bis centre, some of them for more than two months.
The police came to take them at their place. They were handcuffed in front of their families and neighbours and placed in isolation celes in the police station, sometimes during 24 hours. They had to sign a paper while some could not even read French or Dutch. One of them signed without being allowed to read the text because the police had confiscated her glasses! The famous document confirmed that they had given their agreement to be brought to the closed centre and then be deported.
They came to Belgium several years ago to join their children and families, some of them having the Belgian nationality. Their families wanted them to live by their side and to be able to take care of them.
After several juridical steps, some got the order to leave the territory by the Foreigners Office: family gathering is not allowed for everyone, and never mind if families are dispersed.
A 65 years old woman, blind, introduced a 9ter regularisation request(for medical reasons) that was refused after an identification issue! In spite of this, she is being threatened of deportation in the coming days, although there is this identification problem! On the other hand, since she’s been detained, she does not get the eye drops she needs anymore.
Here is what they tell us:
« They came to take me at my daughter’s. They handcuffed me and brought me in a police van in front of my family and all the neighbours. Such a shame…”
« I stayed for 24 hours in the isoldation cell and was insulted all night. »
« They refused to give me my medicine although I have to take it every 4 hours. »
« They confiscated my glasses.»
« I was arrested for the first time of my life. »
At the 127 bis they are astounded and petrified. They do not want to speak about their retention conditions. As soon as they are asked the question, they turn aside.
It is impossible to get a phone interview:
« I don’t want them to find me on the internet, I want to remain anonymous otherwise i’ll be in trouble in DRC, I must remain anonymous.”
They don’t want to stay there anymore, they are asking to be released or deported. They can not stand prison anymore.
« I don’t want to spend another day here, it is torture. »
« I don’t want to be locked up, I’ve never been in prison »
« We are all very shocked.»
Besides, they would not dare to request asylum even though they have good reasons to do so.
« If I request asylum, I will stay locked up here. Then, Belgium will refuse, and just like most Congolese, they will send me back to Congo where I’ll be imprisoned and may be killed because I requested asylum.”.
Detainees often tell us that they introduce asylum requests in closed centres and that the social assistance of the centre doesn’t send these requests to the Foreigners Office. They are therefore not being considered. One of them even got deported without being able to introduce his new asylum request.
A Congolese man likely to be deported to Bulgaria introduced a request of voluntary return to his country because he doesn’t want to hear about Europe anymore. The social assistant would have received a postive answer from the Foreigners Office. The detainee concerned did not get any document confirming this agreement and although we’ve consulted all the bodiees in charge of voluntary returns, we never found any evidence of this request. Our friend has been waiting for this return promised by the social assistant for several weeks at the closed centre.
Censorship at the 127 bis ‘EVERYTHING IS OK HERE MADAM’
When in touch with the detainees, THE one and only answer we get is ‘EVERYTHING IS OK HERE MADAM’, a sentence seemingly learn by heart by all.
However:
-An Iranian man tried to hang himself at the 127 bis closed centre on November 6th. All the detainees were in a state of shock. We did not manage to get more information about this man’s fate. He is not anymore in the centre say his vriends.Where is he?
-On Sunday November 9th at 11 p.m., we heard that several detainees climbed up the roof. The day after, we rang our contacts and the answer we got was: ‘EVERYTHING IS OK HERE MADAM’. We learnt through other sources that 5 persons were placed in solitary confinement in anticipation of a transfer the same morning!
-Other testimony: ‘According to the person I saw, the tensions are heavy in the men’s area every night. The police would be there every night. There would be fights amongst the detainees and protests against the food.
It clearly seems that tensions are strong and that orders were given to the detainees of the 127 bis under the threat by ??? There is no contact with the outside and if there is, the motto is ‘EVERYTHING IS OK HERE MADAM’.
Other information on 12/11/2014: Some wings of the closed centres of Vottem and 127 bis are almost empty. This might suggest important raids (by the end of the year?) or a massive collective flight to come.
Solitary confinement in Vottem
19 prisoners who are since a few months in the closed centre of Vottem started a hunger strike on November 6th to claim for freedom!On 11/11 9 of them continue there hungerstrike.,2 were bringing in medical isolation.
A man who has been for almost 8 months in the closed centre and who was transfered from centre to centre several times had to be moved to another aisle of the closed centre of Vottem. When the guards asked him to move he refused, consierding that one could not play with him like that all the time and he said “I’m not your poodle’. he was placed in solitary confinement.
A man who had been lying on his bed for 10 days because off heavy pains in his back was placed in solitary confinement on November 11th.
Same fate for a man who would have swallowed razor blade…
Some guards who were going to be on strike for two days asked a few prisoners ‘to create mayhem in the centre during these two days of strike!
The collective flight had 19 Belgian Congolese and 3 Congolese from Bulgaria and Finland to be deported according to the Foreigners Office, flight coordonate by Frontex. It had a stop over in Niger to then land in Kinshasa during the night. They were 29 (this figure has been confirmed) to wait in the Kinshasa airport-after going through the immigration apparently without any problem- for a bus to come and take them.
This afternoon on November 5th, the bus came to pick them up to bring them to the ANR (National Intelligence Agency), an extremely powerful body in DRC, having an extremely bad reputation!
A few hours later, we got a phone call from Kinshasa:
‘Theoretically, everyone was released’
‘They were 22 (18 from Belgium, 3 from Finland and 1 from Romania)’
‘Each detainee was accompanied by two escort guards during the whole flight’
‘They were identified by the General Direction of Migrations and transfered to ANR’
‘They were released on discharge by a parent or a tutor’
Let’s remind an order by the Congolese Ministry of Interior distributed to high civil servants of this National Intelligence Agency (ANR), to the police and General Direction of Migrations (revealed by a secret document mentioned in ‘The Observer’ last February): “Above all, be on the lookout for those who came back to the country after being deported’ (…). Agents are invited to ‘be more rigourous’ (…) The treatment reserved to these persons is obvious: torture and any other thing must be in the biggest discretion. These orders had to be executed in a perfect way.’http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/16/congo-torture-asylum-seekers
An investigation mission by the Home Office (United Kingdom Ministry of Interior) published in November 2012 mentions eight Human Rights organisations in DRC that denounce the fact that deported asylum seekers were running heavy risks of torture upon their return.
According to a report by the judge after the observation of 11 DRC deported from the United Kingdom in a time span until September 2013, nine had been detained, eight imprisoned and two were dead, apparently after being beaten heavily by Congolese officers. It is clear that the fate reserved to deported people from Belgium, Bulgaria or elsewhere will be the same. Once more, one may wonder what kind of investigation is being made by our Minisry of Interior, what kind of review for each dossier established by the Foreigners office or the CGRA? Are there any? We think that some of them did not even see someone at the Embassy but would have got European let-passes! It is the eternal argument put forward to introduce ‘legality’ in these inhuman practices.
4 novembre 4 p.m.It was a frontex flight with 19 “illegal” from Belgium and three from Finland and Roumenie, say the mainstream media
4 November 1 p.m. They left the centre around noon, handcuffed, in two big buses and several small vans under huge police escort. There were police controls at the station of Nossegem.
4 November 9.30 a.m. Two big buses arrived to the centre: one was full, the other empty, followed by several small vans.
4 November 9.10 a.m. State secret: the flight to Kinshasa would take off at 2 p.m. From 20 to 25 persons have been in solitary confinement for 4 days. As usual, the information given are false and the State secret is well kept!
Since this morning, the centre has been surrounded by police cars and well watched, what do they want to avoid?
A new military collective flight to DRC is being planned by Belgium, in collaboration with other European countries, for this Tuesday 4th of November.
The take off of this criminal flight would be around 8.30 a.m. this Tuesday November 4th 2014 at the airport of Melsbroeck, chaussée de Haecht (the time is not confirmed).
The prisoners of other closed centres from Belgium and other European countries would be grouped together at the closed centre 127 bis in Steenokkerzeel these Sunday and Monday, they would be driven to the airport under huge escort at 7 a.m.
More about collective flights : http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/mode-demploi-vol-collectif/
Following calls by prisoners of closed centres, one may already assert that some would be deported illegaly by the Foreigners Office: known opponents to the current regime in DRC, no let-passes for some who were introduced to their embassies etc. The ‘authorities’ continue sending back to their executioners individuals who fled a country where they were in real danger, using their administrative power to exclude the ‘unwelcome’.
It is indeed a real war to immigrants that is ongoing:
The European Union (EU) foresaw several new measures in view of reinforcing the war against immigrants that it has been waging for years, notably the recent ‘Mos maiorum’. The prevailing speech aims at daily heightening the hatred against the other and it builds up the character of an ‘undocumented’ ennemy that everybody would like to see gone for good: profiteers, illegal immigrants, terrorists, thieves, etc. This is how one creates the more and more trivial myth of the ‘unwanted’ that should be kept at bay, imprisoned, deported in order to annihilate any kind of opposition.
Warn your friends and Congolese people you may know of the raids and arrests that are likely to take place until this Monday.
“To fight against the deportation machine, against raids, retention centres, to show initiatives of solidarity with the migrants is to jamm the spiral war to migrants.”
We will never accept that people are deported that way because they do not have the right papers and were not born in the right country.
Gathering of protest this Monday November 3rd at 5 p.m. in front of the Foreigners Office, the ‘authority of shame’ that is taking these fatal decisions.
Chaussée d’Anvers,59B 1000 Bruxelles (gare du Nord)
28/10/2014:Mr A was deported. The Bulgarian authorities let him go and advised that he leave Europe and return in 3 months when his Dublin would be expired ! He is currently living in the streets of Sofia with no house nor resource.
______________________________________________________________________________________- Last minute 24/10, 06 p.m. A. mounted on the roof of the closed centre 127 bis this afternoon. Police come in the centre and take him in isolation in the centre. The tension was very strong in the centre
——————————————————————————————-
There are several people in the closed centres who should be deported to
Bulgaria in the context of the famous ‘Dublin’ agreement. Bulgaria is not
really the best place for the welcoming of migrants. In January 2014, the
UNCHR had advised European countries not to send migrants back to Bulgaria
and they are still very cautious about the treatments of migrants in that
country. Being deported to Bulgaria means being imprisoned for months,
facing regular racist violence, living a long term wandering with no
livelihoods, and finally being deported to the country of origin. http://bulgaria.bordermonitoring.eu/2014/07/07/trapped-in-europes-quagmire/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR15/002/2014/en
Let’s resist these deadly migration policies ending with imprisonments and
deportations to all the European countries. Among the 30 daily
deportations done by Belgium, Mr A, from Afghanistan, will be deported to
‘his Dublin’, in this case Bulgaria, on Monday 27th of October 2014.
Let’s prevent this deportation!
A is Afghan, on October 27th 8.50 a.m, he will experiment his second deportation attempt to Sofia, Bulgaria.
He doesn’t want to return neither to Bulgaria nor to Afghanistan.
He is asking for our help to go and speak to the passengers of the flight and support him in his fight against his deportation.
Flight details:
Take off at 8.50 a.m terminal 2, Bulgaria Air
His testimony:
“I arrived in Bulgaria in June 2014 after fleeing Afghanistan. The border police arrested me. They took me to jail. They beat me and left me under the rain for two days, without giving me anything to eat. It was cold. I was sick but they didn’t bring me to a doctor.
They were really aggressive, they were treating human beings like animals. They told me “if you want asylum here, ask for it, otherwise we’ll send you back to Afghanistan.” They beat me and took my fingerprints under coercion. I didn’t want to stay in Bulgaria. I remained in prison for 17 days, then they released me with a temporary residence permit but they took my money, my phone, my clothes and they did not give me housing nor food. I could not afford to stay there, hence I went to see a courier so that he could send me to another country, and I came to Belgium to ask for help. But now, I’m in a closed centre here in Belgium. If they send me back to Bulgaria they will beat me and imprison me. They will not give me any place to live, no food, no papers, nothing! My life will be a pure disaster.
Even worse, if they send me back to Afghanistan, my life will be in danger, and if I come back to Europe by illegal means, I might die or be seriously injured!
If you refuse my asylum request here in Belgium, I am OK to go to another country, but please, don’t send me back to Bulgaria or Afghanistan !”
Let’s meet at the airport on 27/10/2014 at 7 a.m. to warn the passengers of their rights and duties, and to support Amin!
Come on, let go! send faxes and emails to protest against all these deadly deportation flights! Act very fast!
fax/mail
– Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
Hi,
I send this email to you to protest against the deportation of A that is going to take place with the support of your company on
October 27th at 8.50 a.m.
Amin Niazi, who is from afghanistan, will experiment his second
deportation.
He doesn’t want to return neither to Bulgaria nor to Afghanistan.
He arrived in Bulgaria in June 2014 after fleeing Afghanistan. The
border police arrested him and took him to jail. They beat him and left
me under the rain for two days, without giving him anything to eat. He
was sick but they didn’t bring him to a doctor.
He remained in prison for 17 days, then they released him with a
temporary residence permit but they took his money, his phone, his
clothes and they did not give him housing nor food. He could not afford
to stay there, hence he went to see a courier so that he could send him
to another country, and he came to Belgium to ask for help. If you send
him back to Bulgaria they will beat him and imprison him. His life will
be a pure disaster.
Amin Niazi will do everything he can to resist this deportation.
Stop this deportation before it is too late !
Don’t collaborate with this daily violence !
Recently, we’ve received several testimonies by persons who were going to be deported to Bulgaria because of the Dublin law (an asylum seeker must be repatriated to the first Schengen country where he landed). However, a lot of information exist concerning the extremely violent treatments reserved to foreigners in that country and the degrading living conditions in the centres for asylum seekers.
Here are a few testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch:
‘We are treated as less than second class citizens. They are extremely racist. They spit in our face and treat us like animals. On that day, everything started when a guard wanted a man to eat like a dog, serving his food on the floor. First, it was only the local guards who were beating us but then they were more than 50 people, some of them coming from a village, wearing civilian clothes. They beat me in the back with a police baton.’
‘I was beaten on the ribs and chest. Many people got injured and they were not taken care of. A chef in civilian clothes came. He noticed the problem but he was drunk. I could smell the alcohol. He beat my friend in the stomach with a police baton. He took him to another room to beat him. They didn’t bring him to a hospital. The police broke the arm of another friend of mine.’
Here is another testimony by a person retained in the closed centre 127bis. Some information come from discussions we’ve had with him on the phone and from his audio testimony you may listen to here:
Psychologically, we already are terrorised because they are telling us that we are in a closed centre but in fact it is a prison. In the afternoon we get two hours outside, and after we return to our cells, it really is a prison. I did not think that in a country that proclaims itself democratic one could imprison people like animals under the pretext that we come from another country.
I entered Bulgaria on the 25th, they registered me on the 26th. I was arrested at the border by the Bulgarian police. Then I was interviewed by Frontex agents, they were asking questions to check whether I really was Congolese.
They brought me to what they call a ‘closed centre’ but it is a prison. I stayed there for two months. I had to pay my lawyer 100 EUR for him to find me an address in Sofia. They released me and I went to Sofia. I didn’t know anyone but I met other Congolese people and I hid in a social centre in Sofia.
In Sofia they were much more interested by Syrians, so I had to manage by myself. I was hiding. When there were controls I was hiding in the toilets of the social centre so that the wardens would not kick me out.
On 5th January, the Bulgarian police came to arrest the black people who were in the centre. I was lucky because I hid and they could not find me. They kicked out the others and beat them, spitting in their face.
I collected the images. One of my friends knew people in France 24 and the journalists wanted someone to testify. I gave them the elements and they interviewed me by webcam. If you browse “le raid de la police bulgare sur les immigrés africains” you will see my story and the images where black people were being beaten.
These videos used to be online but they are not available anymore…
After these events, a lawyer was helping us. The people of France24 raised questions, hence the authorities wanted to know who had given them the images. My Ivorian friend who was in good terms with the leader of the centre warned me he had told him it was me who had given them the images.
I went to see the lawyer and she advised me to leave Bulgaria because she could feel bad things would happen. I went to see the Bulgarian pastor who welcomed me at his place before I could leave Bulgaria for Serbia.
Personally I didn’t want to leave Bulgaria, I left it under coercion.
And now they want to bring you back to Bulgaria?
Yes that’s what they want and I really fear for my life. I contacted the journalist of France 24. She contacted the General Commission for Refugees. She certified that it was me who had done the interview and given the images, hence I’ll go to jail when I go back to Bulgaria.
In fact, I first went to the Office to introduce an asylum request, I was fingerprinted etc and the day I was supposed to get an answer and have an interview they imprisoned me. They just told me: ‘we’ve seen that you passed through Bulgaria although you are of Congolese origin, how did you get to Bulgaria?’ I said I was forced to leave Congo because my father was a captain in North Kivu, so they made me leave Congo and that’s how I arrived to Turkey. Friends of my father came to Istanbul to help me cross Europe to reach Bulgaria. That is where I got arrested. I was in jail there for three months and then they released me.
I explained all this to the people of the Office but they said it was OK, that Belgium has signed agreements so I would be placed in a closed centre before Bulgaria decided if they wanted me or not.
What is serious is that the Bulgarians lied about my dossier. I was in Bulgaria since 26th September 2013 but the Bulgarians sent the information to the Belgian immigration services that I
had entered Bulgaria on 4th April 2014. In reality, I entered Bulgaria on 25th September 2013 and they took my fingerprints on 26th September. Thus, the only thing I wanted to do was show everybody that the democracy and human rights advocated by the European Union are not really true in all EU countries. There are countries where people are treated like animals, mainly the Africans. In Bulgaria we are treated like animals, it is unfortunate. We are betrayed by the colour of our skin.
Personally, it is not how I imagined human rights, it is exactly the contrary that I am living here.
My future is uncertain, I don’t know where to introduce requests to be recognised. It is the word of an African against the word of the Bulgarians who are all white. I fear more and more for my poor life. What I want is that people know the truth, but this truth turns against me.
For them I am nothing because I’m an African, we are less important than animals. We used to walk by 2 or 3 out of fear of being beaten. I know that prison is expecting me but I cannot be one year in prison for no reason!
I prefer to go back to Congo than to Bulgaria!
Besides, I am sick. I spent more than 7 months in Bulgaria without care. In Belgium I went through a surgery (haemorrhoids problem grade 3). I was supposed to go through a second surgery in Belgium but the doctor of the centre told me I could not because I would have to spend several weeks in the hospital. I bleed everyday when I go to the toilet. They tell me there is nothing they can do. I can show all the evidence that I had an appointment for the surgery, and in Bulgaria they will not do anything. I prefer to die in Congo than here.
27/10/2014: Police officers came into Mr A’s cell in the closed centre of Vottem. They told him they had a warrant of arrest against him and brought him to the prison in Lantin. It seems that the Belgian state (under the pressure by the Foreigners office) asked to review his conditional release. Mr A was imprisoned for 25 years and he was going to be released under the condition that he left the Belgian territory, which he had the intention of doing. He wanted to join his family (wife and son) who are living in France. The day before his release he was transferred to the closed centre of Vottem where he spent 2 months in solitary confinement. Now he is in Lantin!
Mr Larbaoui has been in full solitary confinement (an ‘appropriate treatment’ according to the management) for one month, in a cell of the secure wing of the closed centre in Vottem. He doesn’t meet anyone nor hear anything. He is entitled to a 2 hours walk in a yard surrounded by high wire fences and under camera monitoring. He can walk alone or rather with 4 or 5 prison guards and he often refuses to, not seeing any interest in this outing. (http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/please-translate-in-en_uk-de-gevangenis-in-de-gevangenis-in-vottem-de-beveiligde-vleugel/)
Complaints have been lodged for illegal imprisonment and physical/psychological mistreatment. The Committee for the prevention of tortures has been warned.
Text by Mr Larbaoui on his detention conditions
‘QHS or the temptation of security drift, or when an administrative measure becomes a penalty of imprisonment without the approval of justice.
To be retained in Vottem under the motto of ‘order and security’ is not often easy, it would already be wise that the operating rules be set and targeted by the supervisory authorities. However, it is written nowhere. They opened a so-called secure wing to welcome a category of detainees with a particular profile. The problem is that it would be interesting to know who is entitled to define the profiles to finally decide to imprison. Because, by definition, a closed centre could not be considered like a prison and even more offer conditions of captivity that are harder than prisons. There is no doubt that the retention conditions applied in the secure wing in Vottem are similar to the prison system, embellished with total solitary confinement, although this process is illegal in accordance with the international law and conventions on the treatment of detainees. The absence of rules automatically leads to a day to day programme and to repeated modifications that are destabilizing in the long term.
24/24 solitary confinement causes an unbearable nervous tension and makes the contacts with the guards particularly rough and conflictual. Because nothing justifies this type of treatment applied as a disciplinary sanction or a preventive measure to avoid recriminations of any kind seen the personality of the individual. Just like in prison, confinement remains the rule except that here there is no contact between the detainees and therefore neither social links nor solidarity to show each other, and to the weakest in particular. This prison structure based on maximum coercion provokes a constant stress accompanied with behavioural disorders, so much so that the guards themselves may feel the effects and hesitantly complain about them. The clash is never far away seen the tensions exacerbated by confinement and the absence of prospects. One comes to think that the installation, almost everywhere in the building, of remote surveillance equipment, cameras and microphones is a safeguard, an advantage for the detainees and an inconvenient for the guards. An advantage in the way that the actions are recorded and therefore are a testimony against or in favour in case of serious breach as it often happens in confinement places; an inconvenient for the guards to know that they are being examined and that they can not do what they would like to in case of acute crisis.
In any case, the current prison structure, with no predefined rules is a source of anxiety and it can represent an extension of the image of the Foreigners Office who is the real manager of this Belgian gulag.’
The Chambre du Conseil under high security
On Thursday 2nd October, Mr Larbaoui had to appear in front of the Chambre du Conseil in Mons for a liberation request introduced by his lawyer. He was brought to the trial handcuffed in a van who took the road to Mons with sirens on and with 2 cars of 10 policemen wearing bulletproof vests and rifles. And the Chambre du Conseil ordered the release of Mr Larbaoui!
But as usual, the Foreigners Office appealed against this decision, informing the court that a let pass by the Algerian embassy was ‘on its way’. It is to be noted that the Embassy currently refuses to deliver let passes and that different authorities came to ‘discuss’ with M Larbaoui to make him sign a paper asserting that he was willing to leave for Algeria. This appeal could have suspensory effects on the deportation.
Mr Larbaoui was born in Algeria when the country still was a French department. He grew up in France where his family, wife and son included, are living and they have the French nationality!
Mr Larbaoui added:
‘One has to face the facts and conclude that all this ceremonial surrounded with a luxury of useless precautions (escort, praetorian guard and outstanding solitary confinement) make Belgium EVEN MORE INCREDIBLY RIDICULOUS! Since I was legally and legitimately released and wouldn’t therefore have to find myself in a closed centre and even less in Belgium but at home in France. You said arbitrary dirt, so spot the mistake!’
Last minute: Mr Larbaoui appears in front of the Chambre des accusations in Mons on October 14th 2014.
Cross-checking many testimonies, we are more and more worried about the treatments prisoners are submitted to in Belgian closed centres and about the violence displayed during deportation attempts.
‘Tortures’, ‘terror’ say the prisoners
When we have them on the phone, the detainees of the different closed centres explicitly ask to remain anonymous and that we ‘do not write everything because they will know it was me’. They are scared that their testimony may prejudice them. They say that it is very risky to phone us: ‘I’ll try to warn you but it will be very dangerous for me!’.
Some people in the centres are engaged in the fight for the freedom of movement; a fight they had started already in their home or transit country, and they are ‘undesirable’ that have to be deported ‘at all costs’, dixit a representative of the Foreigners Office.
They all feel muzzled and have no resort against these schemes.
Solitary confinements happen daily. Rough police raids are frequent following hunger strikes or ‘other prison order offences’.
There are testimonies of certain detainees being stripped bare, sometimes all the detainees of one same wing. Racist statements are countless. Medical care is almost non existent.
In the secure wing in Vottem, the ‘troublemakers or dangerous ones’ are isolated. The regime allocated to them by the management is decided on a case by case basis. For more than a month, a man has been totally isolated in a soundproofed cell. He doesn’t see anyone (except the educators which he calls ‘indicators’), he doesn’t hear anything and has no contact at all with the other detainees. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/about-organised-crime-in-the-closed-centre-of-vottem/
The scheming of the Foreigners Office
Several testimonies report that the Foreigners Office puts huge pressure on embassies in order to get let passes. If the embassy does not collaborate, they come to the centre and intimidate the detainee to try and make him sign an agreement for his own deportation. ‘One has to be really strong to refuse this in front of representatives of the Foreigners Office accompanied by their enforcers’ says a prisoner to us.
‘But we know our rights Madam, don’t take us like we’re dumb!’.
The Office even organises gatherings in their offices with a so-called representative of the embassy to put the pressure on the detainee. After calling this embassy, the ambassador told us that he never comes out and that he only signs let passes if the detainee is present in his office. ‘This race for let passes is relentlessness’ some detainees tell us.
Forced deportations are daily and very very harsh. Sometimes they come back from the airport in extremely bad states!
Fight in the centres
Following different contacts in the centres, prisoners spread these messages:
They protest against:
– their imprisonment
– racism in the centres
– the Machiavellian decisions by the Foreigners Office
– the real psychological and physical tortures in the centres and during deportations
They claim for:
– freedom of movement
– the return of capitals to their home countries
– humaneness
– respect for the right of the human being
– the end to deportations (sometimes) to the slaughterhouse
And they call on
all visitors in closed centres
associations
embassies
lawyers
EVERYBODY
‘Do not remain silent about what you hear and see! Do not collaborate with this relentlessness, this policy with no name! Do not forget that silence means consent!’
In front of the European and Belgian policies to ‘monitor migrations’, in front of the racist discourse by some and by right and far right movements, extremely violent behaviours are being encouraged with impunity by those who have or think they have a certain power, be it the wardens in the centre, the police, the authorities that take the decisions on asylum and migration etc.
The return of children in centres
In the coming weeks, we may assist to the awakening of some sleepy associations and media. Indeed, after the statements by the new Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Theo Francken (N-VA), it might be considered again to imprison children in the closed centre 127bis in Steenokkerzeel! A ‘step backward’ some say. Above all it shows that the reforms in view of ‘humanising’ the closed centre are complete nonsense. It only leads to partial and unsatisfactory victories, less photogenic on the humanitarian postcard. According to the adage ‘divide and conquer’ would it become more acceptable to be in a closed centre from the age of 18 years old and for one day? Let’s not fall in the trap that will slowly but surely nibble the freedoms by starting a partial fight. Neither adults nor children in the hell of imprisonment!
And in parallel – Azerbaijan at the holiday centre in Vottem
A delegation of Azerbaijan came to visit the closed centre of Vottem. The management deployed the necessary resources: the detainees had received a very clean chasuble and they could hang around in the centre while the delegation was visiting! The centre was looking like a holiday centre.
For 6 days, Mohamad I, 24, of Pakistani origin, detained at the closed
centre in Vottem, has been on hunger and thirst strike. Today his health
is at stake, according to his pairs in the centre. He came to Belgium
because of his affiliation to an opposition party in Pakistan. Also, he
lost everything there following floods. One could say he is both a climate
and political refugee. He wants to build a new life here among us. His
fears regarding a deportation are many: he will be threatened because of
his political affiliation, and with no resources at all to survive. His
life would be threatened in case of deportation but it also is here seen
his bad health condition. The Belgian asylum policy remains very
restrictive; 75% of asylum seekers are dismissed although many run heavy
risks in case of deportation, as we could see with Aref, this young Afghan
who was shot dead by the Talibans upon his return to Afghanistan in
October 2013. Other people also are on hunger strike in Vottem, they are
claiming for an asylum and migration policy that respects Human Rights.
WEDNESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2014 – MEETING IN FRONT OF BRUSSELS GARE CENTRALE (main entrance) AT 4 PM
let them hear our voice: we say NO to exclusion, we say NO to state racism!
We reject foreigners’ hunting, police controls on racial grounds, foreigners’ detention.
Securitarial policies will never put an end to our solidarity! http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article5491
———————————————————————————————
News 17/10/2014
Not easy to identify the actions by Mos Maiorum in Belgium:
– there were discreet controls on trains by men in civilian clothes asking questions to passengers who didn’t look very white.
– there were discreet raids in phone-shops in Leuven. One Afghan for sure was arrested and placed in a closed centre.
– there were important checks in several places in Brussels but it is not certain that all these ‘raids’ and/or police controls were taking place in the context of Mos Maiorum!
– controls on the roads also seem to be more frequent.
– Belgian railway stations also seem to be very much targeted.
If you are stopped in order to ‘answer’ some questions, you may refuse to take part in this screening organised by Europol and Frontext in view of stopping freedom of movement!
If you have been or are the witness of some actions by our police, send an email with as much details as possible that you might have seen to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net
More info http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article5442
The Council of the European Union is organizing from 13 to October 26, 2014 a major joint operation with the Schengen Member States, Europol and Frontex, called “Mos maiorum”
First, let’s look at the racist and even fascist overtones of the name Mare Maiorum:
The moss majorum (or moss maiorum) means “old ways” or “ancestral customs” and in ancient Rome, lifestyle and the system of ancestral values. It is often taken as a reference, and contrasts with the spectacle of decadence of the present world !!!!
The five fundamentals of moss majorum are:
fides: loyalty, respect for the given word, loyalty, faith; confidence (…)
pietas: piety, devotion, patriotism, duty
majestas: to belong to a superior chosen people, majesty
virtus: quality specific to Roman citizenship, courage, political activity
Gravitas: all conduct of the traditional Roman, respect for tradition, seriousness, dignity, authority
What a program! The choice of code name has been a source of his denunciation !!
All possible migration routes in Europe will be checked in all Schengen States and Europe’s external borders,
the objectives being:
-Arrest “illegal” immigrants and gather information in view of investigation
-Identify, hunt and disrupt the organized crime groups
-Consolidate joint actions to prevent “illegal” migration
-Look at the routes used by migrants and migration networks.
-Collect and analyze the information related to secondary movements also
Controls at airports, train stations, ports, borders and other strategic places (train, bus, metro, tram?) will be strengthened without a doubt. So be careful.
Monsieur Z est depuis 2006 en Belgique et a participé à certaines grêves de la faim des mouvements de personnes sans papiers.
Il est enfermé au centre fermé de Vottem depuis plus d’un mois. L’Office va essayer pour la deuxième fois de le mettre dans l’avion vers Casablanca avec la collaboration de Royal Air Maroc.
Monsieur Z est soumis comme beaucoup d’autres a la double peine : Il a été condamné par nos tribunaux pour « un fait délictueux » pour lequel il a purgé sa peine. Pourtant, à la fin de celle-ci, il n’est pas libéré, comme il pourrait s’y attendre, mais il se fait en prime expulser du pays.
Beaucoup de ces personnes soumis à ces doubles peines sont des personnes qui vivent en Belgique depuis 5, 10, 15 et parfois 20 ans ou plus.
Monsieur Z demande notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion. Il ne connait plus personne au Maroc, ses parents étant décédés.
Vol lundi 22/09/2014 Vol AT833 17h4O vers Casablanca
Rendez vous à l’aéroport ce 22/09/2014 à 15h40 pour prévenir les passagers de leurs droits et devoirs.
Et campagne de fax et mails
à
Royal Air Maroc 134 bd Jacqmain, 1000 bruxelles TEL : 027215050 FAX : 027256292 infobru@royalairmaroc.com
Et fax/mail aux responsables
-Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
-Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be
// Fax 022173328, 025126953
-Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Tél 02 542 80 11 // Fax : 02 542 80 03
Shot down like an animal”
“On the morning of 15/09/2014, 10 policemen wanted to collect a Nigerian from the closed centre ‘Le Caricole’.
When he refused to accompany them they severely beat him and dragged him on the ground. They handcuffed him and he had blood on his face. He continued to scream. The police applied a medical mask, then one of them gave him an ‘injection’ with a kind of “revolver” whilst he stood a few feet away. The inmate collapsed immediately, did not move anymore and was brought into the police van. ” tells an eyewitness.
“It was awful ma’am,” said one inmate, “They shot him like an animal”
“Undercover Expulsion”
The next day, still in the deportation centre Caricole, warders came for a man to “go to the social worker” at 3 pm. Later they came for his things in his cell. It seems that he has been taken to the airport for his 4th attempt of deportation. This man had spent more than 4 months in a detention centre. He had been moved from centre to centre (Bruges, 127b, Caricole) following revolts against inhumane treatment in the centres. He had been warned of the deportation and had applied for asylum that should have suspended the deportation …. but the social worker from the centre had failed to lodge the asylum application to the relevant authorities!
“It’s an undercover expulsion” says one of his fellow prisoners.
Hunger strikes at detention centre Vottem:
For several months hunger strikes or attempted hunger strikes are initiated regularly collectively or individually in the centre. Several detainees are currently on hunger strike.
They want freedom and an end to the evictions.
One of them is at his 7th day of hunger strike in protest against the striter rules of detention: He is isolated in the secure wing of Vottem centre, without any contact with other inmates. With his lawyer he denounces the inhuman and degrading imprisonments and demands the release of all. A second inmate is on hunger strike for 12 days and has just been placed it in isolation this day (17/9/14).
Mail from deported man from Pakistan
Subject I am going to be mintal
Message I am R. N. I was in vottem and 127 BIS for 5 months now I am not
mentally and physically fit I forget the things and I have too much health
problems I don’t know what I do where I go I loss every thing in belgium my
health my family my every thing and there so many unjustice things happen to me
if you give me the time so I can tell you even you people will not believe that
what they did with me thanks you
SMS received
“Thank you for your support. You should also go to protest outside consulates in Brussels so that they do not give passes (laissez-passers) because we refuse to go in the plane and after they hit us but not in front of passengers. This is inhumane ! ”
“You can imagine my anger here 2 minutes ago. Imagine that Jacob (Director of Vottem detention centre) came to blackmail me. Either I sign the paper of my deportation to Algeria and I end my hunger strike, or his administration will make sure to revoke my conditional release. My anger is not over! ”
“You have to help us out of here and put pressure against the closed centres”
Demonstrations
A demonstration took place on 15 sept 14where 200 undocumented migrants from all backgrounds came together, from different occupations in Brussels. They are clamoring for a regularisation for all, the closure of detention centres and stop deportations.
Photos https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.535904626541145.1073741838.497839607014314&type=1
Afghans
Again an 19-year old Afghan part of the movement of Afghans of the Beguinage church was arrested and imprisoned in the detention center 127bis. A demonstration outside the Office for Foreigners (Office des étrangers) was held to demand his release this 17 sept. 2014 at 12:30
He spent 25 years in prison and some time in the high security wing in Bruges. He served his full sentence. He should have been released under the condition that he would leave the territory; which he had promised he would do. But one day before his official release, he was transfered to the closed centre of Vottem in view of his deportation! To Algeria or France since he has two nationalities.
« This time I’m really illegally imprisoned“.
« This is crazy. » « We are far worse off that in prison here: no rules, a lot of pressure, blackmail, cameras everywhere.”” « Everything is controlled and timed”. « It is inciting rebellion”. « They call that a room, actually it is a cell like in the other prisons!” « At the cantine, it is chocotoffs and coca-cola… It is scandalous!”
As soon as he arrives to Vottem, he witnesses a young man that got injured. They claim for a doctor with other co-detainees. Two guards come to pick him up and bring him to the isolation cell. In front of the cell, 20 wardens are waiting for him! “this is provocation” he says.He quietly enters the isolation cell and no one moves.
24 hours later, they come to bring him to the secured wing of Vottem »
He tests the new wing, a prison within the prison, initially arranged for the so-called ‘criminals’ who come out of jail and also, according to Maggie De Block, “for the people whose behaviours require a particular monitoring and follow-up” (they mean the people who oppose to the system, those who decided not to accept being treated that way).
There are no detainees. He is the first one and he considers having a housewarming party alone! « There are cameras everywhere, even in my cell there is a camera and a microphone!”
He also learns that neither France nor Algeria are willing to provide him with a let pass:
An employee of the Foreigners Office comes and proposes him to sign a paper certifying that he agrees to leave for Algeria:
«No way, you are asking me to do the job of the Belgian State and of the Foreigners Office, this is out of question!”
To be continued…
Mister M
On September 9th 2014, a second person ‘enters” the secured wing.
M. has been living in EUROPE for 15 years. He is living in Austria.
He was arrested in Liège and brought to the 127 bis closed centre.
This 2014/09/09, deportation attempt: he refuses and is beaten by six police officers at the airport! He lodges a complaint and is brought to the secured wing in Vottem.
Exhausted, he says: « Does one also need papers to go to heaven? If not, I’m going there tonight.”
Mister M was transfered this 2014/09/11 to the closed centre of Bruges.
Entretiens avec Jacques: Après huit tentatives d’expulsions il se retrouve à Kinshasa
Publié le 9 septembre 2014 par Martine – Read this post in Nederlands
Le 3 septembre 2014
Kinshasa
Monsieur Jacques est arrivé en Belgique en 2005. Il y a passé six années. Il était arrivé avec un visa touristique. Il rejoignait sa famille, dont sa mère et son frère qui résidaient déjà en Belgique. Il n’avait pas de papier et travaillait au noir. Il n’avait pas de sentiments de peur, mais ressentait un manque de considération du fait de sa situation illégale. Cependant, il dit qu’il n’était pas mal vu, car il faisait des boulots « sans problèmes ».
Monsieur Jacques a été arrêté à l’aéroport international de Bruxelles en 2011. Il revenait d’un voyage familial au Maroc. Il voyageait seul, mais ne fut pas le seul arrêté dans cet avion. Les agents de l’immigration lui ont interdit de rentrer, on lui a dit qu’il n’avait pas le droit de venir en Europe. Les agents lui ont demandé de le suivre, il l’a fait de bon coeur, il se sentait innocent. Il ne comprenait pas vraiment pourquoi on l’arrêtait, il pensait pouvoir circuler librement, il avait déjà fait d’autres voyages mais au sein de l’Europe. Il a été emmené dans la zone de détention de l’aéroport, appelée le 127. Les agents de l’office des étrangers qui le détenaient lui ont indiqué qu’il pouvait introduire une demande d’asile, sans quoi, il serait rapatrié vers le Maroc.
Il introduit des demandes d’asile depuis le centre qui seront toutes refusées malgré un changement d’avocat. Le motif du refus : demande non fondée. Pourtant, M. Jacques fait partie des opposants au régime en place en RDC, il vient d’une famille mobutiste, résidant dans le quartier Ma Campagne à Kinshasa (quartier connu pour regrouper les mobutistes).
M. Jacques est resté 6 mois en centre fermé. Il a fait deux mois et demi au 127, pour être ensuite transféré deux mois au 127 bis et finir son incarcération au centre de Bruges (1 mois et demi). Il était en contact avec l’association CRER par téléphone, ainsi qu’avec Getting the Voice. Il n’a jamais vu ses interlocuteurs, mais a passé beaucoup de temps au téléphone avec eux et en parle très chaleureusement. M. Jacques, ayant des contacts réguliers avec les associations a subi des pressions dans les centres. « si on te trouve avec le numéro de Getting, tu as beaucoup de problèmes ». Il a dénoncé une tentative d’expulsion d’une personne séropositive. Le centre a caché le détenu lorsque les associations accréditées à visiter les centres sont venues se renseigner à ce sujet. Il pense qu’à cause de ses contacts avec les associations, l’office des étrangers a pressé son dossier.
Jacques a subi 8 tentatives d’expulsion dont la dernière fut concluante. Il est rentré 4 fois jusqu’à l’avion. Jusqu’au dernier moment, il pensait qu’il pourrait rester en Belgique. Il pense que s’il avait eu un meilleur avocat dès le début il aurait pu avoir un titre de séjour légal.
Jacques trouve qu’il était apprécié par les agents du centre, certains ont même gardé contact avec lui. En raison de sa résistance aux déportations, il fut très apprécié par les autres détenus, qui lui faisaient une fête à chaque fois qu’il revenait de l’aéroport. Il n’a jamais été isolé avant d’être déporté.
Lors de son expulsion, M. Jacques a été emmené pieds et poings liés, bras collés contre le corps, ceinture au ventre et casque sur la tête. On l’étranglait, on l’insultait, on le menaçait de lui faire des piqures pour dormir si il ne gardait pas son calme. Il garde des séquelles de son étranglement dans le cou. Il a été apporté dans un vol collectif, « l’avion du roi » où une trentaine de personnes l’attendaient déjà. Dans ces personnes, 4 femmes dont une mineure, un Angolais ainsi qu’une résidente française à qui on avait volé les papiers. Autour de lui il décrit une centaine de policiers, des médecins, des assistants sociaux « à la solde de l’office », des militaires, des psychologues. Tout le monde était attaché au décollage, les gens ont été détachés après une trentaine de minutes, lui, a attendu plus d’une heure, il était assis entre deux policiers de taille importante.
Arrivé à Kinshasa, on le met, avec les autres personnes déportées, dans une voiture de la HIACE. Il est escorté par les agents de l’ANR (agents nationaux résidentiels) jusqu’à la direction générale de ce service. Ce lieu est situé tout proche de la résidence du président Laurent Désiré Kabila. On les laisse trois jours sans manger, sans boire, sans se laver, ils pouvaient sortir dans une cour sécurisée à raison de deux heures par jour. Dans ce lieu, ils étaient enfermés avec des opposants au régime politique. La prison comprenait 4 à 5 cellules remplies chacune d’une quinzaine de personnes. Quand il pose la question au gardien « où sommes-nous ? », on lui répond « quoi ? Vous ne savez pas où vous êtes ? Vous êtes prisonniers du président ». « Ici, personne ne peut vous libérer à part lui ».
Après les trois jours dans la prison, un gardien vient le trouver pour lui dire que le président à décidé de les libérer. On lui indique qu’il n’a pas intérêt à se retrouver dans un mouvement d’opposition au régime, qu’ils connaissent son nom et son adresse et qu’ils le poursuivraient jusqu’à la fin. Il a l’interdiction formelle de parler de l’existence de la prison ainsi que de ce qu’il a vu à l’intérieur. Les gardiens l’emmènent à l’extérieur. On lui offre à boire et à manger. Après un moment, ils se lèvent, ils disent qu’ils partent et que les détenus sont libres et autorisés à contacter leurs familles. Un dernier conseil, qui ressemble plus à un ordre avant de les quitter, ils doivent s’affilier au parti PPRD. Il reçoit la carte d’un des responsables qui lui propose de l’appeler au cas où il aurait besoin.
Ils appellent la famille. Sa grande soeur vient le chercher et l’accueille dans une chambre de la maison du père décédé.
Le retour est encore plus dur que la vie enfermée. La famille est déçue qu’il revienne dans des circonstances imprévues et les mains vides. Comme on sait qu’il n’a rien, on ne lui met pas la pression pour qu’il participe aux ressources de la famille, mais on ne le considère plus non plus. « C’était comme si je n’existais plus, on disait que je ne servais à rien, que je ne faisais rien, on ne me parlait plus ». Comme la famille s’attendait à recevoir de l’argent et à le voir revenir fier, on accuse d’autres membres de la famille de l’avoir ensorcelé. Seules 2 ou 3 personnes gardent un contact avec lui, « je me suis consolé tout seul ».
Certaines personnes déportées à Kinshasa, pour éviter de vivre la honte auprès de leur famille, ne les appellent pas quand ils se font déporter. Ils cherchent d’abord à trouver un peu d’argent et une valise pour ne pas vivre ce rejet.
Certains travailleurs du centre fermé ont appellé Jacques, pour lui dire qu’elles étaient déçues de la décision de son dossier, qu’ils ne trouvaient pas ça juste, mais que c’était leur travail. Il a gardé contact avec les associations, une militante est venue le voir pour faire un reportage filmographique.
Actuellement, M. Jacques n’est pas dans une situation confortable, il compte regler des affaires d’héritage et repartir en Australie ou en Autriche. L’ambassade d’Autriche se trouve au Kenya, son voyage commencera donc par là.
Les décisions d’expulsion vers le Soudan se multiplient. Même s’il semble qu’elles ne soient pas mises à exécution jusqu’à présent, elles signifient qu les personnes sont enfermées en rétention pendant des semaines avec l’angoisse d’un retour qui peut signifier la prison, la torture, parfois la mort. Et rien n’exclut que les renvois n’aient pas lieu si la vigilance baisse. Il semble que ce soit la réponse du gouvernement français à l’arrivée d’exilés d’Afrique de l’est en quête d’asile.
Trois Soudanais sont ainsi au centre de rétention de Vincennes et ont un vol pour Khartoum prévu pour le 6 septembre.
Ci-dessous un appel à les soutenir et à empêcher leur expulsion, et une proposition de message aux autorités françaises. N’hésitez pas à le relayer largement.
” LA FRANCE EXPULSE : EMPÊCHONS-LA !!
Dans le cadre des nouvelles directives programmées de Cazeneuve, on doit s’attendre à une augmentation impressionnante d’expulsions par vol commercialisé ou par charter dans les mois qui suivent.
Et ça commence rapidement :
Trois Soudanais arrêtés à gare du nord et en route pour l’Angleterre via Calais, sont enfermés au centre de rétention de Vincennes et vont être expulsés vers Khartoum ce samedi 6 septembre 2014 si l’ambassade du Soudan leur délivre le laissez-passer indispensable pour pouvoir les expulser.
APPEL à envoyer des fax, mail à l’ambassade du Soudan
Téléphone local: (01) 4225.5571
international : +33.1.4225.5571
Fax local: (01) 4563.6673
international : +33.1.4563.6673
APPEL à se rendre à l’aéroport de Paris Charles de Gaulle le 06 septembre 2 heures avant le départ, si le laissez-passer est transmis, pour parler aux passagers du vol afin qu’ils parlent au commandant pour empêcher cette expulsion. Nous vous tiendrons au courant lorsque nous saurons avec certitude si l’ambassade du Soudan a donné son aval pour cette expulsion.
Vol prévu pour deux d’entre eux à 11heures, présence à l’aéroport 9 heures
11h Paris Charles de Gaulle – 18h25 Doha, vol QROO4 vers Doha puis Khartoum
Et pour le troisième présence à l’aéroport 20h 30 Vol QR0038 départ à 22h30 vers Doha
APPEL à inonder la boite fax et mail de la compagnie qui collabore à ces expulsions et à saboter les infrastructures existantes / attaquables (page web, agences, bureaux, boîtes aux lettres …)
Agence de Paris
Qatar Airways
24/26 Place de la Madeleine (Entrée au 7 Rue Vignon)
+33 1 70 95 05 80
Appel à harceler le ministre de l’intérieur Cazeneuve et ses copains
Ministère de l’Intérieur :
Cabinet du ministre,
Téléphone : 01 49 27 49 27 (standard, demander le Cabinet), Fax : 01 40 07 13 90 (Directeur de Cabinet)
E-mail : bernard.cazeneuve@interieur.gouv.fr
Secrétaire général : Michel LALANDE michel.lalande@interieur.gouv.fr
Directeur de cabinet : Thierry MORVAN : eric.morvan@interieur.gouv.fr et Pierre-Antoine MOLINA : pierre-antoine.molina@interieur.gouv.fr
Chef de cabinet : Gabriel KUNDE : gabriel.kunde@interieur.gouv.fr et sec.chefcab@interieur.gouv.fr
Conseiller Immigration : Raphael SODINI : raphael.sodini@interieur.gouv.fr
Directrice de l’accueil, de l’accompagnement des étrangers et de la nationalité à la direction générale des étrangers en France : Muriel NGUYEN : muriel.nguyen@interieur.gouv.fr
Directeur général des étrangers en France : Benoit BROCART benoit.brocart@interieur.gouv.fr
Directeur général de la sécurité intérieur (DGSI) : Patrick CALVAR patrick.calvar@interieur.gouv.fr ”
Vous pouvez vous inspirer du message suivant pour les autorités françaises (Bernard Cazeneuve et son cabinet) :
” Monsieur le Ministre,
Les décisions d’expulsion de Soudanais vers le Soudan se multiplient,
prises par les préfets. Trois personnes dans ce cas sont au centre de
rétention de Vincennes.
Soit ces décisions décisions ne sont pas destinées à être exécutées,
faute d’obtenir les documents nécessaires, et l’enfermement de ces
personnes pendant plusieurs semaines avec la menace d’une expulsion, et
peut-être à la clé la prison, la torture ou la mort, constitue un
traitement inhumain et dégradant.
Soit l’expulsion peut se concrétiser, et ces personnes risquent
effectivement la prison, la torture et la mort.
Ces deux cas de figure sont inacceptables. Ces personnes doivent être
libérées sans délais, et les préfets doivent cesser de prononcer des
décisions d’expulsion vers le Soudan.
Veuillez recevoir, Monsieur le Ministre, ‘expression de mes salutations
citoyennes. ”
Mercredi 27 août 2014. Un poignée de personnes solidaires se sont
rendues sous les murs du centre de rétention pour un parloir sauvage.
Des cris ont été échangés pendant quelques minutes avec les retenus.
Vendredi 29 août 2014. À l’appel de la CSP75, ce sont cette fois-ci 150
personnes, sans papiers et quelques solidaires, qui sont allées en
manifestation de la station de RER Joinville-le-pont au centre de
rétention de Vincennes. Sur place un important dispositif policier était
présent (la manifestation était annoncée et déposée) et a maintenue tout
le monde dans l’allée, route du fort de gravelle, loin des bâtiments où
sont enfermés les gens.
Un appel a été passé à l’intérieur du centre un peu avant l’arrivée de
la manifestation.
Centre de rétention de Vincennes, bâtiment 3
« C’est dur vous savez ici car on est privé de liberté. C’est un délit
d’être étranger et pas régulier mais beaucoup d’entre nous font des
démarches pour régulariser leur situation, les gens qui sont là depuis
longtemps et ceux viennent d’arriver. Ici on est des cas tous différents
mais on cohabite bien ensemble, il n’y a pas de problème, pas de
violences entre nous. C’est mieux quand c’est comme ça. On subit de la
barbarie alors qu’on essaie que de vivre ou même survivre. Ici on subit
des humiliations mais on n’a pas le choix c’est comme un éléphant contre
une fourmi, les policiers nous le font bien comprendre. Donc on est
obligé de faire ce qu’on nous demande. »
Je lui explique qu’il va y avoir une manifestation cet après-midi pour
protester contre la mort d’Abdelak et pour la fermeture de centres de
rétention et que toutes les personnes qui y sont enfermées soient
libérées. Je lui dis que peut être nous n’arriverons pas à nous
approcher du centre car la police nous en empêchera mais que j’espère
qu’ils arriveront à nous entendre.
« Ah oui la police on peut leur faire confiance pour ça. C’est bien
qu’il y ait une manifestation. Déjà avant-hier (mercredi) j’étais en
train de dormir l’après-midi et je me suis réveillé on entendait «
Liberté ! Liberté ! ». J’ai essayé de voir qui il y avait dehors mais on
ne voyait rien car il y a une forêt qui cache. En tout cas merci et
bonne chance. »
Dimanche 24 août 2014, centre de rétention de Vincennes:
“On est toujours en grève de la faim. Le commandant n’est pas revenu
nous voir depuis vendredi. La nuit a été calme. Mais les policiers
continuent de nous provoquer. Ils veulent qu’on mange et ils nous
cherchent, ils veulent qu’on craque. D’habitude il y a 2 policiers
dans les parties communes, là ils sont 5 ou 6…”
“On continue la grève de la faim. Il n’y a pas de changements. Les
policiers essaient de nous convaincre de manger.
Dès la première tentative d’expulsion, les policiers avaient scotché
Abdelhak. Ils lui avaient scotché les jambes et menotté les mains dans
le dos. C’est pas normal! Ils l’ont amené comme ça dans l’avion et
c’est le commandant de bord qui a refusé de le prendre, parce qu’il
était complètement ligoté.
On ne demande rien pour nous. On ne veut pas que ça se reproduise.
C’est pas normal. On est des êtres humains. Il y a des policiers qui
nous traitent comme des chiens. ”
Fermeture des centres de rétention !
Liberté de circulation et d’installation!
Jeudi 21 août 2014, Abdelhak Goradia est décédé alors qu’il était
conduit par les flics à l’aéroport Roissy Charles de Gaulle pour être
expulsé vers l’Algérie. Il avait réussi à refuser une première fois
son expulsion le 16 août dernier. Selon la version policière, c’est
dans le fourgon en arrivant à l’aéroport qu’il aurait eu « une crise
cardiaque ». Les flics ont même parlé d’une mort naturelle. Or,
l’autopsie a révélé qu’il était décédé par asphyxie. Ce n’est pas la
première fois qu’une personne décède lors de son expulsion. Plusieurs
sans papiers sont en effet morts assassinés par la PAF comme Ricardo
Barrientos en décembre 2002 ou Mariame Getu Hagos en janvier 2003.
Les retenus du bâtiment 1 de Vincennes se sont mis en grève de la faim
dès qu’ils ont appris la mort de leur camarade. Ils ont rédigé un
communiqué que voici :
“Nous, retenus du bâtiment 1 du CRA de Vincennes, demandons:
– que des journalistes puissent venir voir les conditions de vie dans le centre
– que les acteurs des violences envers M. Goradia soient punis, car
ils l’ont tabassé à mort.
– que la durée de rétention soit réduite à 20 jours car il y a trop de
violences. Ce n’est pas la peine, 45 jours, ça ne sert à rien
– que la nourriture soit améliorée. On mange très mal alors qu’on n’a
pas demandé à être ici.
– Une partie de la police est très agressive verbalement et fait des
provocations. Ils vont jusqu’à dire des insultes dans le micro. Ils
hurlent et font des gestes obscènes.
On ne négociera pas. On continuera la grève de la faim tant que nos
revendications ne seront pas satisfaites ”
Liberté de circulation et d’installation !
Les personnes sans papier prisonnières à Vincennes sont joignagles via les cabines téléphoniques du centre dont voici les numéros :
Bâtiment 1 : 01 45 18 12 40 – 01 45 18 02 50 – 01 45 18 59 70 –
Bâtiment 2 : 01 48 93 69 47 – 01 48 93 69 62 – 01 48 93 90 42 –
Bâtiment 3 : 01 48 93 99 80 – 01 43 76 50 87 – 01 48 93 91 12 –
While this woman, seeking asylum, was driven back from the tribunal, handcuffed as usual as is the custom for foreigners driven in vans, the guards forgot her in full sunlight after reaching the Caricole closed centre.
On Monday (22 July), two detained women seeking asylum were to be driven back to their detention places. One was driven back to a centre whereas the other was supposed to be brought to Caricole but she was ‘forgotten’ in the van on the Caricole parking place! Handcuffed, warmly dressed, she found herself alone in full sunlight for two hours. Afraid that it was the start of her deportation, she burst into tears and experienced times of great panic, not knowing what was going to happen to her, and suffering from heat and thirst. It was only when a guard came to fetch something in the vehicle that he realised her presence and that he ‘allowed’ her in the centre.
This racist system implemented to arrest, to imprison, to reject residence requests for all sorts of reasons, to oppress foreigners in intolerable ways during their detention with no deadlines, to violently deport these people who arrived from other countries with no papers; this system does not permit any reasonable accommodation nor humanisation and it should simply be eradicated. It enables drifts, well concealed tortures that are never punished. Indeed, who would dare to lodge a complaint in the case of that women? Afraid that this complaint would only accelerate the deportation process, all the more since the system in place to ‘gather complaints’ is all blurred and leading to deadlocks.
Each testimony carries its dosis of horror, this one is just another aspect of it.
They are sick of being treated like animals. No respect, no right at all. Some do not have any juridical assistance. When seriously ill, they can not see a doctor. If you want to see one, you must wait for 3 or 4 days. The doctor doesn’t listen to you, he doesn’t examine you, you just get a tablet.
They are sick of seeing all these people arrested by force everyday by ten policemen to be deported. They are sick of being the witnesses of new arrivals of people who got arrested while having lived in Belgium for many years, who sometimes have wifes and children here, a job etc.
So, on 14 July at 10 p.m. it was the final straw: some didn’t get their dinner, so they all decided not to eat that evening.
After discussing with the director, three of them were placed in solitary confinement; the three who had dared trying to initiate a dialogue with the management. After the arrest of their comrades, they were revolted and all shouted “Freedom!!” through the windows at the people who had gathered in front of the centre.
And tonight, 15 July, 25 of them decided to go on hunger strike as a sign of protest, hoping to benefit from the presence of the media and acts of solidarity to support them.
Detainees’ statement:
YES, we were allowed to respect Ramadan and were given meals at 10 p.m and 3 a.m; rotten meals, as usual in the centre;
YES, we were angry on 14 July when some of us did not get their meals and when 3 of us were placed in solitary confinement because they tried to initiate a dialogue with one of the directors.
YES, we continue to fight against these detentions and against our poor living conditions in closed centres.
YES, we are victims of these Belgian and European migration policies, like many others across Europe.
and YES, we will continue to fight against closed centres and for freedom!
Signed : Detainees of the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel
Update 15/07: 25 detenees refuse to eate this evening and ask the liberty for ALL.
Text message from the closed centre 10:54 p.m. on 14th July
« There is a huge mess in the centre. Everyone’s on strike ».
At the breaking of the fast, a ‘racist in charge’ refused to distribute the food according to the rules and some detainees didn’t get any meal. After that, ALL the detainees refused to eat, in a big chaos, and they threw out their food into the bin.
The centre director arrived to discuss with the detainees. Following this conversation, three detainees were placed in solitary confinement; which caused the revolt of the other detainees. Policemen came. At the same time, a small gathering formed itself spontaneously with a journalist in front of the centre. Detainees were shouting through the windows. The journalist then asked to enter the centre but his request was rejected. Seen the presence of the police forces, the calm came back during the night and any new confrontation could be avoided.
On 15th July 1:00 p.m. the centre was again relatively calm. A director was supposed to come back to discuss with the detainees. The three people in solitary confinement haven’t been released yet in spite of the promise of one of the directors.
Words by detainees:
« They treat us like animals”
« Some don’t have the right to juridical assistance”
« Medical care is inadequate”
« It is a complete disaster in here”
« We will not give up. We will continue to claim our freedom!”
Saturday 12 July
Anti-raid demonstration in solidarity with the migrants
Let’s meet at 2 p.m. at Place d’Armes in Calais
We thought that we had witnessed the worst in 2009 with the destruction of the Afghan jungle; the mass arrest of 278 of its inhabitants and their coordinated detention across the whole of France.
However, this Wednesday 2 July 2014 the state showed how much further it can go.
At 6am the CRS, PAF, Gendarme, and the Police Nationale undertook massive coordinated evictions and raids against the migrant population of Calais.
Using the cover of an eviction operation with an undisclosed date, 600 migrants were pepper sprayed, insulted, humiliated, terrorised, and detained. All witnesses of the eviction were violently removed from the site of the arrests. They were escorted onto buses and driven out of
Calais, without having the least idea of their final destination. 200 people are still in detention centres, and those who were lucky enough to have been released, came out traumatised.
This show of force by the police is a result of a wish to disperse migrants so that they give up on their desire to travel to the country of their choice.
These operations are endorsed by Europe and are part of the European expulsion plan and of the war waged for years against migrants and any form of migration. In front of this war and its fascist repression methods, we have to organise a determined resistance!
Today in Calais, once again, migrants are being chased from the town. The majority of people are now in the peripheries – in places where police harrassment can be enacted to its fullest, where there is no-one to witness it.
We call on everybody to meet in Calais to oppose this wave of unprecedented repression.
Saturday 12 July
Anti-raid demonstration in solidarity with the migrants
Let’s meet at 2 p.m. at Place d’Armes in Calais
Saturday 12 July – Sunday 13 July, other solidarity actions planned and to be created.
Come along with your energy and creativity!
Solidarity with the fight of all undocumented in Europe and at its borders.
Documents for all or All without documents!
Freedom of movement for all!
Let’s abolish borders!
Upodate 11/07
De uitzetting van A in 127 bis en van De man in Voottem werden cancelled
Update – Hunger strike at the 127bis, July 8th
Yesterday, A. fell in his room. He was placed in solitary confinement after his fall. His codetainees went to see their “boss” and then the director, and they insisted that A. be brought to the hospital. He was taken to the hospital and brought back to the centre afterwards. When back, he was told that they would deport him to Pakistan “tomorrow or after tomorrow” without precising the exact date or time.
Appeal from detainees in the 127bis
Mr A A is Pakistani. He has been living in Belgium for 8 years. He is detained at 127bis. He has been on hunger strike (and thirst, according to some
reports) for more than 8days. His fellow inmates are worried. He is getting skinnier and is having a hard time expressing himself.
The other inmates went to see the director of the center. The director is minimizing A’s actions. “We’ll see on monday” is what he said.
The fellow inmates are calling for help. They don’t want their friend to die in his cell and they are very scared.
*Deportation scheduled this Monday 7/7/14 : Statement by Cracpe*
Sharzyl RACHID is a Bengladeshi citizen. He has been in belgium for more han 8 years. He has been active in the Undocumented struggle, he has taken
part in occupations and in the hunger strikes of 2006. He is undocumented and gets by as best he can without documents.
He took part in events and actions let by different movements of the Verviers area.
He lives in Dison. He introduced different appeals but has been rejected.
He mentionned, among other things, his health problems.
He was arrested after being checked on a train and he is staying in the Closed center in Vottem.
His deportation is scheduled on Monday, on flight 9W221 9W276 at 10:07
destination Bombay.
He is no longer taking food.
SN airlines no longer has an email address but they have a ‘contact’ page on their website. There are fax lines that can be contacted to protest this
deportation : http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
We call on all people who can, to be at the airport tomorrow (7/7/14) and to head to the checkin line of the SN flight to Bombay. Please be present
at 8h07 to ask the other passengers not to sit down for take-off in order to block the deportation.
Merksplas :
Two detainees on a hunger strike for 8 days have been in solitary confinement since then.
Vottem
For 19 days, an Indian man detained in Vottem has been on hunger strike. Four days ago, he also started a thirst strike. His health is extremely poor today.
He is an asylum seeker. He fears his deportation to a country he fled from following persecutions linked to his political affiliations. His asylum request was refused but procedures are still ongoing. His life would be threatened if he was deported, but it also is now seen his poor health state. He has been living in Belgium since 2008. He really likes our country where he built himself a new life and new relationships.
Other people also do hunger strikes in Vottem, notably one Afghan and one Haitian.
127 bis :
At 127bis, two young Palestinians from Gaza started a hunger strike a week ago. They denounce an asylum and immigration policy that violates human rights.
At the 127 bis, it is Ramadan time for most prisoners. Two or three of them are not concerned by it and one systematically disrupts the life
rhythm of the others. The detainees reported the situation to the director of the centre but nothing changes. They are wondering whether this
troublemaker is not there on purpose.
Bruges :
Women are appaled, they are tyring to send messages but censorship rules. ‘If they knew I am ringing you they would take away my phone!’
N.B.: The Indian detained in Vottem got released today.
An occupation by 100 undocumented people has started in Molenbeek. Among them, a woman with two children got arrested at the Foreigners’ Office! We are waiting for some news. http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article4690
Beware! Never go to the Foreigners’ office when asked to, and never bring children with you because in that case arrest would be guaranteed!!
Testimonies by ‘visitors’
– ‘I know your website very well. I even sent an email in March when my Guinean boyfriend who was detained in Merksplas at the time almost got deported on a military flight. (It made a lot of noise by the way). After 4 months, my boyfriend got released but the situation is still very difficult. When it is clearer, I will go and take apart these damned centres stone after stone. In the meantime, I denounce and report as soon as I can’.
“Yesterday, June 24th, S., a Guinean boy of 30 years old, orphan, without family in his home country, got deported in a very barbaric way…
It was the 5th deportation attempt and unfortunately the last one. After six months spent in a closed centre.
S. is diabetic, he has hepatitis and his health state is extremely weak. The State will have tempted everything to deport him. In March, 4th deportation attempt: he is beaten up by the guards of the centre, so much that when he comes back from the airport, he can not move his head anymore.
In May, he is being “offered” one year treatment if he voluntarily goes back to his home country.
Beginning of June, he is being told he will be on a flight on June 26th. Nothing more after that, radio silence. When he tries to know he gets no answer.
June 25th, 2 p.m. He is brought to solitary confinement. No news from him anymore.
This Friday 10 p.m. I finally manage to reach him. He is Conakry. He was escorted by 10 policemen to the plane.
S. was tied, handcuffed like a criminal during the whole flight. He almost suffocated because his chest was constricted against his knees. Lenght of the flight: 6 hours.
S. went back to his home country to die there.
What a shame to be Belgian!
Vottem
After the hunger and thirst strikes by mostly Pakistani people, among whom two have been released, there seems to be a new hunger strike movement concerning around 20 people.
Merksplas
Six days ago, a protest movement started, notably a hunger strike. Three immigrants blamed for having started the movement were placed in solitary confinement. They have been there for six days and two of them continue their hunger strike.
Bruges
A lot of new people have arrived, most of them with their papers in order. The detainees believe the situation is not normal and they are angry.
Women: a women tells us that many are detained for no reason. One of them was arrested at South Station ten days ago. The Foreigners Office gave her a name and a nationality that are not hers. She is seriously ill after the tortures she went through in her country of origin.
They tell us that people get arrested and deported without let pass, without any warning, and without having the chance to go to court.
An 80 years old woman who can barely walk has been detained in Bruges.
127 bis
Muslim prisoners (most of them Moroccans) have been gathered in 127bis for the time of the Ramandan.
‘There are a lot of new comers and a lot of daily deportations that are unfortunately becoming common’ says a prisoner.
The immigrants of 127bis are very garteful of the caravan in Brussels and they thank us once again.
MERCI, DANK U, Thank you to everybody from the camp
DEMONSTRATION of the
Caravan 2014 of undocumented migrants and refugees
26 juin 2014
Start : Place du Béguinage Brussel 04.30 p.m
People from all over Europe organise a Caravan For Freedom to protest against the repressive European migration regime.
They are camping during the week 22 June-28 June in the Parc Maximilien in Brussel.
during this week various actions are made and debating take place. Ther will also be big demonstration on 26 June
The claims are
– Freedom of movement and of residence for all
– Stop the Dublin trap and the obligatory residence in asylum centres such as “Lagers” throughout Europe
– Permanent documents without criteria (not depending on working contracts or individual state prosecution)
– Stop imprisonment and deportation of migrants
– Same working conditions for all
– Same political, social and cultural rights for all
– Stop the European imperialist policies: no more freetrade treaties and NATO wars
– Abolish Frontex, Eurosur and other anti-migration agencies and measures
For the last 8 days, a hunger strike, and sometimes a thirst strike, has started at the closed centre in Vottem.
Among them are people who fear for their lives in case of forced depor-tation. One example among many others: in Pakistan, several political movements became the targets of Talibans.
We do not accept the very restrictive policy of the Belgian State in mat-ter of immigration and asylum. 75% of asylum requests are rejected, which means that they deport people to countries where there is war and insecurity, dictatorships or authoritary regimes. At the end of last year, Aref, a young Afghan, got shot dead by Talibans upon his return to Afghanistan.
Among the hunger strikers, some insist on other aspects: they have built their lives in Belgium for years, they have friends and family here, they are dismissed of a procedure although they have been working, follow-ing trainings here etc and they do not have any family members left in their country of origin. Only 6% of the regularisation requests were accepted in 2013.
They all undertook this strike because their lives would be destroyed if they were deported.
Two Pakistani who had started the hunger strike 8 days ago were re-leased and brought to the hospital on Thursday to get cured. Five or six other persons are continuing or got engaged in the strike.
In order to support them in their claims for an asylum and immigration policy that respects human rights, notably the right to seek asylum, to move freely and settle down, to live in security, in family, etc. we invite you to join us for our weekly gathering on Saturday 21st June from 4 p.m. till 5 p.m. around the closed centre of Vottem. Since it is the day of Music, any musical contribution is certainly most welcome!
For six days, several persons have been on hunger strike, some on thirst strike, at the closed centre in Vottem.
Among them are people of Pakistani origin who fear for their lives if deported by force. Indeed, in Pakistan several political movements have become the targets of Talibans. They don’t hesitate to commit attacks and kill as we could see several days ago during an attack close to Karachi airport. Some of these Talibans are coming from Afghanistan.
We do not accept the very restrictive policy of the Belgian state in matter of asylum and immigration. 75% of the asylum requests are refused, which means that they now start to deport people to countries where there is war and insecurity, or dictatorships and authoritary regimes. At the end of last year, a young Afghan called Aref was shot dead by Talibans upon his return to Afghanistan.
Among the hunger strikers, some have been building their lives in Belgium for years, they have family and friends here, and they find themselves dismissed although they have been working, following trainings etc.
They all undertook that move because their lives would be destroyed by a deportation. Unfortunatley, now their lives is in danger here. One of them on hunger and thirst strike is already in a very worrying state.
(English below)
Dans le cadre de la semaine d’actions qui suivra l’arrivée à Bruxelles de la Caravane des sans-papiers et des réfugiés (Caravane SP 2014), une rencontre aura lieu le 24 juin 18 h pour partager des expériences et des stratégies de lutte contre les centres de rétention pour étrangers en Europe. Rejoignez des militants de France, d’Espagne, des Pays-Bas, d’Allemagne, d’Italie et de Belgique pour cette séance d’information et d’organisation collective suivie d’un concert!
In the framework of the action week following the arrival of the Freedom March to Brussels, activists from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Belgium will gather to share informations and strategies on the fight against immigration detention centers in Europe. Join us for a meeting followed by a concert on Tuesday 24! 06 p.m
Où/Where: Garcia Lorca, 47/49 rue des Foulons, 1000 Bruxelles (garcialorca.be)
Info: crer.info@gmail.com
Programme de la semaine/Programme of the week:
http://
caravan2014.noblogs.org/programme-2/
Following several events, the 127 bis has become a powder keg
General search and seizure of prayer carpets
On June 4th 2014, after a meeting organised with the detainees by the Centre Management, during which the majority had complaints about the living conditions in the centre, a general search happened in the cells and a body search on the all the ‘residents’. The prayer carpets were also confiscated. The detainees were told that if they wanted to pray they had to arrange that with the boss. The detainees did not appreciate.
Suicide attempt
An Afghan man tried to commit suicide in the evening of June 5th. He was placed in solitary confinement for one hour and a half and then, seen his worrying state, he was brought to the hospital.
Conflicts and fights
A lot of conflicts and fights among prisoners and guards : it is being processed to systematic solitary confinements.
Complaints
Currently, several prisoners lodge complaints with the Complaints committe. They are told that their complaints will be analysed. They have to be submitted to the Complaints Committee by the management. First the “Commission des plaintes” has to check whether the complaints are receivable , then inform the detainees. But never do the detainees get any follow-up! They have the feeling that these complaints, which they have to submit to the director or a member of the staff, never reach the Committee.
Deportations
Many calls for help to prevent deportations are foreseen for next week: Guinea, Morocco, etc They will be published on due time.
On 27th May, a group of policemen wearing uniforms, accompanied with loads of civilians, invaded the yard of the 127 bis closed centre at 7 a.m.
Here are a few testimonies:
‘ – There was a lot of agitation on the weekend of 24-25 May, it was hell!
– The six Congolese, women and men, present for several months in the closed centre were isolated in one wing. During the whole weekend, others arrived in buses from the different Belgian centres, and then others from different European countries.
– The people to be deported were isolated in one wing and we were in ours, they made everything to isolate us so that we would not be able to see anything.
– On Tuesday at 7 a.m. the police invaded the yard of the 127 bis. We could not see anything because the buses were parked at the entrance of the centre.
– I just saw that there was a woman in a wheelchair among them.
– There was one big bus and two smaller buses.’
And other testimonies that say a lot about the whole thing:
‘We can not say anything. I can not give you any information.’
Contact with a deported Congolese in Kinshasa on 28th May 2014: ‘We now are at the airport for identification, we are about a hundred people…’ then the line was cut.
Various information in the flight: according to some detainees, they were between 90 and 100 Congolese, according to a worker from the centre they were 110, according to the Foreigners Office that was contacted by an association they ‘only’ were 19: 16 Congolese from Belgium, 3 from France, and one from the Grand-Duchy.
The information is very fragmented. It is a state secret! If others have testimonies or informaiton, please email gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net to try and gather more information!
“They have a lot of money here: Two cops for each deportation, several times per day, who get payed for a roundtrip. It’s a big budget for a country in crisis!”
“Commerce is going well in closed centers”
In the closed centers
Hunger-strike in Merksplas one month ago: 9 people put in solitary confinement, transferred in other centers or “disappeared”, probably because they were through the back door!
“Social services in closed centers are to persuade imprisoned people to be deported to enrol in the voluntary return program”, explains the Immigration Office:
At first, prisoners fully trust social assistants, who seem very friendly and even nurturing: “Don’t worry, everything is going to be all right!”
Many know nothing about the functioning, and think they are going to be released, in view of the injustice surrounding their imprisonment, until they are brought to the plae!
Social assistance NEVER proposes voluntary return. It doesn’t give any information and seem to have only one goal: deportation at all costs!
Behavioural problems
Some prisoners have been transferred to the Vottem’s new wing. “A new wing dedicated to those who suffer from behavioural or psychic problems”, dixit Maggie De Block. This is a way of “psychiatrise” those who resist against their confinement, who revolt against their deportation, and therefore have behavioural problems!!!
Deportations
Guineans: every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, on Guinean at least is deported to Conakry on an SN Airlines flight. New arrested Guineans promptly replace them in the center.
One Moroccan man deported: his whole family is in Belgium. He told us: “No problem, I’ll be back soon”, and he’s back!
An Albanian woman deported some days after he was arrested: “brilliant system that works fine”, she says! She was told by the social assistant that she had to trust her lawyer, who didn’t sat on his hands!
A Congolese man living in Belgium for ten years, who were regularized in 2009, was arrested with other families during a raid at the NPO “VLOS” in St Niklaas. http://www.tvoost.be/nl/2014-04-03/illegalen-aangetroffen-bij-huiszoeking/#.U3xiZ4avicR. He spent on month inside but he was finally released and received the same day a positive answer to his new application for regularization: it was an “administrative error”.
About double sentence
A huge number of North African people were deported without any mercy. They have to leave their wife, their children and their jobs behind. They are being deported without any warning: 3 hours before departure they are taken from their cell and no one, not even their lawyer, is able to do anything against their deportation! But fair enough, they are offenders!
SMS received on 28 April:
26 April 2014, 2:45 pm: 5 cops made me enter the plane. They forced me to stay on the seat. I started screaming very loud. They began to beat me, they attached my feet to the chair. Another cop throttled me, I couldn’t speak anymore and I thought I was going to suffocate, I couldn’t scream. One cop was holding my hands, and another one was tightening the safety belt and making me writhe. I was in a lot of pain, and I couldn’t breathe anymore.
Double sentence seems to be one of the major priorities of the Immigration Office. And even if they are critically ill and they are going to die in their country, they are deported, because they are “criminals”. No 9ter for a criminal, or one that still allow the person to be deported! That’s it!
Call to all squatters, antifascists and everyone else to support the struggle in Calais!
On May 27th, the three main camps of Calais will be destroyed by the police. More than 600 people live in these camps, which were won through constant migrant struggle after a long series of evictions. No solution has been proposed for the evicted migrants. Moreover, a social center and two further squats are up for eviction starting on May 30th. All told, more than 800 people will be put on to the street.
In this stopping point on the way to England, squatting is the only housing solution that exists. It is also a tool of resistance for migrants to protect themselves from violence and police harassment in the camps and in the city. Today, the mayor of Calais’s fight against squatting has reached a new low. This time she has proposed a law which would change the 48 hour period in which squats must be evicted (which is not officially set down in French law). We know very little about the content of this law, only that it will attack the right to housing for all. The entire future of squatting in France is endangered by this law.
We call all squatters to take action in their own cities to defend themselves from this grave threat to the right to squat. Moreover, we call all squatters, activists and militants to come fight this law where it was born: here, in Calais!
We call everyone to come and resist these evictions and to squat more empty buildings in Calais.
We call everyone who believes that after years of constant evictions with no solution for housing the migrants, this game of cat and mouse must end.
Antifascists, militants, activists, Zadists, freedom marchers: come support the struggle in Calais!
On Friday (2 May) over 150 detainees in Harmondsworth migration prison
occupied the main courtyard in a sit down protest and began a mass hunger
strike. On Monday (5 May) supporters held solidarity noise demos outside
Harmondsworth and simultaneously at Dungavel (Scotlans). Yesterday evening
(Tuesday 6 May) protests started to spread to Colnbrook and Brook House
migration prisons.
At lunchtime on Friday 2 May over 150 people detained in Harmondsworth,
the UK’s largest migration prison run by corporation GEO group for the
Home Office, staged a sit-down occupation of the main courtyard and began
hunger strike. They issued a set of demands (see below) protesting against
the ‘Fast Track’ system, under which refugees seeking asylum are
immediately imprisoned before their claims are even heard, as well as
further mistreatment in detention.
The protestors stayed in the courtyard until the evening, when the Home
Office sent 3 officials to meet with delegates of the protestors. The
officials took a petition signed by all of the protestors, and said they
would reply to the demands on Tuesday 6 May. The detainees decided to
suspend their hunger strike while they waited for the response.
On Monday (5 May) solidarity noise demos took place at Harmondsworth and
also at Dungavel detention centre in Scotland. At Harmondsworth, over 30
people made lots of noise with pots, pans, drums, whistles, etc. to let
the detainees know they are not alone. The people locked inside waved and
held up signs to the windows with messages such as ‘Unlawful Detention’
and ‘No Healthcare’. There was also contact over the phone, and the
prisoners said they were really glad of the support.
No big surprise, the Home Office broke its promise and still (1.30 PM
Wednesday 7 May) hasn’t given any reply to the protestors. Instead they
have moved rapidly to issue deportation tickets to several dozen people
involved in the protest.
However, yesterday (Tuesday 6 may) the unrest began to spread. In
Colnbrook detention centre, built right next to Harmondsworth, guards
broke up an organising meeting of 40 detainees inside Colnbrook yesterday
and put five ‘ringleaders’ in isolation cells, before moving them to
another secure facility. Supporters have since been unable to contact the
men.
Then at 10pm last night a group of 20 men detained at Brook House IRC near
Gatwick staged a protest in the courtyard and refused to return to their
cells.
The prisoners have been particularly asking for us to help spread their
words and voices as widely as possible beyond the prison walls. They face
a tough struggle ahead, and need our active solidarity.
Définition : « On nomme camp de concentration un lieu fermé de grande taille créé pour regrouper et pour détenir une population considérée comme ennemie, généralement dans de très mauvaises conditions. Cette population peut se composer des opposants politiques, des résidents d’un pays ennemi, de groupes ethniques ou religieux spécifiques, des civils d’une zone critique de combats, ou d’autres groupes humains, souvent pendant une guerre. Les personnes sont détenues en raison de critères généraux, sans procédure juridique, et non en vertu d’un jugement individuel. Le régime nazi a créé une relative confusion en utilisant le terme de camp de concentration pour désigner certains de ses camps d’extermination, il convient de les distinguer, même si les conditions de détention dans les camps de concentration peuvent mener à des niveaux de morbidité et de mortalité extrêmement élevés. »
Nos camps de concentration sont les prisons, les hôpitaux psychiatrique, les centres fermés pour jeunes , les centres fermés pour étrangers……. On y enferme, concentre les personnes jugés « non intégrables »ou « non désirables ».
Les camps fermés pour étrangers :
On y concentrent les illégaux, ceux qui ont une « couleur » et qui ont osé mettre les pieds sur notre territoire pour visiter, revoir la famille, pour essayer de trouver un endroit pour respirer , pour essayer d’assurer un avenir pour leurs enfants…………ou tout simplement par esprit de voyage, de découverte. Ils sont arrêtés, dans la rue, chez eux ou a nos frontières et concentrés dans des camps en attendant leur expulsion ou plus proprement dit leur rapatriement.
Pour les autorités et les médias ils sont présentés comme des voleurs, des criminelles, qui viennent profiter de notre système, qui viennent nous polluer , qui viennent nous voler les droits que nous avons acquis. Ces droits ne sont réservés qu’à nous, et nous les garderons pour nous. Personnes sauf ceux qui suivent les règles du système ont ces « droits »
Eux, ceux définit comme « étrangers », « malades », « criminelles » ont droit à des enfermements avec sanctions, coups, maltraitances et expulsions.
Nous nous sommes appropriés le monopole de la violence face à ces indésirables
Et les Droitsdel’hommistes occidentaux bien pensant ont bien intégré cette nouvelle vision des Droits de l’homme et ne disent mots !
Les Droits à…..sont réservés aux bon « citoyens », à celui qui obéit, fonctionne comme on lui dit.
L’autre, le SDF, le Sans papiers, les Roms….resteront « dans la rue » ou dans les prisons , privés de ces fameux droits, décriés par tous
La guerre aux migrants et sans papiers n’est pas qu’aux frontières . Elle est chez nous, sur notre sol, dans nos quartiers, dans nos rues, dans nos transports en commun.
Nos états n’auront aucuns moyens d’empêcher ces migrations. La seule chose qu’ils pourront faire est de réprimer, renvoyer tout ce qui « dérange », fermer d’autres frontières, créer de nouvelles armées .
Agissons, créons la riposte contre ce pouvoir omniprésent de l’état et de ses armées
Monsieur A est arrivé en Belgique pour demander l’asile en 2012. Il a de gros problème en Guinée et risque d’être arrêté dès son arrivée . On avait déjà tenté de l’expulser lors du vol collectif du 17/03 qui a été refusé par le gouvernement guinéen. Il est depuis plusieurs mois enfermé au centre fermé 127 bis. Monsieur A est très angoissé et ne veut et peut pas retourner en Guinée !
L’Office va à nouveau essayer de l’expulser ce dimanche 13/04 à 11h30.
L’ambassade de Guinée semble ne pas avoir délivré un laissez passer pour lui. Nos autorités vont utiliser un laissez passer européen pour tenter de l’expulser, laissez passer discutable et contesté par plusieurs associations. Une solution fabriquée par les instances européennes pour se débarrasser de ceux qu’elles considèrent comme indésirables et qui ont droit à notre protection.
Rv à l’aéroport ce 13 /04′ à 9h30 vol SN airlines vers Conakry SN 205
Et fax, mail de protestation contre ces expulsions à tout va.
http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél : 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
-Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
-Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be // Fax 022173328, 025126953
-Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be, milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
-Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be Tél 02 542 80 11 // Fax : 02 542 80 03
Ce vendredi 25/04/2014 une soirée de soutien est organisée à gettingthevoiceout pour permettre de continuer à soutenir les prisonniers de tous les centres fermés et leurs luttes, à la Parfumerie à Bruxelles.
A diffuser partout!
Programme
A la parfumerie
en face de l’arrêt de tram : porte de Ninove – Bruxelles
Bouffe populaire
Prix libre
19h – présentation de
Getting The voice Out et Discussion
Concerts :
20h – Barbazmari
Jazz Ethiopien
21h – Mòlo Sâyat
Folk acoustique Apatride
22h30 – Cop On Fire
Dub, Ska, Punk
0h00 – DJ No Border
CONTRE les PRISONS
pour immigré-e-s
et TOUTES les formes
d’ENFERMEMENTS !
Update 16/03: On leur a dit au 127bis que c’est demain lundi entre 11h et 12h qu’on va les transférer à l’aéroport militaire, qu’ils seront accompagnés de nombreux policiers..
Update 14/03: It seems that a demonstration might take place tomorrow in front of the Belgian consulate in Conakry to protest against the deportations planned. Other rumors also say that the Conarky airport may refuse the landing of the Belgian plane… In Vottem they are starting to isolate the Guineans in view of their departure for the 127bis centre. Eight people would be concerned. In Merksplas they would be 11 Guineans concerned (some of them in confinement). In Bruges, they would be 4. Among them, eight Guineans made an appeal and the court refused their deportation.
In the closed centres, several Guineans would have been warned that they would be deported this Monday 17th of March. It is quite strange that the date was announced to them. A lot of them did not get any let pass from their embassy. All the more since there seems (unofficial) to exist a refusal from the Guinean President to welcome Guinean nationals coming from BENELUX (http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article3687)after the failure of Mrs De Block’s visit in Guinea. Warning for the Guineans who are still free. They might still be subject to raids in the cities or at home… http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/mode-demploi-expulsions-collectives/
Ce lundi 17 mars, un vol militaire est prévu pour expulser une vingtaine de Guinéens actuellement détenus dans les centres fermés de Vottem, Merksplas et Brugge. “Nous cherchons vos laissez-passer mais votre expulsion c’est lundi”, ont annoncé les assitantes sociales aux personnes concernées.
Contactée, l’Ambassade de Guinée a confirmé n’avoir délivré aucun laisser-passer. Une délégation des Pays-Bas serait venue récemment à Bruxelles pour solliciter ces documents indispensables à tout rapatriement. L’Ambassade aurait alors contacté le Ministre guinéen des Affaires étrangères, Louseny Fall, qui dans un fax a immédiatement confirmé à Bruxelles l’opposition de la Guinée aux délivrances de laisser-passer pour ses ressortissants.
Il est vrai que le contexte est relativement sensible: lors de la visite récente de Maggie De Block à Conakry sensée solliciter l’aide du gouvernement guinéen pour le rapatriement de ses compatriotes en situation irrégulière en Belgique, le Président Alpha Conde s’est dit catégoriquement opposé aux rapatriements de Guinéens vivant en Belgique “sauf s’ils sont dealers ou criminels”. La visite du Président prévue le mois prochain à Bruxelles complique encore la donne. Ainsi que la perspective des éléctions présidentielles en Guinée prévues en 2015.
Il est à prévoir qu’en absence de laisser-passer délivré par l’Ambassade, représentante légale de l’Etat guinéen en Belgique, le gouvernement belge appliquera alors une recommandation du Conseil de l’Union européenne effective depuis le 1e janvier 1995 et qui instaure un laissez-passer européen qui permet aux Etats membres d’expulser des personnes sans document de voyage ou dont la nationalité n’a pas été formellement établie.
Autrement dit, l’Union Européenne instaure une procédure qui outrepasse les prérogatives d’un Etat.
Les Guinéens contactés dans les différents centres fermmés attendent dans l’angoisse leur transfert au 127bis de Steenokkerzeel, vraisemblablement la veille de l’expulsion. Tous ont déclaré qu’ils refuseront cette déportation dans un pays que la plupart ont quitté voici 4 ans.
Qui parmis “nos responsables” s’intérroge sur les raisons profondes qui font des demandeurs d’asile guinéens le deuxième groupe le plus important après celui des Afghans? Que penser d’un pouvoir en place qui est incapable d’assurer la sécurité de ses citoyens en raison d’une corruption qui sévit à tous les échelons de la société? Que répondre aux 80% de jeunes diplomés guinéens qui ne trouvent pas de travail au pays? que dire aux familles de ces ados abattus en pleine rue parce qu’ils manifestent pour plus de justice et moins d’impunité?
En organisant cette nouvelle déportation collective, la Belgique se place une nouvelle fois dans une position peu honorable: en violant l’art. 4 du Protocole n°4 de la Convention Européenne des Droits de l’Homme qui interdit et condamme les expulsion collectives. Mais aussi, en ayant recours à une instance supra-nationale, l’Union européenne, qui par ses recommandations s’immisce de manière anti-démocratique dans les prérogatives dévolues aux représentants légaux des Etats souverains.
Il a été annoncé à plusieurs Guinéens dans les centres fermés qu’ils seraient expulsés ce lundi 17/03/2014.
Assez étonnant que la date leurs ait été annoncée. Beaucoup n’ont pas reçu de laissez-passer de leur ambassade. Surtout qu’il semble exister (non officiel) un refus de la part du président de la guinée d’accueillir des ressortissant Guinéens venant du Benelux (http://bxl.indymedia.org/spip.php?article3687) suite à l’échec de la visite de Madame De Block en Guinée.
Attention pour les Guinéens encore en liberté. Ils pourraient encore être raflés dans les villes ou chez eux…
UPDATE: 25/02 19:00: the effectiveness of repression: calm returns to the detention center of Bruges: Some placed in solitary confinment, groups of cops with dogs. “Resisting was impossible” say the prisoners.
25/02 10:30: The police is in the center with dogs. A dog has bitten a detainee. The police took away four prisoners considered “leaders”. “We are very disappointed of Belgium” said a prisoner.
On the evening of 24/02, a detainee had to be brought into isolation for deportation. Other inmates insisted to be able to say goodbye.
The guards did not appreciate this and became very violent. They beat the detainee who was to be expelled and other inmates who protected him. One inmate allegedly has a broken arm after the violence.
“The guards were all very violent” says one of them. This morning (25/02) prisoners in the C-wing of the center of Bruges have decided to start a hunger strike, in protest against the violence!
“It’s very hot in here this morning. Journalists have to be warned. The outside world has to know how we are treated in here”
24/02: There was 38 Congolese people in the flight., 7 from the cosed centre of Belgium. “it was very,very hard”. A majority of them are always in detention in Kinshasa.
19/02 2:30 p.m. As far as we know, the plane took off at 9 a.m. this morning with 7 Congolese aboard. Micheline who was supposed to be on that flight was not deported; she was apparently brought to the hospital overnight.
18/02 2:30 p.m. Message by a detainee of the closed centre at 8 p.m: “There are clashes and ambulances in the isolation cells.”
We’ve heard that a collective deportation to Kinshasa has been planned for tomorrow (Wednesday) .
At the 127bis centre, five men and a women (the women they tried to deport last Saturday) have been placed into solitary confinement.
Others would be transferred from the other centres to the 127bis this evening.
The military flight would apparently leave at 10 a.m this Wednesday 19th February.
A lot of the people who are going to be deported have been imprisoned for several months already and they are political opponents for sure, even though the CGRA did not want to believe them.
Their welcoming in Kinshasa will most likely be very agressive, when one reads the article by the Guardian.
A top-secret document that circulates among the police and security heads of department in the DRC suggests that people deported from Great Britain risk torture when going back.
Another question is whether this flight will be a FRONTEX flight and then other Congolese nationals would also be brought to the 127 bis centre to then be deported on the same flight.
A man in his 50s tried to kill himself on Friday 14/02/2014. He cut himself with a knife. The other detainees were very upset this morning, the suicide attempt was spectacular.
The man was taken to the hospital and the other detainees were not given any information. He was then brought back to the detention center and put in solitary confinement.
Since then the other detainees have received no news. They are outraged. They don’t understand how such things can happen without any reaction from politicians and the public. They don’t understand why such horrible events don’t generate a protest movement!
It is hard to explain to them the reasons for this indifference.
They are asking for reactions from outside, from their supporters, from journalists! They complain about not being able to see a psychologist when such events occur and that the management and “social services” in the centre don’t pay any attention to their requests and the violence they endure.
This act of desperation seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
They want to protest but feel powerless in the face of the repression that is common in the center.
How many suicide attempts and how many revolts will there have to be before we react ?
Micheline came to Belgium one year ago. Her dad, mum and brother have been living here since 1986. The father had been recognised as a political refugee upon his arrival in Belgium.
She wanted to join her family because her dad is seriously ill. He is paralysed and can not talk anymore.
She introduced an asylum request as soon as she arrived. While waiting for the answer to that request, she first lived in an open centre and then at her parents’ in Woluwe-St-Lambert. After the negative answer by the Office, the police came to pick her up at her place on November 2nd 2013.
She has been retained in the closed centre in Steenokkerzeel since then.
She experienced her 3rd deportation attempt this 15/02/2014.
She was sitting at the back of the plane with her hands tied and surrounded by 12 policemen. She cried, horrified by this violence and extremely upset having to leave her sick father whom she’d probably never see again.
The passengers of the flight, among whom one Member of Parliament, found the way she was treated by her escort absolutely unacceptable and they protested at them. Several of them had to get off the plane, including Micheline.
During her return to the closed centre she was beaten and knocked around by her escort.
Micheline is in a state of shock and can hardly witness what happened. She wants to stay closed to her father and look after him.
A lot of deported people come back to Belgium when they are not too far away and/or can afford to, because they have all their friends and family here.
For others however it is hell!
Testimonies of deported Congolese:
A few deported Congolese who can not reveal their identity for fear of retaliation explain us what they may expect at their arrival in Congo.
As soon as they reach Kinshasa, the Congolese are being questioned and kept in a secret place for several days in order to be identified and for the authorities to be sure they are not opponents to the regime. Some of them are badly questioned during several days in a row.
“All the deported Congolese are considered as ‘fighters’ by the authorites until they may prove the opposite.
If they are released at last(on bail), the hassle is not over: they must remain at the disposal of the authorities until they are completely cleared. It may happen that police forces come again to their houses. After their release, many of them immediately leave the country for a bordering country, after having placed their family in a safe place! Almost daily, Congolese people are deported and many of them “disappear” as soon as they land in Kinshasa, either imprisoned or fleeing the country.
And a Top secret documentLire : http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/16/congo-torture-asylum-seekers
A Togolese woman has been deported 15 days ago. It was the third deportation attempt on her. We learnt that she’is doing bad, both physically and psychically. Here is the message by another person deported to Togo concerning her state:
« She is seriously ill! I saw her, she is swollen from her head to her toes! She went to the hospital where she got injections. I told her to go back to the hospital for heart or liver analyses, I don’t know what she suffers from but she should be properly checked and cured accordingly.
She is not doing fine at all! Still in a state of shock, not realising what happened to her. She should not give up!
She mentioned an injection that the escort wanted to give her at the airport, which scared her so much that she did not dare resist anymore in the plane.
So she’s still shocked and her adoptive mother tells me she fears that she commits suicide! Her luggage is still lost!”
These testimonies are very difficult to obtain. They only are the tip of the iceberg! The future of the deported is the least of Belgium and Europe’s worries!
Here is a series of testimonies that support those of prisoners in closed centres, telling the same facts; which increases their fears of being sent back to hell. One should insist here on the fact that these testimonies are invaluable and very hard to get. However, thanks to the faithful relation we could install we were able to collect them. They only are the tip of a huge iceberg that is much easier to ignore. As far as we know, no deporting authority, in Belgium or in Europe, tries to do this work of checking the fate of the people they deport, it is the least of their worries, provided they do good business!
Our Maggie Deblock and her friend Freddy Roosemont, director of the Immigration Office are visiting Conakry;
At the same time, Guineans get stopped at the the Immigration Office or in public places. This February the 1, a police raid took place in a Guinean coffeehouse in Brussels: everyone was searched and 5 Guineans were arrested and taken to detention centers. A dozen others were arrested during an appointment at the office according to our information .
It is clear that our Maggie wants to make a good impression in Conakry, arresting and incarcerating Guineans in Belgium and deperting them to a country “less dangerous than Afghanistan and the DRC!”, says Mr. Roosemont. According to him, “In Guinea, there’s no violence, no persecutions like in the Republic of Congo or in Afghanistan”.
Comprehensive statements from Maggie and Freddy can be read here:
N has been locked up in a closed center for 3 months. She will undergo a second deportation attempt on Wednesday 5/2 towards Kinshasa. She has applied twice for asylum and a third application is being processed currently. She has been in belgium since 2011.
She sent us this desperate SMS :
“I was given a flight reservation and escort for tomorrow at 10:40AM… Help! They are delivering me to rape and death my god! I don’t know Kinshasa. I used to live in the province of Kisangani. I was persecuted there and my life is endangered. Help me please I am begging you!”
She is desperate and calling for help !
Let’s prevent these criminal deportations.
Meet at the airport at 8:40 AM to speak to the passengers. They must be warned that N will be in the back of the plane , tied down and restrained by a plain-clothed escort. The passengers must know that they can refuse to travel in these conditions
–Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Ce 28/01/2014 à7h30 un nombre impressionnant de policiers accompagnés de chiens sont descendus dans les 3 ailes fonctionnelles du camp (une quatrième aile est en travaux suite à des évasions il y a 2 mois). Les détenus ont été amenés un par un et rassemblés après avoir été minutieusement fouillés. Toutes les pièces ont été inspectées jusqu’aux plafonds, les cellules, les poubelles ;…. Vraisemblablement cette descente aurait eu lieu suite à la découverte d’une cisaille.
L’isolement et le manque d’activités rend encore plus difficile la vie dans le centre, déjà très pénible.Très peu de contacts avec l’extérieur, pas de TV. Les détenus ne savent pas ce qui se passe à l’extérieur.Ils sont coupés du monde sauf quand, par chance, ils arrivent à mettre la main sur un journal. Cela ne fait qu’augmenter un sentiment d’insécurité déjà très présent , et la majorité des détenus a très peur.Surtout les premiers jours. « On lit une énorme angoisse dans leurs yeux ». D’autres prisonniers sont très déprimés,et régulièrement certains attentent à leur vie : les tentatives de suicides ne sont pas rares.
Les conditions de vie insupportables rendent parfois les réflexions amères. Un détenu compare ces prisons à des camps « comme pendant votre dernière guerre ». “Pas d’extermination mais si ils pouvaient ? Sans lois ni droits, juste à cause des origines ». “Pas de droits, même pas celui de se défendre ». « Et c’est un vrai commerce ces politiques de migration. Pleins de gens gagnent du fric avec ça, ici et dans les pays d’origine, sans compter les dessous de table » .
La chasse à “l’illégal” –celle ou celui dont la situation administrative n’est pas strictement conforme à la loi– prend de l’ampleur : on ratisse de plus en plus large, on rafle à tous les étages. Il faut faire du chiffre.
Le même détenu nous raconte : “il y a ici des hommes qui vivent depuis 10 ou 15 ans en Belgique. Un Monsieur était en Belgique depuis 22 ans et avait une longue barbe blanche.”
D’autres ont leur femme et leurs enfants ici. “Une mère et ses 2 enfants viennent de Liège 2 à 3 fois par semaine pour visiter leur mari et père.
Il nous parle également d’un Congolais qui avait été arrêté car il n’avait pas ses papiers sur lui, mais était en règle.“Il a été arrêté parce qu’il était noir!“ Il a été libéré après 5 jours et l’intervention d’un avocat“.
Il nous relate encore une anecdote étonnante concernant deux cousins Roumains enfermés: “l’un des deux a été expulsé et 3 jours plus tard il est venu au centre pour visiter son cousin!“
Même des Européens peuvent être détenus puis expulsés : “Un Italien a été expulsé vers l’Italie après plusieurs mois de détention !”
Quand le bout du tunnel n’est qu’un cul de sac admnistratif, l’Office se fait créatif. Ou pas.
Encore une fois, pour les détenus, c’est l’inconnu, l’insécurité permanente. Et l’angoisse.
Beaucoup « croupissent » depuis des mois dans le centre car leur ambassade refuse de délivrer un laissez-passer. Notre témoin évoque aussi “d’énormes magouilles“ de l’Office des Etrangers(OE) pour obtenir des laissez-passer.Pour un Congolais résidant en Belgique depuis 7 ans, à qui l’ambassade refusait de délivrer un laissez-passer, l’OE s’est vu délivrer par le gouvernement congolais à Kinshasa un « sauf conduit » en vue de son expulsion.
“Il y avait beaucoup de Chinois mais la majorité a été expulsée, sans avocats et sans moyens de s’expliquer, ne parlant que le Chinois.”
“Beaucoup d’autres sont venus par l’Italie où ils avaient reçu des papiers temporaires et sont renvoyés là-bas : cela règle quoi?Ils reviennent après. »
Pire, ils sont parfois renvoyés vers leur pays d’origine , afin de les éloigner autant que possible et de rendre leur retour plus difficile, voire impossible.
Et les expulsions s’enchainent…
“Depuis les quelques mois que je suis là, je n’ai vu que trois libérations dans mon aile, les expulsions je ne sais plus les compter”
“Je pense que pour le moment ils sont très durs, à cause des prochaines élections.”
…heureusement sans tuer l’espoir d’une vie meilleure
“Chacun a son projet pour revenir en Belgique après l’expulsion, et des astuces sont échangées pour trouver un moyen de revenir.”
Que disparaissent ces lignes absurdes tracées sur des cartes… elles n’ont pour nous aucun sens.
Mrs O, from Angola, was arrested at the Brussels airport on 17 December 2103 with an Italian visa. She was planning to go to Italy. The airport police arrested her and she has been retained in the closed centre of Bruges since then.
She will go through her third deportation attempt to Angola this Thursday 23 January 2014 and she is asking for help to prevent this deportation.
‘We are not animals Madam. Belgium is not nice, I wanted to go to Italy.’
Flight to Luanda Thursday 23 January 10.45 a.m SN 359
Among the detainees in closed centres, Congolese, Chinese, Moroccans, Algerians, Cameroonians, Russians and… Afghans.
Most of them are deported after months of imprisonment.
No one pays attention anymore to the Afghans that are deported. They are often arrested during demonstrations of the solidarity movement with the Afghans in Brussels (https://450afghans.owlswatch.net/), and detained for 4 months. Very often they arrived here when minors and they want to stay here.
But the reasoning of our politics is ‘Good fences make good neighbours’, ‘Let’s close the borders!’.
« The law is the law” they say, just like others say “I do my work” or “I obey the orders”.
May be someone should remind them that not long ago a few people were condemned for having obeyed orders or laws that were judged illegal or inhuman by courts!!
In brief, the executioners continue their dirty work:
Another Afghan has just arrived to the 127bis centre. He is 16 years old – that’s what’s written on his birth certificate – but the Office give him 20!!!
Another Afghan from the 127bis will go through a new deportation attempt this 22 January!
Flight to Francfurt SN 7003 , 11.10, then Dubai and Kabul !
–Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be
// Fax 022173328, 025126953
-Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be
milquet@milquet.belgium.be
/ Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
–Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Update 15/01 “Following the ‘encounter’ with the director of Vottem, five detainees were placed in solitary confinement and fifteen were transferred to other centres!!! The calm was restored!
Since the evening of Saturday 11 January, the tension has been high in the yellow wing of the Vottem retention centre.
It all started with arguments among detainees which the guards tried to solve with arbitrary confinements.
Sunday 12 January saw new arguments, disproportionate reactions of the guards, hunger strike threats by some of the detainees, and threats that the guards would ring the robocops who would ‘massacre’ them.
‘It’s war here Madam’.
Detainees complain about a complete lack of respect from the guards, about death threats against some of them, and they protest against the planned deportation of an Afghan.
An agreement was reached this evening: the promise to meet with the director on Monday! The tension remains electric.
Update 18/01/2014 Mrs K was brought under escort to the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel the day before her departure. Around 7 p.m she noticed that she was losing blood. She warned the staff of the centre. She was told ‘this is nothing, it happens to all pregnant women!’. She did not see a doctor, she was just given pills to sleep.
A few hours later she was still losing blood, a lot of blood. She started to scream, begging them to call an ambulance: the staff of the centre panicked and rang the emergency services. She was brought to the hospital with the security services of the centre. After the necessary exams, the hospital doctor refused that she’d be deported the morning after. The members of the security services insisted, arguing that ‘it was absolutely obligatory that she left’. The doctor had to heavily insist for them to accept the certificate forbidding the journey.
She was brought back to the retention centre of Steenokkerzeel during the night, and in the morning of the Saturday to the closed centre of Bruges. She is fine and the baby too. She thanks you all for your support! The haemorrhage had been caused by stress.
It is to be noted that during 24 hours no one got news from Mrs K: neither her husband nor her co-detainees. Everybody was extremely worried seen the heavy risks linked to this forced deportation. It is only on the Saturday afternoon, after 24 hours, upon her return to the closed centre of Bruges that she was given back her mobile phone and that she could warn her husband.
The Foreigners Office at the service of France?
Mrs K has been living in France with her husband for 9 years. She is working there and everything is in order except that she still doesn’t have ‘papers’. She is four months pregnant. Her place of residence in Paris is written in her Moroccan passport.
She came to Belgium to visit a friend hospitalised there. She got arrested during a control.
Mrs K has been retained in the closed centre of Bruges since more than one month and she will go through her third deportation attempt to Rome and then Casablanca this Saturday. She had lodged a complaint against police brutality during her second deportation attempt and this time they will use all the possible means to get rid of her! That’s the promise they made to her!
Her lawyer introduced an appeal for her release but it will be on Monday 20 January, after her deportation!
All that she wants is to go back to France to end her regularisation process that she will get lawfully. If she returned to Morocco she would be rejected by her family because of her pregnancy.
Flight Rome 18 January 2014 Brussels Airlines 7:30 a.m Airport at 5:30 a.m to speak to the passengers.
Let’s flood the mailboxes and fax machines of the persons responsible as from now! http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/ Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 Tél : 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362 -Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l¹Office des Etrangers : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be T 02 793 80 31 (NL EN) 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , -Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be // Fax 022173328, 025126953 -Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l¹Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be, milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580 -Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d¹Etat à l¹Asile, à l¹Immigration et à l¹intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be Tél 02 542 80 11 // Fax : 02 542 80 03
A lot of women are ringing us these days to denounce the situation of their co-detainees in the closed centres of Bruges and Steenokkerzeel. A climate that is harsh and heavy.
On January 17, they were 35 in the closed centre of Bruges and 30 in Steenokkerzeel.
Each have their story, one part of their life is here and they cannot go back to their homeland for personal reasons.
– A Russophone woman, 80 years old, has been retained since one month and had to go through a first deportation attempt! Her health is very bad, her whole body is shaking and she does not eat.
– A Cameroonian woman has been retained for 7 months. She had been arrested during an urgent medical assistance request in Antwerp: the social assistant of the CPAS came to her house within the context of this request to check that she was indeed living there. She was accompanied by the police who arrested her on the spot.
– A Peruvian woman retained since one month and very violently arrested at her house in St Josse at 5 a.m. She refused a first deportation attempt. All her family is legal here in Belgium.
– A Moroccan mother retained for 2 months. Her two sons are living in Brussels and are Belgian. She was arrested during a control. She has nothing and no one left in Morroco and her sons want to take charge of her and have their mum close to them.
– A Pakistani woman arrested at work, detained for 2 months. She has been living in Belgium for two years, got married here and she can not go back to her country where the whole village might turn against her and kill her.
– A Cameroonian woman arretesd at the Foreigners Office. She spent one year in Cyprus where she lived an ordeal (closed centre, forced prostitution, etc.). Belgium wants to send her back to Cyprus (Dublin2).
And two releases:
– A 33 weeks pregnant woman. The father is legally living in Belgium. She got through a first deportation attempt to Norway (Dublin 2) and then, having refused her deportation, she got released.
– A woman from Burkina Faso with Italian papers in order got released. She was in transit in Brussels when they arrested her. Now that she is free she doesn’t know where to go to, she doesn’t know anyone in Brussels and has no financial means. She wants to go back to her host country, Italy. It was a ‘mistake’ of the administration!
All this is just an overview of what happens behind those walls.
Repression remains the Office’s privileged means of action, in the form of imprisonment at all cost!
Update: 13/01: les travaux de peinture ont commencé dans l’aile 1. Même que certains détenus y participent et seraient payer pour leur travail (en noir?)
Ce matin l’aile 1 du centre fermé 127bis à Steenokkerzeel a été vidée de ses occupants. Tous les hommes ont été rassemblés dans l’aile 2. L’explication de la direction : “pour cause de travaux “
Nous ne sommes pas dupe. L’Office des étrangers a libéré des places 50 places) pour enfermer d’autres :
Des possiblités de rafles ce Weekend ? :
Rafles des Afghans qui entament demain matin une nouvelle marche vers Gand ? Maggie oserait-elle rafler les manifestants Afghans qui continuent à demander des titres de séjour depuis des mois ?
Prévisions d’un gros contrôle STIB ou SNCB (lors desquelles de nombreux sans papiers ont déjà été arretés ?
Rafles de congolais à Matonge pour remplir un vol collectif ? De nombreux congolais sont déjà enfermé et les vol collectif vers ce pays sont nombreux en ce moment.
Places pour des migrants venant d’autres pays Schengen en vue d’un vol collectif Frontex au départ de steenokkerzeel?
Maggie oserait elle rafler les manifestants Afghans qui continuent à demander des titres de séjour depuis des mois ?
Ou plus perver,s serait ce une stratégie d’intimidation de l’OE pour casser la lutte des Afghans et la mobilisation.
ACTIONSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Parce que personne n’est illégal, ne laissons pas la machine a expulser continuer a écraser les gens jour après jour!
Il faut rester vigilants et s’organiser contre ces assauts quotidiens, par exemple en alertant son entourage, ou en réagissant à ce qui se passe devant soi. Ne restons pas spectateurs!!
Preamble : The detainees currently provide us with very little information on the situation in the closed centres (detention centres) it is only once released or deported that tongues are loosened and that they give us the information they want to make known.It seems that in the majority of centres a watchword has been given to guardians : be friendly and polite .
“There are even those who smile, but you know the type of smile that showsthe teeth. We feel that this is false “
Following the death of the young Ivorian in the detention centre of Bruges, hunger strikes cascaded in most detention centres also successive evasions then, as a result, security in some centres has been strengthened .
But the deportation machine remains well oiled, and the number of evictions is industrial : “In our centre , every day there are a dozens who leave and ten new arriving “
A Congolese told us : “This is dictatorship in your country. Now I understand why the dictatorship prevails in Congo: it is you who have imported it and you obviously continue supporting it ! “
Mass arrests:
Arrests take place at all possible stages of the migrants’ journey without any coherence nor ethics, because it increases the figures!
– The negative results of the regularisation campaign of 2009 fall daily. People who introduced a regularisation request are frequently arrested and learn, during their arrest or upon arrival in a closed centre that there is a negative answer to their request . A Congolese woman living amongst us for 8 years says, ” they came to my home to tell me that I had to accompany them for information on my proceeding for regularisation. Once at the police station they put me in a cell and from there sent me to a detention centre “
– Is a request for legal marriage or cohabitation a risky behavior ? Many foreigners are being arrested at their home after introducing a simple demand for marriage or cohabitation . They are systematically suspects for the adminisration, which tracks “Marriages of convenience and statements of legal cohabitation of convenience” showing often a close to paranoia zeal. And if some of these “fake couples” later on get conjugal visits once a month at a detention centre, don’t see any inconsistency in it!
After his marriage application a man has spent more than five months in a detention centre . After several attempts of deportaion and administrative apeals, the town agreed to his wedding. So he was released after five months of detention. Di Rupo is in favour of the wedding for all … almost all! Another refugee whose marriage had been accepted and the wedding date fixed early January, has been deported to Iraq a month before that date. His wife, pregnant and in a precarious health, must now make the trip to manage getting married eventually. “The law is the law” says Maggie, wishing she could count the mother and the unborn child in her gruesome accounts.
Other foreigners find themselves being “advised” to go and get married in their country of origin. This advice was given to a person from Guinea living and working legally in Belgium, but who is suspected to wish a “white wedding”. His fiancee is detained at the 127bis centre and continues to hope for a favorable answer concerning their marriage application.
– At the airport, just in transit? Nothing works! Several passengers in transit, who were carrying a visa for another European country and made a stopover in Brussels are being arrested at the airport. They are then quickly and efficiently deported to their country of origin at the taxpayer’s expenses. Welcome to absurd land, but never-mind, as long as it does the trick : boosting Maggie’s figures and surveys show the consequences…
– Try to leave the country without being formally deported:unlucky you, no one escapes Maggie! A man was arrested at the airport in Charleroi, his crime: leave the country himself, since he had received an OQT (Order of Leaving the territory). He found himself detained for 4 months in the closed centre of Bruges awaiting deportation. Just like quantum physics, Maggie’s logic is contra-intuitive but merciless.
– Going to your local administration in appliance with the Belgian law: a little homegrown trap. Frequently we hear of arrests in town halls. SomebigCommunes are excelling in this sport: precarious migrants hunting. A woman was arrested at her townhall (Molenbeek). She came to legalise a document: the employee has found one of her names was different on the document. Suspect element if any, the administration of course never makes errors. Our little zealous employee called the police to report the suspicion. Nobody told us whether he was busysucking a small Vichy tablet at the time! (pastille Vichy are digestive tablets). The woman was taken to a detention centre, then was deported after three months of imprisonment. So do trust your administration, play the game, it will reward you well!
– During driving controls, better drive drunk than undocumented ! Although it is not often mentioned, people are regularly arrested following road controls. An Afghan involved in the current movement of Afghan refugees in theChurch de Béguinage, has been arrested in Leuvenand imprisoned. He was finally released after two weeks, the judge stating in his conclusions that ” the Foreigners’ Office takes irrational decisions.”
–When expulsing from a home, likes to show the multiple facets of poverty ; ” it’s like disco” would she have said. To our knowledge, two people were arrested during the eviction of the Gesù and are currently detained into the centre of Bruges. With Maggie a misfortune never comes alone.
Orders to leave the territory (OQT) atall-will
When the centres are full and deportations are accelerated to their limits, how otherwise make increase the figures wonders Maggie ? A three-letter solution (voters, like dogs, remember short names easily) , that’s good: OQT. Order to leave the territory. They are delivered in spades. Must show that it’s “effective” , let‘s make figures !
It seems that in that era Maggie one could speak of OQTM ( not ” Order Exit Territory Maggie ” but ” Order to leave the Territory Multiple” ). Indeed, OQT becomes downright an identity document for migrants card : “When I’m being controlled, I show my OQTB and it’s OK .” Even “funnier”, those who are detained following the issuing of a OQTB then freed because notdeportable, receive at their release their umpteenth OQTB . Waiting often for the next arrest and the next OQT ! This creates employment (useless servants) but what counts above all … the figures!
Detention, an essential communication tool for super Maggie
As long as the centres are saturated, it’s OK, the maximum turnover is being assured and the detention statistics climb ! Detention often lasts several months and is accompanied by blackmail, physical and / or psychological pressure. This in order to keep pressure on the detainee so that he / she disappears during a deportation or a forced” voluntary return “, evasion (less appreciated by Maggie) or release with OQTB. The aim is to break the prisoner as quickly as possible in order to make her/his space available for the next one. Despite this, detentions that last for 4 months are quite common.
Vis-à- vis the public, detention is used to demonstrate that the hunt for migrants continues steadily, that “illegals” are systematically tracked down,imprisoned, deported. It also works as a deterrent against future migrants “not just in Belgium, goal awaits you and you will be roughly treated. Go and seek asylum in a more hospitable country. “
Asylum: legal proceedings to be limited, reduced and atrophied
The Foreigners’ Office is the one that “registers the application and makes a few screenings ” before even handing the case over to the CGRA (Commissariat général aux réfugiés et apatrides – Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons). It uses all possible tricks to reject these claims , they therefore never even reach the CGRA , and will not be registered as formal requests. If the claim is actually accepted and transferred to the CGRA , it is common that it’s the asylum seeker that finds her/himself arrested and taken to a closed centre.
“You are being put in the detention centre to continue your proceeding. This will go faster. ” This is the new lie used by the Foreigners‘s Office. Once locked up, it becomes very difficult to gather evidence justifying the application for asylum, and thereby increasing the risk of rejection of the application.
Maggie likes to quote the increasing demands of multiple requests as evidence of “bad faith” of asylum seekers.
At the same time, the policy that she is leading is indeed an incentive to introduce massively. Autopsy of yet another hypocrisy: in many centres social assistants say “The only way out of here is to (re) apply for asylum.” And as there is no other solution , each (re) files an application for asylum necessarily accompanied by very few elements and in most cases rejected by the CGRA.
In November 2013, 1,103 asylum applications were registered in Belgium. This is a decrease of 34% compared to October 2012. Of those 1,103 asylum applications, 352 (31.9% of the total number of applications) were multiple applications. The number of multiple applications decreased by 24.5 % compared to October 2013.
Dublin 2 proceeding : Maggie’s black hole
Dublin procedure seems to be used indiscriminately by the Office des étrangers to prevent new claims and increase the number of evictions , but more curiously to increase figures of confinements ! During this procedure,e the refugee will be assisted automatically by a lawyer,having as consequence that he sometimes becomes unable to prove that he is not ” dublinisable ” .
A significant number of detainees are ” Dublin ” cases. They are usually arrested at the Immigration Office when applying for asylum. If there is the slightest chance that he/she can be the called Dublin case, he/she will then be transferred directly into a detention centre. There the waiting begins for an answer from the European country which would have been passed before reaching Belgium. Can then be used as evidence the statements of the refugee’s visa, an air ticket, fingerprints kept in that country etc… If that third country agrees to give its ” support”,the refugee is then deported. His application for asylum in Belgium will thus not be recorded: great indeed, this means an application for asylum less and a deportation more, Maggie is thrilled as is herovercautious electorate.
Sometimes the situation turns into an absurd tragicomedy. Recently, a man who had made an application for asylum was called to the Office. He must come and get the documents needed for his voluntary return to France, where he introduced a first asylum request that was agreed to be processed by that country. He went to the Office with his luggag, ready to return to France , thinking to take the train straight after leaving the offices. However the administration has reserved a surprise: he is being arrested and locked in a detention centre.
Another person is for three months in a detention centre. He was arrested when he came to Brussels to request a copy of his OQTB necessary for its application for asylum in France !
Yet another one came to seek asylum : he was arrested and imprisoned under the Dublin procedure. Fortunately, he had the chance to prove that it was not justified and was released after 15 days.
Embassies tours, sometimes it’s like playing Russian roulette.
To evict you need a pass from the embassy of the country of destination. The Office put in every effort to achieve this, always contempt for man and woman, sometimes in defiance of the law (the law is the law” but not for everyone! A national of Zymbabwé was trapped for more than 4 months. He was visiting Brussels , wanting to travel to the United Kingdom when he was arrested . The Office tries to deport at any cost. As the Zymbabwé embassy does not issue passes, the Office des étrangers went successively to the Embassy of Angola, Guinea and the DRC. The man is desperate and begs to be sent home . He does not want to hear about Europe. He was finally released with a OQTB.
A “representative” of the Embassy of the DRC went to 127bis centre , pre-signed passes under the arm. He came to ” identify ” the detainees. Thus, even before seeing them, he had the necessary document to have them deported to Kinshasa. According to several witnesses, this man from the embassy was carrying the asylum claims files during the “identification” interviews. For political opponants this is the best way to ensure that they will suffer mistreatment at least, not to say prison or just to “disapear” after arriving in Kinshasa…
Evictions : an aim in itself, a symbol sent to electors:Deport at any price just to increase the numbers!
Evictions are daily and become more commonplace in the centres : ” Soon it will be my turn madame.” Many prisonners, after several months of detention and legal struggle comply with these expulsions under the threat of violence and under blackmail.
“If you resist you never be able to return to Belgium” they are told .
“Here they are wild forced expulsions and cascades of negative outcomes concerning our procedures “
The determination has no limits ; an Afghan has been locked without understanding what was happening and the reasons for his detention. A fellow prisoner knowing our language has asked to see his papers and found out that they were concerning a completely different person, the names were not corresponding ! This is a good example of how the investigation ” case by case ” highlighted by Maggie to justify her expulsion actually works.
Former prisonniers are expelled, sometimes directly from the prison, sometimes after a transfer to a detention centre. They are expelled without any consideration of their families or situationsleft behind in Belgium and are forced to leave!
Read on the website of the OE “A working group consisting of the Foreign Office and the Federal Police Brussels National Airport was created It examines how a foreigner can best be satisfied . return without resistance and without constraint ( escort ) .” It is not however clear whether the currently used techniques such as deception, lies, blackmail , threats, and physical or psychological pressure will be evaluated and refined. The prisonniers testify : “Faster to expel ; they put us in prison and without warning put on a plane . ” In many cases , they are told the night before their deportation the next morning without being able to talk and inform anyone.
Finally, again and again, young Afghans are deported to a “safe country” Afghanistan, for which the Ministries of Tourism and Foreign Affairs are warning about the dangers .
Collective deportations : an industrial view of deportation , as carried out by Maggieby Europe ( Frontex):
On the 21st of November 2013, a collective deportation to Eastern Europe took place. A dozen people were taken to the detention centre 127bis in the late evening and put in detention . Very early in the next morning, they were transferred to the airport in police vans and deported .
Collective deportation to Congo on the 4th of December 2013. 52 Congolese were on the list ..30 were deported. From the information collected, many were then interviewed by the authorities upon arrival in Kinshasa. The authorities confiscated their passports, people remain waiting in Kinshasa, often hidden for fear of further reprisals. An Angolan is still at Kinshasa. It is impossible for him to return to his country without a passport.
Information on the fate of expelled people remain very fragmented : the contacts we have with the family members have become more discreet, giving the impression that they fear to speak. The detainees who were on the listnot yet deported are now gradually deported by civilian flights .
Evasions : another well kept secret: They are not in public statistics !
But fortunately they exist. Sometimes with the complicity of remorseful guards .
Merksplas : “The past six months were prisoners attempted to escape : the night they broke tiles , neutralised alerts and climbed the wall. Three were injured and could not get up. Three others have succeeded and left into nature. The guards were alerted by the cries of pain of the three injured at the bottom of the wall, one of them broke his foot. Two of the injured have since been set free.”
127bis Steenokkerzeel : A person tried to escape through the door during the visits, but was unfortunately caught .
Vottem : On Wednesday, 18 December 2013, three prisoners tried to escape by breaking the windows of the lounge they were caught, the lounge room is currently unusable due to the damage.
Releases one more little secret hatched by Maggie :Not in public statistics !
More than 30 % inmates are released after a period ranging from a few weeks to 8 months imprisonment.
The list is as long as your arm ; extracts: two Guineans released after eight months of detention, with a OQTB . Release of a Guinean woman after 4 months, always with OQTB… and nationals of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan etc… mentioned previously .
In conclusion, if Maggie applies this very industrial vision of repression and terror against migrants, it’s for the figures and appearance. Everything is pretty good for spreadsheets, pretty graphics, waved to be seen, with as background hollow phrases and shocks speeches. A “policy” always conducted in defiance of the human being, sometimes bypassing the law, often by obscure acts, even plunge people into Kafkaesque situations or wasting the taxpayers’ money as well. This because it is the price of her popularity. But somehow she thinks, who cares ? Any resemblance with a banker (just before the Krach ) is fortuitous …pplications decreased by 24.5 % compared to October 2013.
As long as the centres are saturated, it’s OK, the maximum turnover is being assured and the detention statistics climb ! Detention often lasts several months and is accompanied by blackmail, physical and / or psychological pressure. This in order to keep pressure on the detainee so that he / she disappears during a deportation or a forced” voluntary return “, evasion (less appreciated by Maggie) or release with OQTB. The aim is to break the prisoner as quickly as possible in order to make her/his space available for the next one. Despite this, detentions that last for 4 months are quite common.
Vis-à- vis the public, detention is used to demonstrate that the hunt for migrants continues steadily, that “illegals” are systematically tracked down,imprisoned, deported. It also works as a deterrent against future migrants “not just in Belgium, goal awaits you and you will be roughly treated. Go and seek asylum in a more hospitable country. “
To evict you need a pass from the embassy of the country of destination. The Office put in every effort to achieve this, always contempt for man and woman, sometimes in defiance of the law (the law is the law” but not for everyone! A national of Zymbabwé was trapped for more than 4 months. He was visiting Brussels , wanting to travel to the United Kingdom when he was arrested . The Office tries to deport at any cost. As the Zymbabwé embassy does not issue passes, the Office des étrangers went successively to the Embassy of Angola, Guinea and the DRC. The man is desperate and begs to be sent home . He does not want to hear about Europe. He was finally released with a OQTB.
A “representative” of the Embassy of the DRC went to 127bis centre , pre-signed passes under the arm. He came to ” identify ” the detainees. Thus, even before seeing them, he had the necessary document to have them deported to Kinshasa. According to several witnesses, this man from the embassy was carrying the asylum claims files during the “identification” interviews. For political opponants this is the best way to ensure that they will suffer mistreatment at least, not to say prison or just to “disapear” after arriving in Kinshasa…
The Foreigners’ Office is the one that “registers the application and makes a few screenings ” before even handing the case over to the CGRA (Commissariat général aux réfugiés et apatrides – Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons). It uses all possible tricks to reject these claims , they therefore never even reach the CGRA , and will not be registered as formal requests. If the claim is actually accepted and transferred to the CGRA , it is common that it’s the asylum seeker that finds her/himself arrested and taken to a closed centre.
“You are being put in the detention centre to continue your proceeding. This will go faster. ” This is the new lie used by the Foreigners‘s Office. Once locked up, it becomes very difficult to gather evidence justifying the application for asylum, and thereby increasing the risk of rejection of the application.
Maggie likes to quote the increasing demands of multiple requests as evidence of “bad faith” of asylum seekers.
At the same time, the policy that she is leading is indeed an incentive to introduce massively. Autopsy of yet another hypocrisy: in many centres social assistants say “The only way out of here is to (re) apply for asylum.” And as there is no other solution , each (re) files an application for asylum necessarily accompanied by very few elements and in most cases rejected by the CGRA.
In November 2013, 1,103 asylum applications were registered in Belgium. This is a decrease of 34% compared to October 2012. Of those 1,103 asylum applications, 352 (31.9% of the total number of applications) were multiple applications. The number of multiple applications decreased by 24.5 % compared to October 2013.
Arrests take place at all possible stages of the migrants’ journey without any coherence nor ethics, because it increases the figures!
– The negative results of the regularisation campaign of 2009 fall daily. People who introduced a regularisation request are frequently arrested and learn, during their arrest or upon arrival in a closed centre that there is a negative answer to their request . A Congolese woman living amongst us for 8 years says, ” they came to my home to tell me that I had to accompany them for information on my proceeding for regularisation. Once at the police station they put me in a cell and from there sent me to a detention centre “
– Is a request for legal marriage or cohabitation a risky behavior ? Many foreigners are being arrested at their home after introducing a simple demand for marriage or cohabitation . They are systematically suspects for the adminisration, which tracks “Marriages of convenience and statements of legal cohabitation of convenience” showing often a close to paranoia zeal. And if some of these “fake couples” later on get conjugal visits once a month at a detention centre, don’t see any inconsistency in it!
After his marriage application a man has spent more than five months in a detention centre . After several attempts of deportaion and administrative apeals, the town agreed to his wedding. So he was released after five months of detention. Di Rupo is in favour of the wedding for all … almost all! Another refugee whose marriage had been accepted and the wedding date fixed early January, has been deported to Iraq a month before that date. His wife, pregnant and in a precarious health, must now make the trip to manage getting married eventually. “The law is the law” says Maggie, wishing she could count the mother and the unborn child in her gruesome accounts.
Other foreigners find themselves being “advised” to go and get married in their country of origin. This advice was given to a person from Guinea living and working legally in Belgium, but who is suspected to wish a “white wedding”. His fiancee is detained at the 127bis centre and continues to hope for a favorable answer concerning their marriage application.
– At the airport, just in transit? Nothing works! Several passengers in transit, who were carrying a visa for another European country and made a stopover in Brussels are being arrested at the airport. They are then quickly and efficiently deported to their country of origin at the taxpayer’s expenses. Welcome to absurd land, but never-mind, as long as it does the trick : boosting Maggie’s figures and surveys show the consequences…
– Try to leave the country without being formally deported:unlucky you, no one escapes Maggie! A man was arrested at the airport in Charleroi, his crime: leave the country himself, since he had received an OQT (Order of Leaving the territory). He found himself detained for 4 months in the closed centre of Bruges awaiting deportation. Just like quantum physics, Maggie’s logic is contra-intuitive but merciless.
– Going to your local administration in appliance with the Belgian law: a little homegrown trap. Frequently we hear of arrests in town halls. SomebigCommunes are excelling in this sport: precarious migrants hunting. A woman was arrested at her townhall (Molenbeek). She came to legalise a document: the employee has found one of her names was different on the document. Suspect element if any, the administration of course never makes errors. Our little zealous employee called the police to report the suspicion. Nobody told us whether he was busysucking a small Vichy tablet at the time! (pastille Vichy are digestive tablets). The woman was taken to a detention centre, then was deported after three months of imprisonment. So do trust your administration, play the game, it will reward you well!
– During driving controls, better drive drunk than undocumented ! Although it is not often mentioned, people are regularly arrested following road controls. An Afghan involved in the current movement of Afghan refugees in theChurch de Béguinage, has been arrested in Leuvenand imprisoned. He was finally released after two weeks, the judge stating in his conclusions that ” the Foreigners’ Office takes irrational decisions.”
–When expulsing from a home, likes to show the multiple facets of poverty ; ” it’s like disco” would she have said. To our knowledge, two people were arrested during the eviction of the Gesù and are currently detained into the centre of Bruges. With Maggie a misfortune never comes alone.
Dublin procedure seems to be used indiscriminately by the Office des étrangers to prevent new claims and increase the number of evictions , but more curiously to increase figures of confinements ! During this procedure,e the refugee will be assisted automatically by a lawyer,having as consequence that he sometimes becomes unable to prove that he is not ” dublinisable ” .
A significant number of detainees are ” Dublin ” cases. They are usually arrested at the Immigration Office when applying for asylum. If there is the slightest chance that he/she can be the called Dublin case, he/she will then be transferred directly into a detention centre. There the waiting begins for an answer from the European country which would have been passed before reaching Belgium. Can then be used as evidence the statements of the refugee’s visa, an air ticket, fingerprints kept in that country etc… If that third country agrees to give its ” support”,the refugee is then deported. His application for asylum in Belgium will thus not be recorded: great indeed, this means an application for asylum less and a deportation more, Maggie is thrilled as is herovercautious electorate.
Sometimes the situation turns into an absurd tragicomedy. Recently, a man who had made an application for asylum was called to the Office. He must come and get the documents needed for his voluntary return to France, where he introduced a first asylum request that was agreed to be processed by that country. He went to the Office with his luggag, ready to return to France , thinking to take the train straight after leaving the offices. However the administration has reserved a surprise: he is being arrested and locked in a detention centre.
Another person is for three months in a detention centre. He was arrested when he came to Brussels to request a copy of his OQTB necessary for its application for asylum in France !
Yet another one came to seek asylum : he was arrested and imprisoned under the Dublin procedure. Fortunately, he had the chance to prove that it was not justified and was released after 15 days.
01/01/2014: Deport at any price just to increase the numbers!
Evictions are daily and become more commonplace in the centres : ” Soon it will be my turn madame.” Many prisonners, after several months of detention and legal struggle comply with these expulsions under the threat of violence and under blackmail.
“If you resist you never be able to return to Belgium” they are told .
“Here they are wild forced expulsions and cascades of negative outcomes concerning our procedures “
The determination has no limits ; an Afghan has been locked without understanding what was happening and the reasons for his detention. A fellow prisoner knowing our language has asked to see his papers and found out that they were concerning a completely different person, the names were not corresponding ! This is a good example of how the investigation ” case by case ” highlighted by Maggie to justify her expulsion actually works.
Former prisonniers are expelled, sometimes directly from the prison, sometimes after a transfer to a detention centre. They are expelled without any consideration of their families or situationsleft behind in Belgium and are forced to leave!
Read on the website of the OE “A working group consisting of the Foreign Office and the Federal Police Brussels National Airport was created It examines how a foreigner can best be satisfied . return without resistance and without constraint ( escort ) .” It is not however clear whether the currently used techniques such as deception, lies, blackmail , threats, and physical or psychological pressure will be evaluated and refined. The prisonniers testify : “Faster to expel ; they put us in prison and without warning put on a plane . ” In many cases , they are told the night before their deportation the next morning without being able to talk and inform anyone.
Finally, again and again, young Afghans are deported to a “safe country” Afghanistan, for which the Ministries of Tourism and Foreign Affairs are warning about the dangers .
On the 21st of November 2013, a collective deportation to Eastern Europe took place. A dozen people were taken to the detention centre 127bis in the late evening and put in detention . Very early in the next morning, they were transferred to the airport in police vans and deported .
Collective deportation to Congo on the 4th of December 2013. 52 Congolese were on the list ..30 were deported. From the information collected, many were then interviewed by the authorities upon arrival in Kinshasa. The authorities confiscated their passports, people remain waiting in Kinshasa, often hidden for fear of further reprisals. An Angolan is still at Kinshasa. It is impossible for him to return to his country without a passport.
Information on the fate of expelled people remain very fragmented : the contacts we have with the family members have become more discreet, giving the impression that they fear to speak. The detainees who were on the listnot yet deported are now gradually deported by civilian flights .
When the centres are full and deportations are accelerated to their limits, how otherwise make increase the figures wonders Maggie ? A three-letter solution (voters, like dogs, remember short names easily) , that’s good: OQT. Order to leave the territory. They are delivered in spades. Must show that it’s “effective” , let‘s make figures !
It seems that in that era Maggie one could speak of OQTM ( not ” Order Exit Territory Maggie ” but ” Order to leave the Territory Multiple” ). Indeed, OQT becomes downright an identity document for migrants card : “When I’m being controlled, I show my OQTB and it’s OK .” Even “funnier”, those who are detained following the issuing of a OQTB then freed because notdeportable, receive at their release their umpteenth OQTB . Waiting often for the next arrest and the next OQT ! This creates employment (useless servants) but what counts above all … the figures!
On Sunday 8th December in the afternoon, cheerful chaps gathered in front of the 127bis closed centre in Steenokkerzeel. After they exchanged a few words with the detainees who were in the yard, the guards rapidly had the detainees go back in to avoid any contact. The guards went back inside with words shout at them such as “Clear off bitch! Resign!” and “Cops and guards on a plane!”
Even though the centre did not burn out that day and no escape took place, a feeling of rage was expressed in front of these prisons with firecrackers, fireworks and smoke bombs, all this in a cheerful hullabaloo.
The aim of this was to show solidarity with the undocumented people inside and to shout the anger about the existence of these centres and about the death of one detainee this week in the closed centre of Bruges.
In four closed centres, hunger strikes have been started by prisoners in protest against the death of a young man from the Ivory Coast in the closed centre of Bruges on 5 December, and out of solidarity with the people on hunger strike who support the Afghans.
The repression machine was very rapidly launched by the State.
In Bruges, the police came in force on 6 December. Three prisoners were placed in confinement and 5 or 6 others were transfered.
In Vottem, the pressure was more psychological. At present, some are still continuing their action. One of them will be transferred today.
At the 127 bis closed centre, several dozens of prisoners were transferred. Thirtheen continue their action, 8 are from Afghanistan. One of them was be deported this Tuesday 10 December. We were also informed that 3 Afghans who had started a hunger strike last week have been deported in secret. One Algerian man , in hungerstrike for 5 days was deported on 10/12 and liberate in Venetia (Italy): he is there without money and papers and do not know what to do!
At the closed centre in Merksplas, hunger strikes were started this 7 December in two different wings. According to what we’ve heard, four are on hunger strike: three Afghans and one Pakistani.
Monsieur N , Afghan, va être mis sur un vol KLM vers Amsterdam ce 10/12/2013
Il y a 8 ans qu’il vit en Belgique. Demande d’asile, demande de régularisation n’ont pas été accepté. Il est enfermé au centre fermé 127 bis depuis bientôt 4 mois. Et en grève de la faim depuis 4 jours .
Il va être mis sur le vol KL172 KLM à 8 h 15 vers Amsterdam , puis vers Kaboul, toujours par KLM.
Rendez-vous à 6h DEMAIN MATIN (10/12/2013) à l’Aéroport de Zaventem.
Allez y, laissez vous aller, envoyer des fax et des mails pour protester contre ces vols meurtriers.
Mai et fax aux responsables : Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be
Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : Téléphone : 02 542 80 11 Fax : 02 542 80 03 info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Update: Meneer B phone us: He was deported this morning and they let hem free in Venice (Italy) without paper and money!
Mr B is Algerian. He risks his life if he goes back to his native country. He has been living in Belgium since 2009 and is supported by the FGTB Liège as a worker. He was arrested at the Foreigners Office while introducing his aslyum request. A part of his family migrated to Spain to flee the persecutions on their ethny in Algeria.
Mr B has been on hunger strike at the 127bis closed centre for 5 days and he is weakened. He will go through a second deportation attempt this Tuesday 10/12/2013 and the Office of Shame will do its best to get rid of him via Venice and then Alger.
Let’s try to prevent this deportation by going to the airport, faxing the people in charge or inventing other original actions!
10:05 a.m. 10 December
Flight SN3201 to Venice VCE Brussels Airlines
Let’s meet at the airport at 08:05 a.m to speak to the passengers of the flight to Venice.
And spam the mail and fax boxes of the people in charge of this deportation as from now!
–Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
On 5 December, a detainee of the closed centre of Bruges was found dead in his cell. Although no light has been made yet on the circumstances of his death, one can but notice that another person has succumbed to imprisonment.
After that event, all the centre’s detainees started a hunger strike, as a last resort for the unheard. It is the way people choose to fight when they have nothing left to lose. The hunger strike movement rapidly spread to other centres, in Vottem and the 127bis centre.
This movement echoes the one that was launched by the Afghans’s support group a few months ago. Indeed, in front of the assassin persistence of Maggie De Block and the Belgian government as a whole (is it worth reminding that De Block is but one of the pawns, following Wathelet and others, implemented by the Belgian system in its campaign to repress and break the undocumented), several Belgians took the decision to stop feeding themselves until the Afghans finally get a positive answer to their request.
Where there’s life there’s hope, but the path they took might lead to something totally different. Deaths, hunger strikes, forced deportations, constant controls, Š for many people life has become unbearable and the climate explosive.
What to do? The answer is so obvious that it seems absurd to repeat it for the umpteenth time. But OK, let’s say it again. As of today, we should abolish the frontiers and stop the policing and humiliations, put an end to indulgence with the racist and assassin state, and with the introverted Europe that is responsible for massacres in the name of the preservation of a so-called economic and security well-being.
The widespread riot is therefore not very far, and so much the better if it finally gets rid of all this crap and evaporates this awful and toxic smell exhaled by the placidity and blindness of the well-off!
Hier matin, un jeune homme originaire de la Côte d’Ivoire a été retrouvé mort dans sa chambre au centre fermé pour étrangers de Bruges. L’enquête sur les circonstances du décès est en cours.
La nouvelle s’est répandue, et dans plusieurs centres des mouvements d’indignation se propagent: tous les détenus de Bruges sont en grève de la faim, et n’ont pas dormi; grève de la faim au 127 bis aussi, à Vottem, à l’heure où nous vous écrivons, 59 personnes ne mangent pas. Tous sont également solidaires des Afghans et de leurs soutiens belges grévistes de la faim.
Rappelons à ce propos que l’un d’entre eux, Loïc, mène son action dans une tente face à Vottem.
Au téléphone, de Vottem, ces paroles d’un des détenus grévistes : “et puis il y a aussi le décès de Mandela aujourd’hui, c’est le même combat…”
Pour appuyer ce mouvement contre l’inacceptable que restent les centres fermés, machines à expulser, rejoignez, si vous le pouvez, notre rassemblement hebdomadaire ce samedi à 16 heures devant le centre fermé de Vottem.
A Bruges, la police est intervenue ce 06/12. Elle est restée dehors et a appelé plusieurs personnes un par un à l’extérieur. Trois personnes ont été Certains ont été mis en isolement, trois autres transférés vers d’autres centres. Certains sont tous découragés et ont arrêter leur grève de la faim
Update 06/12/2013
Hongerstrike;
127: 100 people
Vottem: 40 people
Brugge: General hongerstrike
Update 06/12 8.30 a.m Here at the centre in Bruges, the strike is extending (no food, no sleep, no tv, no shower) this is a general strike.
Update 05/12 11 p.m. Centre in Bruges, 10 p.m, no resident went to the dormitory to sleep, they will all stay awake, the hunger strike goes on.
Update 3 p.m
40 detainees started a hunger strike in Bruges, and 20 others in Vottem, out of solidarity with the detainees of Bruges, with the Afghans’ fight, and with the hunger strike of the 4 Belgians.
‘here it is forced deportations, like wild animals, and negative outcomes of the procedure like a waterfall…
Update 04/12: Thirty Congolese (men and women) were placed on a military flight, each one escorted by three police officers. More info to come.
Update 04/12 9:45 a.m.
15 women and 38 men from Congo in the closed centre. The police just arrived with two buses and vans. The flight is foreseen at noon or 1 p.m. from Melsbroek airport.
A man from the Ivory Coast, around 30 years old, was found dead in his bed this morning at the closed centre in Bruges.
Prisoners are stricken. The information was confirmed to the women by the staff of the centre.
‘The police comes to make a statement.’
‘We knew it was going to happen one day, it’s awful’
‘One has to denounce all this!’
‘It is hell over here!’
‘All this torture must stop!’
Message of a co-detainee:
‘Yesterday the guard came for him because his girlfriend had come for a visit around 9 p.m. After that he went to bed as usual. The day after he was dead.’
Update 04/12: Thirty Congolese (men and women) were placed on a military flight, each one escorted by three police officers. More info to come.
Update 04/12 9:45 a.m.
15 women and 38 men from Congo in the closed centre. The police just arrived with two buses and vans. The flight is foreseen at noon or 1 p.m. from Melsbroek airport.
Update Tuesday 3 December 8.30 a.m.
Still all in isolation, some of them for 36 hours!There are for the moment 32 men and women isolated. One women is in a wheelchair. Nothing moves. To one it was announced it would be on Wednesday at 6 a.m, to others on Wednesday at noon. Among them there also are reservists for the flight, i.e they would be put aboard if there was still place on the plane. Around ten women are on the list!
It seems that their strategy consists in keeping the confusion and increasing the stress level. Wouldn’t this be assimilated with torture according to Human Rights? And where are the associations that are paid to be scandalised?
Update 2 December : We were around 20: shouts, fireworks, nice atmosphere. The detainees really appreciated. Robocops were present, in uniform (helmets and shields) but they did not interfere.
At present, more than 20 Congolese are in confinement. Many have astounding migration stories to tell. They believed they had found a place to rest in Belgiqum. Some of them have all their family here, some are young, others are much older and they have been living in Belgium for 10 years.
Assassin policies again… The latest news are that the flight would leave tomorrow Tuesday at 10 a.m. The police would come and take them at 7 a.m.
Come to the 127bis detention centre at 18.00 this Monday, 12/02/2013, to protest against this organised crime !
Tervuursesteenweg 300 1820 Steenokkerzeel
Train to Leuven, get off at Nossegem
South Station 17.18, Gare Central 17.21, Gare du Nord 17.25.
There is widespread indifference in Belgium about the expulsion of foreign asylum seekers, which has now reached proportions rarely seen before. Following the mass expulsion of Congolese nationals on 27 October 27, a new deportation to the Congo has been arranged and will probably take place this Tuesday, 3 December.
A representative of the Embassy of the DRC visited the 127bis detention 7 November to identify people threatened with deportation. He was accompanied by representatives of the Office des Etrangers and the CGRA. Detainees interviewed by them have told us they were shocked and outraged to realise that embassy staff had their asylum applications in their possession. Let’s remember that legally, no part of this file can be given or disclosed to representatives of a refugee’s country of origin.
According to our information, a list of Congolese nationals has already been drawn up for an upcoming flight to Kinshasa – probably a military flight from Melsbroek.
Let’s also recall that the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits collective expulsions “except in cases where such action is taken after and on the basis of a reasonable and objective examination of the particular situation of each individual alien in the group” and that Belgium has already been convicted in the past for contravening this rule (see in particular the judgment Čonka February 2002).
Militants, opponents of the Kabila regime, and human rights activists are affected by this new decision by the Office des Etrangers which once again puts the asylum seekers in question in mortal danger. According to several witnesses, deportees are met on arrival by the infamous ANR (the National Intelligence Agency) and are systematically arrested and interrogated. If they are believed to be political opponents, they are imprisoned and tortured. All-powerful in the country, the ANR reports directly to the President of the Republic, is not subject to any parliamentary control, and is heavily criticised for its repeated violations of Human Rights by the UN as well as by numerous associations.
Confirming their gnawing anxiety, associations active in the defense of the Congolese expelled on 27 October have had no further news of their many contacts. But they have received confirmation that at least four have been imprisoned in Kinshasa since their arrival.
Once again the Office des Etrangers and the Belgian government are not hesitating to deport refugees doomed to arbitrary detention at best, and at worst imprisonment, torture and even death.
Once again our government plays the innocent, closing its eyes while its administration delivers opponents to their executioners.
They killed Aref, but they still do not understand. How many deaths does it take for our ministers to put an end to this macabre hypocrisy, this pretence that they do not know what is clear to everyone?
Each expulsion is an expulsion too many. Each expulsion is a crime.
The 17 Congolese at the 127 bis are in mourning: the mother of one of them died yesterday night in Angola. He had not seen her for years and has been retained in the closed centre for several months.
Condolences messages are welcome on gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net, we will forward them to him.
And then the good news
Escape from the 127 bis
Two man escape from the closed centre 127bis with success this morning
Escape from the closed centre of Bruges
Last month, six prisoners tried to escape. They broke the windows at night, neutralised the alarm and tried to climb over the wall. Three of them hurt themselves and could not rise again. Three others succeded and vanished into thin air. The guards were alerted by the screams of the three wounded prisoners at the bottom of the wall, one of them had a broken foot. Two of them got released since then.
Release at the 127 bis : one Togolese and one Algerian were released to day
Release in Bruges: a man from Zimbabwe was released after 4 months of retention. Since the Zimbabwean embassy automatically refuses to deliver free pass to its citizens, the man had been brought to the Angolan embassy, then to the Guinean one and finally to the DRC one to try and get a free pass for his deportation. In vain!
Austrian Airlines refuse to collaborate with a new deportation of a Gambian boy living in Vienna. The actvists in Vienna thinks he will be deportated the follow time with the collaboration of SN Airlines and appeal for a fax and mail campaign against SN Airlines
Nyatta J. (born 13.02.1979, Gambia) from Gambia is living in Austria for 10 years already and iswell integrated. He speaks German on B1-level and he was working legally. He was married for five years to an Austrian woman and applied for humanitarian visa after the divorce. The visa wasrejected. Instead they arrested and put him into detention center on 25th of August 2013. He does not have a ban on staying and wants to live in Austria. The responsible asylum authority rejected hisrequest. The asylum court did not react on his appeal and did not grant suspensive effect.
The Austrian aliens’ police tried to deport him on the 18th of November via Brussel to Gambia, butAustrian Airlines did refuse it. It was too risky for the pilot, because of the health and mental condition of Nyatta J.!! He is now in an even worse mental condition and the deportation is againsthis free will.
The Austrian aliens’ police does not mind and wants to try to deport him again. This is an utter scandal!!
He could probably be put on a flight of Brussels Airlines, because Austrian Airlinesstill refuse to transport him. If Brussels Airlines transport Nyatta J., the responsible crew willendanger the safety of the whole flight and passengers!
As customers of Brussels Airlines we don ́t want you to make money by deporting refugeesagainst their will. Don ́t make business with authorities who day by day break Human Rights,as fair asylum procedures, freedom of movement and protection!
Solidarize with Nyatta, rise up and protest! Stand up for human rights and the freedom ofmovement and against deportations which are based on racist laws!
Mr M has been living in Gent for three years. For several months he has been locked up in Bruges. He will undergo his second deportation attempt on the 24th of November. He can’t return to Guinea because of the serious problems waiting for him there. He wishes to stay in our country and is requesting our help to prevent this deportation
Flight SN Airlines 205 11.30 am to Conakry 24//11
See you at 9.30 a.m to explain to the passengers of the flight.
–Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Lots of Congolese in the closed centers at the moment. They had heard about a mass expulsion plan but the rumour seemed to be wrong, instead they observe now that each on his turn got expelled on civil flights.
A locked up woman went through her fourth expulsion attempt this 19/11, without being allowed to inform anyone! She was put on the plane by 12 federal police officers, tied up and handcuffed. She was arrested as soon as she arrived at Kinshasa.
They all risk the same. For the Congolese authorities, the simple fact to come an ask for asylum is an evidence of belonging to the political opposition, and the large majority of them are put in jail as soon as they arrived at Kinshasa.
We just heard that Mr B was put in isolation cell with no explanation this 21/11 at 5PM. His lawyer wasn’t informed!
He’ll most probably be put on the flight of this friday 21/11 at 10.30 AM toward Kinshasa that stops over at Douala.
Flight SN 351 10.30 am to end up in the jails of Kinsaha.
We gather at 8.30am to talk to the passengers about this murderous policy.
You can also fax and mail to protest to the officials who are well informed of the fate intended to the expelled Congolese. Will they go as far as deliver the opponents to their Congolese friends at the power?
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Prime Minister : info@premier.fed.be
// Fax 022173328, 025126953
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Interior : milquet@lecdh.be
milquet@milquet.belgium.be
/ Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
Madame Maggie De Block, State secretary at Asylum, Immigration and Social Integration, assistant of the Minister of Justice: info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Tél 02 542 80 11 // Fax : 02 542 80 03Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Prime Minister
Since the grouped flight that brought 10 Congolese and our Minister De Crem to Congo on 27th October 2013, around 30 Congolese are still detained in our closed centres in view of a deportation.http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/collective-flight-rdc-fr/
Some of them heard that a new grouped flight would be organised for them.
At the 127bis, on Friday 8th November 2013, one delegate of the embassy accompanied by delegates of the Foreigners Office, the CGRA and police forces arrived to identify the ‘deportables’. One of the supposed Congolese asked them if asylum still existed. The answer was: ‘this is a wide question Sir!’.
Many of them are still in their appeal process but the delegation systematically told them that they had no evidence of these appeals.
An Angolese man got a free pass to DRC from the Congolese embassy. He was supposed to stay in isolation for the first deportation attempt but he refused for several hours, after which 12 security guards forced him to the isolation cell and he was brought to the airport the day after. He continued to oppose to his deportation and he was brought back to the centre. He feels desperate and after the risk of deportation to Congo and the bad treatments he goes through in the centre, he considers a voluntary return to Angola, ready to leave behind all the things he built in Belgium.
A Congolese man was arrested in his room in a Red Cross open centre and brought to a closed centre.
A woman detained for more than three months is desperate: she was given a ticket for a flight to Congo. She is hesitating and might accept it because she is absolutely knackered, even though it would imply severe risks for her if she went back to her country.
Afghans
This week, as far as we know, 4 young Afghans were deported to Kabul. The Afghans’ support committee was at the airport to try and prevent these deportations, talking to the passengers of the supposed flight. Unfortunately, the dates, times and airlines of the deportations are now systematically being changed by the Office to prevent our actions.
In Vottem again, this 9th of November, a man psychologically heavily disturbed was placed in isolation. His co-detainees went on a hunger strike in order to protest. The management very quickly released the man and the others stopped their action.
This Sunday 10th of November, the screw protested during one hour. Would they have enough of their work? (Screw resign!)
This 11th of November, detainees warned us of the arrival of a new person extremely unstable psychologically. “His place is not here” they say… more info to come.
127 bis Closed centre
At the 127bis, a man tried to escape this 9th of November. The police came in force and the man got arrested. The detainees rather tend to laugh about this kind of force deployment because of ‘a tiny escape attempt!’
At the closed centre of Bruges, in the morning of October 6th, everything was terrible. No usual breakfast, on purpose, so that they find me in the weakest possible state. As if I was going to pass on the electric chair, and I was not totally wrong. I arrived to Zaventem airport with fear in the stomach. Eleven federal police officers were waiting for me. Not a minute to loose, everything was timed. I will never forget what I heard on that Sunday 6th of October, whatever I do, those faces will never fade from my memory.
‘You will not go back to the centre today’ one of the police officers says to me, and he adds ‘It is the end for you’. It is now up to you to choose between life and death, staying quiet on the plane. Anyway, we got orders. It will be a really cruel day for you, you’ll not forget it soon. We booked seats for you on all airlines, and the three escort agents who will accompany you to Togo. You’ll go out of a plane and go to another one. Even if you have to spend two days here in Zaventem airport, we’ll do it, but the decision has been made, you are going back to Togo today, dead or alive, and it is not negotiable. Calmly, I asked if I could ring my lawyer. At last, one of the police officers came back with a let-pass, I thought I would have seen the flag of my country on it, or at least the name and signature of the Togolese ambassador in Belgium but I only saw the logo of the European Union. In my head I was thinking, as far as I know they are deporting me to Africa, or may be they are bringing me for a tour of Europe…
While putting my clothes back on, two female police officers put me in Pampers diapers, because I supposedly pissed myself on the plane during their last deportation attempt on me. I asked them why I would have pissed myself on the plane, what for?
The deportation:
What S. told the head of the escort officers at Lomé airport: “You tied me up with your so-called ‘French belt’ and I could not walk alone, you had to hold me and you were two to hold me. Once in the plane, it was not enough for you to tie me up, you interlaced your feet against mine to immobilise me, and your hands around mines although they were already tied to the armchairs. The most horrible was my neck (although this part of the body is sensitive), but it was you Sir, it was you who strongly held my head down so that my words, my shouts, my story and your abduction did not reach the passengers who were curious of what was going on and who would also see how you had tied me up. Your goal was to maintain my head down so that the passengers would not see the animosity and bestiality with which you were treating me. It was atrocious! You were eleven to go on the plane with me and an air hostess had to tell you that passengers would start embarking and from taking pictures and filming the scene. Also the airport officer was there, and he was telling the passengers that what I was saying was not true, that I was doing all this to attract their attention. Even one hostess reacted slowly, going closer to him and whispering (and it really surprised me) ‘she said a complaint was ongoing and that you kidnapped her so that there would be no follow-up to this complaint, if what she says is true, you don’t have the right to do that.’ And you all answered that it was not true, that I was saying bullshit because I didn’t want to go back to my country.
You went far this time, the passengers who were defending me and who thought your practices were lousy, who asked you to make me go out of the plane, it is them you made go out of the plane!!! An hostess came back to you and said ‘it is fine now, the passengers who were making some noise have been asked to leave the place, the others should normally not be problematic. Soon we will cose the doors.” I could have died!!
On October 6th, I again saw and realised how the Anti-Foreigners Office may take it out on somebody, how ready it is to be illegal on all the grounds, to cheat and ignore all rule and law; the utlimate goal being to have me back in my country, dead or alive. They give themselves no limit and it really is a pity. The Foreigners Office say we are illegal, but everything they’ve done to me on that Sunday 6th of October is much more illegal.
In Lomé
We landed in Lomé (Togo) at 3.27 a.m. local time, an escort of three agents (2 men and 1 woman) brought me back. Once in the hall of Lomé International Airport, at the registration desk, a Togolese police officer who saw that I was suffering stood up from his post, came to see me and asked me what had happened. I stayed silent. I was extremely scared that they directly sent me to prison since my passport had expired. He insisted by saying ‘before I let your escort go, I need to know where your pains come from, you may hardly move your neck…’. Feebly, I showed him the scars of the assault and battery on my two forearms. Shocked and overtaken, he turned to the three escort agents and told them: ‘I understand you may deport people from your country but to draw from this the conclusion that you may ruin them this way, I am absolutely distressed by your methods. Our country is not a waste bin where you may assault and traumatize our fellow citizens and come to flood them here’ he continued harshly. ‘I’ll have to confiscate your passports’ he said’ ‘You bring the lady to a hospital so that they take care of her or you go back to Belgium with her’ he added.
I was really dazzled, at last someone who dared to talk, someone who was telling them the truth in their face, who says that they do not have the right to assault anyone. ‘Bring her to the hospital’ he said. One of the escort agents opens his briefcase and takes out a medical card he gives to the Togolese police officer saying ‘a doctor examined her and she is in good shape.’ Without having a look at that medical card, the police officer asks ‘when was she examined?’ The head of the mission answers (lying, I thought deep inside) ‘just before entering the plane’.
Later, when I read the medical card in question, I saw it dated back to October 4th, while I landed in Lomé on October 7th and no doctor had examined me neither at the centre the same morning, nor before entering the place as asserted by the escort.
The escort feeling that the police officer had really decided they should bring me to the hospital , searched their pockets saying to the officer that they would give him some money. 0ffended, the Togolese officer answered ‘I don’t need your money. What I have been asking from you for 40 minutes already is nothing else than care for this woman you may have assaulted, if not you would not have tried to corrupt me. What you do is terrible, don’t you know?. I understand you may deport her but in such conditions it is unconceivable, inadmissible and insane! I am working here in Togo at the migration service and I know what you are capable of. ‘
The head of the escort mission speaks less loudly and asks ‘Would you like to see with what we tied her up? It is a French belt.’ I was nervous and could not contain myself anymore: ‘It is true! The violence was so harsh that your shoe exploded and you had to change shoes before coming to Casablanca. The three of you were laughing of it, you certainly did not cry! You even were ready to kill me and for what reason: the loss or absence of a residence permit?’
The police officer was completely disconcerted and took the floor: ‘she entered Belgium legally didn’t she? I saw the visa in the passport and you bring her back to us in that state? Coming from Belgium, that is a state of the rule of the law, it is completely shameful. Brussels that gives us post electoral and human rights lessons, Brussels that gets indignated with post elections violence in Togo, and from the same Brussels a fellow citizen is coming back totally banged up, assulted and traumatised? I can not believe it, says the police officer, it is incredible! With all the respect I owe you, and in a harsh tone he tells them again to get her cured else they will have to return to Belgium with her. He then went towards his post and make her sit down. The head of mission came back and said: ‘I’ll be obliged to contact our embassy that will take care of all this.’
The honorary consul of Belgium in Togo arrived to Lomé International Airport around 6 a.m. local time. She introduced herself and guaranteed that she would take me to the hospital.
At 6.20 a.m precisely, we were at the doctor’s at the International Lomé Airport with the consul and the police officer. The doctor welcomed and examined me to send me to a gynaecologist and a traumatologist for more appropriate care. A gynaecologist because, during the search, a female police oficer had introduced her finger in my vagina; wearing a latex glove. I wonder what she was looking for in such a place…
It is an inhuman and degrading treatment that goes beyond my belief.
A few minutes later, we were taken to the Togolese national police station with the consul. There, I was heard. I lodged another complaint against the three federal escort police officers whose names I know now, for repeated offence.
The three escort agents were called the morning after by the national Togolese police for their deposition.
A thousand questions stream into my mind. Is it worth spending so much money to deport only one individual whereas if the same individual was in the country it would not cost that much? I lived almost 6 months in the closed centre of Bruges where I cost an impressive amount of money per day to the Belgian State. What is all this waste for? Is the aim of a deportation to enforce the law to the extent of losing the values that govern a whole state such as Belgium? I have a friend in the closed centre of Bruges who keeps saying:’If a man is judged illegal on earth, where is his place then?’
A new grouped flight towards the DRC threatens the closed centers. The Congolese ambassador is coming on Thursday 8/11 to visit the 127bis and identify the 20 detainees, 7 women and 13 men.
A few quotes from the prisonners :
“it sucks here”
“we have to act now or never!”
“If I go home, I’m dead!”
“Can you imagine ? : arriving in handcuffs on a military flight to Kinshasa : it’ll be the end for my father. He’s a discharged soldier. “
“Your politicians work with the ANR (national intelligence agency), you didn’t know ?”
“Shameful”
“Have we, Congolese, become a commodity for the policies in between our country and Belgium ?”
“Asylum requests no longer exist?”
Many say they no longer receive a response to their asylum requests, or they do when they are about to board a flight, when it’s already too late?
The flames of anger remain in the coldness of the closed centers. They consumed a sheet in a cell on Monday night in the closed centre of Vottem, as voices rose louder and louder against the detention conditions. Accident or act of rebellion, who cares. The fact remains that the repression continues. The police showed up to put 5 people in the hole. One was released while the four others remain there this Tuesday evening. The robocops beat them up of course before throwing them in the bottom of a hole. We still don’t know what condition these people are in, or if any are badly injured.
It’s hard to fight and keep hope in the bottom of these pits. And isolating them deals a final blow to this momentum.
Let’s not let the sparks go out, Let’s unite our flames.
Update 08/11: they were 6 people on the airport to speak to the passengers. We have no news of the afghan boy. He do not answer anymore. It is the fourth Afghan who disparate in one week time!
For several weeks, deportations of Afghan people residing in closed centres have happened almost daily. They are extremely secret and when some refuse their deportation they are illegally placed on another flight the same day in complete confidentiality. One of them, 24 years old, will go through a second deportation attempt tomorrow Thursday 7th November.
Flight to Amsterdam Schiphol 8.15 a.m, KL 1722
Then from Schiphol Flight KL 871 to New Dehli
Departure 1.15 p.m.
For all the ones who can, please be at the airport at 6.15 a.m to inform the passengers.
A Belgian organization just let me know that a young asylum seeker would be brought back from Belgium to Afghanistan tomorrow ( November the 7th). It seems that his “travel” will begin with KLM flights :
I guess you know that Afghanistan is a country where there is still the war. An Afghan man who was about 20 years old was killed there some months ago after he was sent back in his country by Belgian authorities that considered that there was no danger for him there.
I also guess you have a family, maybe children… If it was one of your own brother or child, would you accept he would be sent back in such a country ? This is not human to do this to him !
I then ask you to refuse to take this asylum seeker in your planes. Don’t collaborate with Belgian authorities !
Thanks a lot for paying attention to my request.
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
These news have been collected from testimonies of people expelled or locked up.
Thirty congolese were brought from other closed centers to the 127bis with the intention of a collective expulsion to the DRC the 27 th of October: 10 of them were actually expelled. The 20 others were in recourse, ….. and are now waiting at the 127bis!
The 10 people expelled were put on a military plane with 110 paratroopers and, apparently, Peter De Crem himself!
As there were still some vacant seats on the plane, our Minister of Defence would have asked to the Foreigners Office to add some congolese to expel.
It seems that some of the expelled resisted and were violently repressed.
At the arrival in Kinshasa, they were put back to the Congolese authorities with their asylum file. They were held for a long time.
A call from Kinshasa this 28/10/2013 at 19.43:
what happened on the flight?
“I really can’t say, we were 10 and 110 Belgian paratroopers in mission on the plane.”
You are free now
“Not really. I can’t tell you anything…”
Eventually they were all released.
BUT the next day, the soldiers came back to their home to arrest them. At the present time 4 people have been arrested.
SMS from this 31/10/2013: ” The friends have been expelled last sunday. The ANR agents are looking for them in Kinshasa. They had to leave their home.”
We have to stay very vigilant: last June, a second flight was organised one week later to expel those who they couldn’t expel before (20), after they “rectified” their administrative situation. And according to a testimony, some police officers went to the congolese embassy to get visas!
Women
Five women were brought from the closed center of Bruges to the 127bis saturday morning 26/10/2013. Two were expelled. Three others came back to the center of Bruges this monday 28/10. They spent more than 36 hours in a ” concrete room, with a concrete bed, a tap and a toilet. We had to drink with our hands. it was awful and very very long, especially that we didn’t know what would happen..”
One of her wasn’t on the expulsion’s list. She doesn’t understand why she was brought and left in doubt for 36 hours.
One of the woman locked up in the 127bis was released.
A youngAfghan whowasimprisonedfor threemonthsin the127bis is deported.Hewasputon afirst flightin the morning. He refused,and wasputthe same dayon anotherflight with force ,accompanied by aescorte.Hijtold us thathe wasin Kabulin danger!
The 162 Afghans arrested with violence during actions this week were released due to a shortage of places in the detention centers (Link: yahoo.skynet.be / actualites / politique /)
Many other Afghans who do not participate in the actions,were arrested and imprisoned over the last weeks. As if the government is taking a revenge.
There are more than fifty of them at this moment in the closed detention centres.
If they have no passport or “laissez passez” necessary for there deportation,the autorities give them a “ European ” laissez passez, a document of which the legality is questioned by the lawyers of the Afghan refugees.
The deportations happen in strict secrecy ( two cases of which we know, and probably more .. ) . They do not get their ticket for the flight, as the law states, and do not know what flight they will be put on. The flight can go trough Amsterdam , Istanbul, Moscow …..
One of them even testified of an injection that he got before his flight . He woke up in Moscow. This is verry hard to confirm, because after this last message he disappeared and contact was broken.
Could it be possible that the foreignersoffice is afraid for an invasion of the airport if one of those deportations gets public ?
The two companies that collaborate with this deportations are KLM and Turkish Airlines, in a less frequent case, this is SN Brussels Airlines
For people who can move easily and quickly send us your mobile phone number to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net . If we know the hour of a deportation , we will send you an SMS to come to the airport ..
We learnthat a flightcollectivedeportationwill be heldthisSunday, October 27. SeveralCongolese (s)of differentdetention centersarecurrentlygathered inclosed center127a Impossible toknowthe details ofthese flights.
A callturnsto goprotestandshow solidarityto the127bisdetention centerin Steenokkerzeel10a.m..this Sunday!
The 162 Afghans arrested with violence during actions this week were released due to a shortage of places in the detention centers (Link: yahoo.skynet.be / actualites / politique /)
Many other Afghans who do not participate in the actions,were arrested and imprisoned over the last weeks. As if the government is taking a revenge.
There are more than fifty of them at this moment in the closed detention centres.
If they have no passport or “laissez passez” necessary for there deportation,the autorities give them a ” European ” laissez passez, a document of which the legality is questioned by the lawyers of the Afghan refugees.
The deportations happen in strict secrecy ( two cases of which we know, and probably more .. ) . They do not get their ticket for the flight, as the law states, and do not know what flight they will be put on. The flight can go trough Amsterdam , Istanbul, Moscow …..
One of them even testified of an injection that he got before his flight . He woke up in Moscow. This is verry hard to confirm, because after this last message he disappeared and contact was broken.
Could it be possible that the foreignersoffice is afraid for an invasion of the airport if one of those deportations gets public ?
The two companies that collaborate with this deportations are KLM and Turkish Airlines, in a less frequent case, this is SN Brussels Airlines
For people who can move easily and quickly send us your mobile phone number to gettingthevoiceout@riseup.net . If we know the hour of a deportation , we will send you an SMS to come to the airport ..
170 very violent , many of them will be bring tomorrow to the closed centers.
Today there were 50 Afghans in detention centers which 15 were arrested during a previous demonstration , 25 others were released due to an appeal to the courts .
Due to the demonstration and arrests today many new Afghans will be send to that detention centers .Een equal number of people will be released with an order to leave the country and will disappear into the underground world , to make space for the arrested Afghans.
Soon there will be only Afghans in the closed centre, due to their large protest movements. (600 places)
Detentions in the closed centre are be used as threats , threats of deportation , threats of oppressions.
Mug to, disappeard, is the message send to the undocumented people.
She underwent serious violence committed by the Belgian escort during the eviction . On her arrival in Lome , she was taken to the hospital. She filed a complaint , and the three men of the escort ( two men and one woman) were deprived of their passports by the Togolese authorities and held in Lome . The police escort when questioned by the gendarmerie denied, of course, all accusations .
Diplomatic negotiations ensured that the three people of the escort were flying back to our country three days later, the complaint is said to followed its course…
Mrs S is still in the hospital due to a severe cervical trauma .
” There must be an end to this violence , ” she tells us .
Mass strategic releases in detention centers
After the arrest of 42 Afghans at a demonstration in Brussels , many people who were held in detention were released … to make place for the Afghan newcomers. So that there is an impressive turnover in our detention centers . The people who were released were given an order to leave usually within 7 days and returned in clandesnity.
The detention centers are used as a tool of repression and intimidation for those who dare to violate the established order.
Meanwhile, more than half of the arrested Afghans were released, thanks to the relentless work of lawyers, allowing to make room for new entrants …
A man who lived legally in Belgium for 20 years , was arrested at the airport and detained in the detention center the Caricole . Because of the death of his father, he went to his country and remained there for over a year . This provoked that his residence papers were taken from him , as our laws determining … They try to turn him to his country of origin two times. He wants to stay here with his friends and family !
Another man arrived three days ago in Vottem , became furious : he broke everything for an hour. Police, ambulance and a psychiatrist came and he was taken , no one knows where.
” It is really hard to see that sufferinf brought by the imprisonment ” says one of his fellow prisoners very concerned
Many arrests and detentions of people of Polish people these last few days!
We are told that more and more often, some are brought to the isolation cell before the expulsion, without the possibility to inform anyone: “Quick done, well done” tells us a prisoner.
Laissez-passer
To carry out the deportation , the embassy of the presumed country of origin of the people must give a laissez-passer to the Immigration Service . For this they are presented by Immigration before their embassy , which confirmed that they indeed whether or not coming from that country.
A witness tells us :
” They were brought to there presumed embassy, there were two combis , double parked in front of the embassy, one with three or four men , another with a woman . They all stayed in the van before they were escorted one by one escorted by the guards of the centre ( three in each van ) to be brought to the consul of the embassy . The interview lasted for each of them a few minutes confirm whether he / she were or not from that country and deliver a laissez passer.
Voluntary Return
The blackmail to persuade people to accept a voluntary return to their country occurs more and more frequent, in collaboration with NGOs. These NGO have well integrated the policy decisions of Immigration encourage the undesired migrants to voluntary return, from free will or not . They cooperate actively, convinced that the voluntary return is ” the best solution for them .” These NGOs work closely with the government and Europe to this exclusion policy and gradually forget why they are here. With that game of ” least evil ” they support and reinforce this policy .
A man of Chechen origin signed a voluntary return to Moscow , under the threat of being imprisoned and terminated in Moscow in cases of forced return . He is very afraid of this return , has no ties and no living means in Russia . We remember a man who had remained after his expulsion for several months at the airport in Moscow , because he did not dare set a foot on Russian soil .
Back to home
Still a lot of calls from people who were deported and returned to our country , sometimes from very far .
They found their friends , their families and their children back here . Details are obviously not publishable .
Mrs S., of Togolese origin, was deported by the Foreigners Office on October 6th. It was the third deportation attempt on her and it was done in secret to avoid any resistance or mobilisation.
She was isolated Saturday 5th of October in the evening around 9.30 p.m. in the closed centre of Bruges where she was had been staying for several months. Her phone was taken away from her at 10:00 p.m. but she managed – that was close! – to warn contacts. She was supposed to be on flight SN Airlines to Abidjan at 2.35 p.m and then to Lomé.
We had not launched any call because this flight had been cancelled on the website of Brussels Airport, which we naively saw as good news for S. However, the Office found another solution. She was put on the Air Maroc Flight to Casablanca at 1.45 p.m with a correspondence to Lomé!
A complaint was lodged after the blows the got during the second deportation attempt, which should have suspended the deportation while the request was being dealt with, but the Office of Shame doesn’t care and deported her secretly.
A female member of CEACPE had been arrested at the airport for two hours during that deportation attempt.
The story of S. is singular. She had married a Belgian man in Togo for whom she abandoned everything. She came to Belgium to live with him three years ago. He immediately rejected her, and different procedures led to divorce. It is how S lost her residence rigth and introduced a reguralisation request that was rejected. She was fearing her deportation to Togo because she would go back there as a repudiated woman, which is not socially accepted there, especially in the family middle she comes from. S. is victim of discriminatory procedures of sexist character in Belgium. She will also be in Togo.
She sent us a text message from Casablanca: ‘I am wounded but OK. I will have fought till the end, it’s true. 1000 thank you’s. Thank you for your commitment! Your fight is extremely noble’.
Testimony by a woman retained in the closed centre of Bruges for 4 months and then released.
(FR)
[audio:http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/La-terre-appartient-à-personne.mp3|titles=La terre appartient à personne]
I swear there were pregnant women. One of them lost her baby in the stairs (it was crazy, guards were pulling her… stairs). An 80 years old mother got arrested, an old mum, a mum from Kosovo. There were mums over 60 years old who were also arrested. The guards were not nice, they treated us like prisoners.
They come without warning for a deportation?
Yes, we are never warned. They come unexpectedly. Besides, if you refuse once, they may plan another flight for you. Stress is predominant. We are being told there is a social assistant but I think she’s rather a flight organiser. A social assistant should assist you morally, especially morally in this kind of situation.
How does the medical service function?
oooops, don’t even ask… When you fall sick, you go to the medical care unit, they give you small tablets, you don’t know the name of them, there is never a name on them, there is never a date either.
And does the doctor examine you seriously?
We never see any doctor. We only see nurses. If you want to see a doctor you must really insist (…). Sometimes you’re even being told that is it not because you pretend to be sick that you’re gonna be released. ‘ “It is absolutely normal, if your stomach aches, if you throw up. To be retained like this. It is absolutely normal’, they say.
We are being told to take our stuff, but I think someone doesn’t only have one suitcase after they left their country for so long and spent years and years on the territory, they have a life here, were integrated here, and suddenly they are being asked to leave from one day to the other, with one suitcase. (…) If you really want people to leave, organise the journey with the persons concerned so they may take everything they have and leave.
Everybody is happy to stay at home. I am being reminded each time. ‘Why don’t you want to go back home?’ I simply answer that the earth does not belong to anyone. No one decides to be born in a poor or in a rich place. It is destiny. Now, if you have the opportunity to change the situation just a bit… to look for something else, it is man’s reflex. This is why he wants to change his situation.
With the onlyweaponour words,against the violencein theescortswe haveonlyour words,alarmcries…
SemiraAdamu,you are forusa model ofresistance,perseveranceand bravery.Youwill always remain inthe heartsof those who arelocked up indetention centers.Wedocontinue asyoubegan.“
So, I was for 2 months in Merksplas, and during these two months what I see, it’s a place they call centre but it is more a prison, because we have no right to anything.
You don’t get good food, the place is not clean, people get sick. Many people get sick, they go to the doctor, and they are being told that they’re lying that they have to go away. That’s always what they say to the people, and they make people feel bad.
And there was a plan that no one would eat because the food was just cheese and bread. In the meantime they gave us other food, but sometimes it’s cold, sometimes it’s dry, you cannot eat it, and sometimes the food is even old. For this reason everybody in my block said we are not eating. So 40 people are not eating. Then we said that to the director, and the director started to bring us the police and they said to us if you people are not eating I will show you how you do it. The police started to beat the people, they beat two people and brought them to an isolation cell.
I told the director that this is not good what I see here in this prison, if people ask about their rights, they bring the police.
These things you see in Nigeria, Egypt, in this kind of country. We are in Europe, they call it democracy, human rights, but people can not ask anything.
The director asked me to make a list of what the people want to change. I said OK, I made the list and on Monday 1.30 I had a moment with him, I gave him the list, he said it’s jut not about the list, we have other problems with you, you have to go to the an isolation cell because you are the leader. If people are not eating they put everybody in confinement. So they threat us with that.
After two days in isolation, they transferred me to the centre in Bruges.
People are getting sick because of the system, what they do is not to make you relax, if they can deport you, they deport you, if they can leave you free, they leave you free.
What they do wiht us to make us tired, they do everything to convice us to go back and say I want to go back to my country, I want everything to go back to my country.
The politics in the centre is that they make people sick, they make people tired. The director told me ‘You people are illegal in this country, you don’t have any right in this country you can not ask for anything in this country’.
What I heard from the director is not normal.
When you ask them something they tell you that you are talking too much and that you may not stay here in this place.
Even in other places, when people ask for their rights they put them in confinement.
In Bruges, one night I heard from the other people that one guy was not eating, I don’t know the reason, but they put him in confinement. You don’t eat you are automatically put in an isolation cell.
Short report from the deportation centre, from someone inside.
It is very bad in the deportation centre. the deportation centre is more
bad than the prison. if you go to the prison you know why. there is a
reason and the judge tells you what you did wrong.
but people come to the deportation centre for nothing. they take you in
the early morning time, arrest you and bring you to the deportation
centre.
after a couple of days you see the judge who tells if you really get
deported or not. most of the time you get deported.
when you have papers they deport you quickly, the same day or one day
later. if you dont have papers it can take up to fifteen days. they say
they have to ask italy if they want you or not.
there is two times food in the day. at six o clock in the morning and at
twelve o clock. one baguette for four people.
its not clean inside and there are three, sometimes four people in one room.
they hit the people. they did this to me but also to other people, that is
normal. if you do something wrong, they hit you. but they dont tell you
what you do wrong.
they are not friendly, but very racist. they never say nice things and
they never listen to you.
but inschallah they deport me quickly.
They left their ties in search of no matter what, and after a long journey that may be disastrous, they find themselves face to face with the cold and cruel welcome of the West that goes on looting their home countries every day.
Welcome to Fortress Europe and its barbed wire that cut any hope outright. And when one run after their lucky star, the Fortress’s agents hasten to find them, handcuff and retain them.
‘You are nothing’
They try to inject this feeling in the deep of their soul
‘You are nothing’
They pile them up like cattle.
‘You are nothing’
Just to prevent them from dying they throw their daily ration of bread and cheese at them three times a day.
On the run, the rythm is military: 20 minutes shower, 40 people, 4 showers: two minutes to get clean, it’s over come on, on the run!
Just to let them suffer, no medical care.
‘You are nothing’
Since they deem to be more than nothing they refuse to let go. Some of them speak and try to react as they can from the bottom of their cage.
Friday in Merksplas for e.g. they were 40 to start a hunger strike and ask for support, not to stay isolated in the centre, that the outside world rallies their fight. It took only 4 hours for the cops-robots to come and crush 5 of them before putting them in an isolation cell.
It won’t stop the others. They are 20 to continue their claims. They work together, make up a list and meet the director of the centre three days later. They only answer they get in their faces is :’ You are illegal, you have absolutely no right, you are not allowed to ask for anything’. Another one is sent to isolation.
Four days of hunger strike, an invariable and violent repression, 6 people in isolation. One violent transfer to another closed centre.
Monsieur B, Camerounais demande notre aide pour empêcher sa deuxième tentative d’expulsion ce dimanche 29/09/2013. Il est chez nous depuis 2008 et devait se marier.
Il s’est fait arrêter lors d’un de ses passages à la commune près de Mons pour la demande de mariage le 10/08. Il est depuis enfermé au centre de Vottem.
Il ne veut pas partir. Il veut se marier et fonder une famille avec sa copine enceinte. C’est quelques chose qui est interdit aux « étrangers »!.
L’Office des Étrangers va essayer de le mettre ce dimanche 29 septembre
sur le vol Brussels Airlines – Flights 351 à 10 h40 vers Douala
Rendez vous à l’aéroport à 8h40 pour informer les passagers sur leurs “droits et devoirs”
Et fax/mail aux responsables
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre
info@premier.fed.be
Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :
milquet@lecdh.be
milquet@milquet.belgium.be
Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11 Fax : 02 542 80 03
info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
A second Afghan from the closed center of Merksplas will be deported on the same fly
Maggy De Block has declared to the media that 12 Afghans have been deported in 2011, 18 in 2012 and 21 in the first six months of 2013.
Belgium has no readmission agreements with Afghanistan, contrarily to other European countries. In concrete terms, this means that when the deported person is back in Afghanistan, he will not be welcomed by Afghan authorities nor taken in charge by the Ministry for Refugees and Returned Persons. His presence on the Afghan territory will neither be legal nor declared. The young Afghan boy deported from Belgium will just be ‘dumped’ at the airport exit. He will therefore be untraceable and the Belgian authorities will never be able to say if he survived.
The Afghan Embassy is aware of none of these deportations. The same goes for the HCR.
So the question is ‘are these deportations legal?’
However, Mrs De Block continues in her error:
A young Afghan will experience his second deportation attempt this Tuesday 24th of September. He arrived here when he was 16, in 2008. He left Afghanistan when he was 4 and lived in Iran until he was 15. After a long journey of six months he got to Belgium and requested asylum. He doesn’t know anybody in Kabul.
He will be taken away from the closed centre of Bruges at 6.30 a.m. this 24th of September to be brought to the airport. He will leave for Amsterdam on flight KL1724 at 11.20 a.m. They will land in Amsterdam at 12.15 a.m and he will be deported on flight KL427 to Dubai at 2.30 p.m.
Let’s meet at the airport this Tuesday 24 September at 9.20 a.m. to speak to the passengers or in Amstderdam/Schiphol at 12h30 for the flight to Dubai.
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre
info@premier.fed.be
Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :
milquet@lecdh.be
milquet@milquet.belgium.be
Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11 Fax : 02 542 80 03
info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
21/09: Cinq prisonniers ont été mis au cachot hier soir. Le directeur est venu menacé les grévistes de la faim et leur a dit que si ils continuent leur mouvement il appellerait à nouveau la police. Vingt détenus ont décidé de continuer la grève. Ils ont ajouté à leur revendication la libération des cinq détenus au cachot.
21 heures: les trois “meneurs” ont été arrêté très violemment et mis au cachot. Notre interlocuteur se demande dans quel état ils sont. Les autres ont décidé de continuer leur grève de la faim. Plus de nouvelles avant demain matin, car les téléphones ont été confisqué comme toujours à 21 heures.
20 heures: descente de police en nombre et mise au cachot des récalcitrants
Quarante détenus du centre fermé de Merksplas ont entamé une grève de la faim ce 20/09 à 16 heures pour protester contre les traitements qu’ils subissent dans le centre:
Ils protestent contre le rythme militaire qu’on leurs impose, contre la nourriture (fromage et pain uniquement), contre les soins médicaux inexistants.
Ils sont révoltés de voir des papas d’enfants Belges qui sont enfermés, de voir des personnes enfermés depuis parfois plus de 10 mois.
Ils demandent qu’on envoie des personnes pour venir voir dans quelles conditions ils vivent.
Ils veulent faire connaître leurs conditions de détention. Ils parlent de maltraitance générale.
Ils demandent de diffuser l’information et de prévenir les médias.
Sachant que ces mouvements sont très, très vite réprimés nous vous appelons à faire circuler rapidement cette information.
Tension has been really high for several weeks in the closed centre of Steenokkerzeel. The attention of some detainees is concentrated on the worrying situation of some of them.
Last week a detainee of Palestinian origin who had been on hunger strike for 15 days and was very weak had incited them to go on a general hunger strike to claim for his hospitalisation.
This hunger strike was very rapidly interrupted and the Palestinian man was deported to Hungary. Ten guards came unexpectedely to take him by force out of his bedroom and bring him to the airport.
That day we got a new phone call:
A man of Iraqi origin is in the 127bis closed centre. Several days ago he selfmutilated himself and got several stitches. Five days ago he had also started a hunger strike. This Saturday 14th September in the evening he tried to swallow a razor blade and was urgently hospitalised. This 15th September in the morning he was brought back to the centre and isolated in a room with cameras and two guards.
His friends tell us that he wants to die and they are sure he’ll try another time.
He should be deported to Bulgaria. There he would be detained for an undetermined period of time and then be deported to Iraq where he doesn’t want to go anymore and where he would be in danger.
The detainees do not know what to do to help their companion and they ask for the help of associations to spread the information. They tell us that it is quite unbearable to be the witnesses of so much suffering without being able to act.
and…
During a demonstration in front of the centre, on Sunday 8th September, the detainees had created banners and made a lot of noise inside. “It’s gonna burst” they said. The demonstration was a failure. A detainee told us that people were there just like tourists and that demonstrations like that are no good. Belgian deputies paid a visit to the detainees but ‘it is useless’ except may be to calm down the angry spirits.
It was last Sunday on August 11 , I had my second deportation attempt.
We left the center at 9:30 am , with the drivers as usual, with guards as usual and ask ” Will you come back to the center , or go your way ?” to these questions I answered with a smile , not knowing what was going to happen .
We arrived at the airport in a car with the two policemen who had picked me up . They took me in a cell and they told me right away : ” This is what will happen . We will have two to bring you to Togo. We will make a stop in Abidjan and then we go to Lome TOGO . “
They searched me completely : you have to undress completely and fully nude , twice bending forward.
Then there are the questions . There is a lady who came to ask : “Do you have long been at the center ? ” I said, ” Everything is in my file , that you should know . ” They told me they do not really have access to the file . We know you have a brother here in Belgium . Would you call him ? I said, “No it’s fine .” You want to call Lome ? ” No, everything is OK . ” I did not say much and I remained very quiet with a glimlach.They did not think I understood Dutch , they said among themselves, ” Here is someone who is calm , saying nothing and asks nothing . “
Then they came to me and said : ” There is medication in your bag , why? ” “This is for blood pressure .”
After 47 minutes a policeman come to me and says, ” Do you know that the validity of your passport has expired ? ” ” Yes I know” . And then they kept saying ” Ah you ‘re a good girl , the flight will be fun ” and they look to their camera in their bag to go to Lome.
” Everything will go perfectly ,” she said.
Then she told me : ” Here’s how it will happen : We’re going to attach a strap to your arms and stuff . This is the rules , and then we go on the plane . ” ” OK not worry , ” I reply .
Then there is a gentleman who introduces himself as the auditor of the airport that will ask me : ” Will you not fight in the plane ? ” “I do not ” get it. He said : ” This has become frequent. There are people who , once making noise in the plane , ” I said .” No, I do not get it on the plane ? When? ” He asks me if I ‘m sure I ‘m going to stay calm. ” Yes , I am calm , do not worry ” and he goes away .
Now was the time has come for the green belt which they attach you. You can hardly breathe and not move your arms . I can not explain it .
We left for the airport with a white van . They chronomete everything . I think it was 02 p.m.. I glanced at the watch of the escort lady sitting next to me. We went with the escalator inside the plane . I could not just walk , because I was tied up, and they supported me .
When we arrived , I had to sit on the chair :
My goal was that they were not immobilize me on the chair . I then began to move as much as possible and a lady ( the escort ) said : ” ! They do not want it “
With their six they took me down to commit to sit me. One of them my left foot , another right foot and others my hands . The only thing I did not succeed to stick on the chair so I could call and heard me.
I was 15 minutes earlier than the passengers inside the unit. Once the passengers boarded , I started screaming that my passport had expired and that I do not see why they have not been for a request for a laissez-passer , that the embassy if they send me to Togo with the expired passport , the Togolese begun to wonder : what has she done to be plotted with expired passport ? And they will stabbing me in jail .
So I said that . One of the policemen told me ” Your passport has not expired ” I said, “But sir , you love the fool with me in the cell you tell me that my passport has expired , and now you say that it has not expired ! “
He said : ” You had two hours in the cell to talk . You have not said anything . If you had said something , we could … ” ” Why do you think we can deport : to negotiate with the Togolese authorities so they can see you and not stabbing you in jail . “
I keep calling , but in the meantime they had me very, very moderately. I had severe pain . I cried and I asked that at least one woman ( the escort ) held me . I told them I could not stand the pain . One of the men told me : ” You can not tolerate pain , but you can call . ” “Oh, yes , that’s why I call ” Furthermore, I kept yelling as loud as I could, and did not know what I said . .
They took all six of my neck at the same time solid, and pushed my head under the seat so that passengers could not see me all together . I was totally shocked and began to cry very loudly. Luckily there was a lady (there were four men and two women in the escort ) who responded and said . ” You’re going to break her neck ” They let me go . I came with my head up and I kept saying what I had to say .
There was a passenger who eventually responded . I was at the rear of the aircraft. He came to us , I heard him call . ” You prevented from seeing what is happening and why it is used so much violence against the woman us! ” Then stood a dozen passengers immediately .
A police officer said : ” OK , let her go . “
I said, ” Untie me . ” They did not untie me , they put me right . I try to show the passengers how I was pinned since they were hiding everything.
When we got off the plane , there was a police officer who violently pushed me to say . ” You lied ” The others stopped me so that I would not fall .
In the van I said, ” My luggage is already on the plane . “
” Your luggage goes to Togo . Now you start to really suffer. Remember this date of August 11 not . This is a memorable day : You had a fight with the federal police and you are now considered a criminal. You ban on returning to Belgium and the Schengen area will not 3 years but eight years . “
I did not say anything and we have returned to the cell .
They told me : ” You will be examined by a doctor . ” The doctor came with a dress of a cosmonaut and asked me where I was in pain , I left my arm to see the scar . He told me ” You had that came here for you. “
I was shocked and I said, ” What? and yet you have tied me with such poor? “
He said, ” OK , I’m going to write that you have nothing . “
The drivers of the center lifted me to run to the center me back.
43 detainees of the 127bis closed centre stopped feeding themselves today. They claim for the hospitalisation of a Palestinian co-detainee who has been on hunger strike for 11 days and who is not well at all. The management of the centre won’t accept his hospitalisation in spite of their insistence.
They are calling for solidarity with all and ask for their message to be widespread!
Solidarity action to create
and protest fax/mail
Au 127 bis Tel. +32 2 7550000
Fax. +32 2 7598168
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Mme Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11 Fax : 02 542 80 03
info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Transcript of a phone call by a detainee in Steenokkerzeel
“This is not normal at all Madam,
It is not a prison here, it is a waiting room and for somme even a death row. A closed waiting room. No one knows for how long they have to wait: several weeks, sometimes several months, no one knows what is going to happen to them, released or deported?
Personally I don’t care. I don’t have no wife or children. I have two arms, two legs and a brain. Whether I am in my country or here, it’s not the end of my life.
But there are other people, Madam, for whom the situation is serious. There are many Afghans, every day new ones are coming. They are going to be sent under the bombs Madam.
And then you have Guineans who are extremely scared because a new consul who delivers free passes and if they go back to their country it will be extremely dangerous for them Madam.
Then you have people who come out of prison, they followed rehabilitation schemes in jail, they could regularly see their kids, meetings organised for their children not to suffer too much from the separation, then they are deported. No dad anymore. Does it make sense?
And what about Congolese? I saw them leaving (during a group deportation flight) chained and surrounded with many policemen, just like slaves. Will you let that happen Madam?
What you do is not good Madam: you put us in a waiting room and you come to support us from time to time.
You have to be stronger Madam. What you do is not good Madam.
You must help us, not support us Madam.
We are doing our best here, but you don’t do anything Madam!
Some detainees have told us that SN Airlines Agents ‘paid a visit’ to a few detainees in a closed centre on September 3rd 2013.
They asked to see the file of several Africans to be deported soon and who had already been submitted to one or several deportation attempts. To their request, the social assistant of the centre gave them the files of the people they wanted to meet.
Hence, employees of SN Brussels Airlines could have an interview with these people: they told them that the airline proposed that the person to be deported collaborates and lets him/herself be deported without escort, and in return the airline would give him/her 250 euros upon arrival in the country of destination.
According to our interlocutor, this kind of deal had already been previously proposed to other people by the airline at the airport at the time of the deportation. When arriving in the country of destination, still according to testimonies, they never got the sum proposed.
As a reminder, a polemic had sparked off following a press release by Belga:
‘The police’s annual budget for forced repatriations has already been almost entirely used’
‘Reacting to the information published this Monday morning by De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, ‘Maggie De Block asserts that ‘the budget of the Foreigners Office allocated to repatriations in case of forced returns is still sufficient. The issue of escorts by the police for these repatriations will be dealt with in the coming days with the political wing concerned’. http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20130826_00707983 http://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_le-budget-2013-pour-les-rapatriements-des-illegaux-toujours-suffisant?id=8074565
Is this rather dishonest collaboration with SN Brussels that they’ve taken out of a hat to sort out the issue of police escorts for these repatriations?
How can employees of a private company have access to closed centres that are so hermetical? The centre of Bruges even refused the access of journalists during the ‘Open Access’ campaign.
How does the social assistants’ ethics enable the handing over of personal files to these employees?
Besides, wouldn’t this way of functioning indicate that one is going towards the privatisation of deportations by expert companies? It is to be noted that in the United Kingdom repatriations are already managed by a private company, G4S not to cite it, and this with serious collateral damage. http://www.corporatewatch.org/
Update: On 08/25 9.30 p.m., at least two Congolese women were placed in confinement with no reason and not allowed to warn anyone. Women in the centre are very worried and fear a surprise deportation for them.
Togo, Congo, Morocco, Brazil, Guinea,………
They are about fifteen retained in their ‘wing’.
They were arrested at the airport, at home, in an open centre, in a public space, between Antwerp and Verviers.
They are being accused of marrriage in name only, of having lied during their asylum request, of travelling with fake papers, of not being as sick as they claim to be, etc.
They have been detained for several weeks, sometimes months.
Some of them were taken away from a desperate husband or a child.
Most of them already had to go through at least one deportation attempt to which they resisted, some two or three attempts were extremely violent.
One of them had a miscarriage in the centre.
They are desperate and angry but united!
They all chose to come and live here, and there are plenty of things they could bring and share with us!
A few cases among others:
– A woman got married in Morocco in 2007 with a Belgian guy. At the commune she was told that the wedding had been registered but not recognised! They should go back to Morocco and get divorced there to be able to get married again here! She was arrested and detained when six months’ pregnant. She had a miscarriage in the centre. Her husband is desperate. She went through a second deportation attempt on July 31st.
– A woman has been detained in Bruges for 4 months. She was arrested at the airport. She was fleeing a dangerous situation in Congo. Her asylum request was refused because she was travellilng with fake papers. She went through two deportation attempts, the second of which was extremely violent.
– A woman has been detained for several weeks. She denied the existence of her son out of fear they would try to deport him too. She is very worried about his son who is currently at friends’.
– A young woman is seriously ill. She will not get the necessary treatment for her illnesses in her country of origin. Her deportation would clearly mean a sentence to death. She was being taken care of by Fedasil, waiting for a 9ter regularisation. The police controlled her and brought her to a closed centre following an order of the Foreigners Office. A theatre band was ready to hire her because she is keen on playing theatre. .http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/loffice-des-etrangers-me-demande-de-rentrer-pour-mourir/ !
– A woman went through a second deportation attempt which was extremely violent. A women member of CRACPE who was present at the airport to speak to the passengers got arrested for more than an hour.
“Bonjour Madame,
Je suis enfermée à Bruges depuis un mois, j’ai été arrêtée à Liège.
Les autorités jugent que je suis illégale parce que j’ai reçu un ordre de quitter le territoire, mais j’attendais juste le recours de mon 9 ter qui est encore en cours et donc je n’ai toujours pas quitté le territoire, j’étais toujours dans un centre d’accueil. J’ai une adresse, je suis prise en charge par Fedasil, toujours.
Donc j’ai été surprise d’être arrêtée. et directement les policiers qui m’ont interpelée, au lieu d’appeler le centre qui m’héberge qui a ma responsabilité normalement sur le territoire belge, ils appelent directement l’office des étrangers qui juge que je dois être enfermée dans un centre fermé. Et voilà comment je me suis retrouvée à Bruges, à disposition de l’office et donc l’office décide de toujours me retenir en centre fermé pour une éventuelle expulsion. ils vont faire des démarches en vue d’avoir un document de voyage.”
-Et vous êtes malade. Vous avez deux graves maladies. Qu’est-ce qui se passerait si vous retournez en Guinée pour vos soins?
“Oui, je suis malade, ça fait plus de huit mois que je suis au courant, et donc si je retourne dans mon pays en Guinée…Nous n’avons pas d’hôpitaux équipés, même pour le paludisme, donc j’imagine que pour les maladies dont je souffre, on n’en a pas. Je connais parce que j’ai vécu là-bas, j’ai soutenu deja des gens qui ont ces maladies. Mais même pour une diarrhée dans un hôpital où on mélange de l’amidon à boire pour arrêter la diarrhée, je me demande comment ce pays peut avoir une trithérapie ou un suivi normal pour des gens malades comme moi.
-Et on me disait que pour les trithérapies par exemple, il n’y a pas de stock?
-Les stocks s’épuisent parce qu’il y a beaucoup de magouilles dans les stocks et qu’ils ne les reçoivent pas normalement. Et des fois c’est des médicaments qui sont fabriqués au Nigéria ou en Chine. En fait des médicaments qui n’ont aucun effetsur la maladie. C’est juste pour vous faire croire que vous prenez des médicaments, mais en fait vous ne prenez rien du tout.
-Et vous êtes diabétique, vous avez besoin d ‘insuline plusieurs fois par jour?
-Oui, je me pique 5 à 6 fois par jour, donc j’en ai besoin. C’est des médicaments qu’il faut garder au frais. Chez nous il n’y a pas d’éléctricité, il n’y a pas d’insuline, il n’y a pas d’insuline parce que il n’y a pas de pharmacie qui va risquer d’investir dans un produit qui va périmer. Et si le produit reste a l’air libre avec la chaleur et tout, qu’on s’injecte avec, c’est la mort directe, je ne l’invente pas. C’est pas possible d’avoir accès à l’insuline.
-Donc pour vous une expulsion revient à mourir dans votre pays?
-Ben oui, donc l’office des étrangers me demande de rentrer mourir.
-Et à Bruges comment ça se passe?
-Ca va comme une prisonnière. Nous avons deux chambres qui contiennent chacune 16 lits, et toutes nationalités confondues.
-Vous avez d’autres choses à ajouter d’important?
-Je dirai juste, je sais que l’état belge se défend en disant qu’il ne peut pas recevoir tout le monde.
Mais je ne veux pas vivre en Belgique rien que parce que c’est la Belgique. Je veux vivre en Belgique ou en Europe simplement parce que c’est une question de vie. C’est nécessaire pour moi, c’est important pour moi de rester ici! C’est pas le luxe ou quelque chose d’autre, mais il me faut rester en Europe, que ce soit en Belgique, en France, partout ailleurs en Europe mais que j’ai accès à des soins adéquats. Je pense que pour un être humain c’est pas trop demander.
He is 17, Guinean. He came to Belgium when he was 12. He had been to Switzerland with a girl friend. The Swiss police brought him back to Belgium. He was told to go to the Foreigners Office; which he did on August 1st. They arrested him on the spot and brought him to the 127bis centre. After a medical check-up, the Office said he was 18, which is good enough a reason for them to keep him there!
He is desperate, he doesn’t eat anymore, he can not sleep.
Monsieur A est Sénégalais. Il y a 10 ans qu’il est en Belgique. Il y a plus de 2 mois qu’il est enfermé au centre fermé de Merksplas.
Quatre fois déjà l’Office a essayé de l’expulser. A chaque fois son avocat a fait un recours qui a annulé l’expulsion.
Demain dimanche 25 août l’Office va à nouveau essayer de l’expulser vers Dakar avec escorte. Il n’a plus personnes au Sénégal. Sa famille est dispersée dans les pays d’Europe
Il demande notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion.
« Il préfère mourir ici que retourner au Sénégal »
Son avocat refait un recours mais rien n’est sure !
Every single day others are being deported with violence.
Text message sent by a woman to a lawyer:
« Good morning Maître! It was awful and cruel yesterday in the plane. They were six guards to escort me. They hurt my arm and almost twisted my neck when trying to hide my head under the seats.’
A young Afghan was heavily punched by the police during his deportation.
Sometimes, some are released with no explanation and with an order to leave the territory within one week. They leave the centre and go hide somewhere, they do not dare going back home because they fear a new arrest.
Many do not understand why they are arrested. They don’t get any explanation from their social assistant in service and they thought they had the ‘right’ papers.
A man has an orange card that is valid until 2014. He has a job and feels at home here. He was living in Leuven where he got arrested. The embassy won’t give him a free pass. The social assistant told him he would stay four months and then be released.
Others signed for a voluntary return and are waiting for it during weeks.
Some are seriously ill, others become crazy:
A man who has been detained for four months cries all day long. He is scared of going back to ‘his country’. His co-detainees are extremely worried about him.
Another man is handicapped because of an accident. They arrested him although he was regularised two years ago.
Some want to go back to their country and asked for the date of their ‘repatriation’, sometimes for several months.
A man who was visiting Belgium was arrested and brought to the 127bis. He wants to go back to where he was living and has a job and family. He has been waiting for one month and even proposed to leave by his own means. He remains imprisoned.
Others have wives and children here and want to stay close to them.
The isolation cell remains the daily means of repression. They just have to raise their voices and they are placed in isolation for 24 or 48 hours, sometimes for several days.
Useless to say that they are extremely nervous and cry injustice. They ask for support from the outside.
Yesterday I was brought to the airport for a third deportation under escort. They bound my feet and put my hands in a kind of bag so that I stayed quiet and could not make a single move with my arms nor lean on anything.
It was already my third flight under escort. They do not allow me to follow my file here. Since I have been living in Belgium I have undertaken many different steps, I had integration classes, I was volunteering as a teacher etc. One morning they came to my house and told me that I was illegal on the territory. I answered that this was not possible since my orange card was still valid until the 31st of January. They arrested me on the 14th and since that day I’ve been in trouble.
Were you on the plane yesterday?
Yes, we went on to the plane. I resisted as much as I could and a few passengers told the captain that they did not want to travel with me in these conditions.
People stood up and refused that you travelled with them on the same plane.
They accepted that I got out of the plane but they told me that it was not over, that they would try to put me on another plane.
Another plane? On the same day?
Yes, on the same day. But it was not possible so they sent me back to Bruges and told me that they would keep me informed, that they would come back to pick me up in a few days.
Did the people also react on the second plane?
No they didn’t because we never reached the plane. When they saw that I had been resisting too much they punched me and then they trampled me.
They trampled you???
Yes, you know, they blocked my head with their feet and prevented me from making a single move with my head. My neck and my arms really hurt now, my arms are all swollen.
Here, one of my compatriots also had a broken arm. He had also left under escort and came back with a broken arm. Now they’ve put him in an isolated room, all alone.
He is isolated now, with a broken arm?
Yes. He must be getting his treatments. We don’t know what is going on. That’s how they proceed. As soon as there is something, they try to conceal you and smother you.
After that a doctor came to see me to ask me how I felt. I said I did not trust the doctors here and that if they wanted me to get a treatment they had to send me to the hospital. They refused.
Now you are back in the centre in Bruges and you are scared of another deportation.
I know that they will try again, they wanted me to be sure it was not over yet. What is for sure is that they will come this week, on Sunday at the latest.
Do you have other important things to say?
Yes I do. What is important is to do awareness-raising among these people who travel. I think that when someone travels, when he/she pays for his plane ticket, he/she has the right to chose not to travel with such people in such conditions because the circumnstances and conditions in which they make us travel are really not human.
Even in the centres we are in, it is really worse than prison! Sincerely, I would even prefer to go to prison than to stay where we are at the moment.
Yesterday they proposed to give me 50 euros to go back to my country, make a passport there and get a student visa.
I told them that it was easier for me to stay here since I am registered here and that they should give me this status here. I asked them to put that in written and sign but they said that the decisions were coming from Brussels, that Brussels had to take decisions… but I can not go back to my country.
You would like to stay… anyway, if you hear about a new deportation attempt please let us know.
There is problem with deportations. I think that everyone here is entitled to get information on their flight. Everyone should be kept informed on the flight, what time, what day etc. But that’s not how they do it: they come to see you and tell you your flight is for the day after.
Normally, and if they respect the law, you should be warned 48 hours in advance.
Yes indeed. But as soon as I get the notification I have to go to an isolation cell and they take my mobile phone so I may not call anyone. I have complained about that already three times but they only answer that it is the way it is. Why? I must be informed on my flight!
He has been living here for 14 years. He has a girlfriend whit whom he’s had a child (8 months) that he recognised and they are expecting a second baby.
To settle their situation, they went to the commune of Antwerp to get married. They went through interviews which any foreigner wishing to get married has to undergo. They had passed the test! They had been given a date for the wedding after having paid for the ‘marriage certificate’: August 23rd.
But the Foreigners Office discovered there was a glitch: mister had been condemned to one year and a half imprisonment with suspended sentence after 4 months of preventive detention. Oh what a bad boy!
Since Ms Maggie De Block has defined priorities: ‘I therefore set priorities to SeFoR: on the one hand, focus on the voluntary return and on the other hand, repatriate a maximum of persons who represent threats to the public order or national security’, she has all the people who once dared braving the laws daily arrested, imprisoned and deported. http://www.deblock.belgium.be/fr/ordres-de-quitter-le-territoire-suivi-intensif-portant-ses-fruits
Hence, early morning one month ago, the police of Antwerp came to take the father at his marital home to try and deport him to his country of origin. The consulate did not deliver him any free pass, he has no passport, they want to deport him on the basis of his old Morrocan ID card.
It is to ‘protect our security’ … and to satisfy a certain ‘electorate’ that one puts a father away from his children, with no other considerations???
Mr A will experiment his first deportation attempt this Friday 16th of August, flight Air Maroc 1.45 p.m. to Casablanca.
In the 127bis closed centre where he is being detained, the social assistant has warned him that he can not refuse it and that he will have the privilege to be deported under escort.
Meeting point at the airport at 11.45 a.m to express our fury in front of this murderous politics and try and prevent the deportation.
Fax and mail to the collaborators and persons in charge
Royal Air Maroc 134 bd Jacqmain, 1000 bruxelles TEL : 027215050 FAX : 027256292 infobru@royalairmaroc.com
Et fax/mail aux responsables
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers
Selon Gassama, son expulsion a été annulée car il n’a pas de laissez-passer. Il semblerait aussi que les assistantes sociales à Merksplas font du zèle pour briser la résistance des réfugiés en leur annonçant des expulsions qui ne sont pas réellement programmées. A vérifier. Merci à ceux et celles qui sont intervenus : toujours utile de secouer le cocotier !
URGENT CALL: 2nd deportation attempt for Gassama to Conakry on 4th of August
URGENT CALL: 2nd deportation attempt for Gassama to Conakry on 4th of August
Gassama, 27, from Guinea, has been living in France for ten years without being granted asylum. He was arrested in Belgium and has been retained in the centre for illegal immigrants in Merksplas since 16th of January. Belgium also refused to grant him the asylum protection.
A second deportation attempt to Guinea is planned for this Sunday 4 August on SN Brussels Airlines flight 205 at 11.25 a.m.
Gassama has no family in Guinea anymore and he will refuse this new deportation attempt under escort. His fears for his physical security are confirmed by the multiple human rights violations perpetrated by police forces during demonstrations by the opposition, and by the incessant impunity granted to authors of abuse.
After more than six months in a detention centre, Gassama, who does not have the financial means to answer the requirements of his lawyer, can only arm himself with courage to refuse this second deportation attempt.
Let’s help him by contacting by fax, tel, email the politics in charge of this deportation as well as Brussels Airlines that collaborate to it.
http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931
Tél : 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
A la compagnie SN Brussels Airlines
zone General Aviation
Brussels Airport Building 26
Ringbaan
1831 Diegem
Réception: 02 / 754 19 00
A l’attention du Commandant de bord du vol SN 205 du 4 août à 11h25 à destination de Conakry
Monsieur,
Nous apprenons qu’un homme enfermé depuis près de 7 mois au centre fermé de Merksplas va subir une deuxième tentative d’expulsion vers son pays d’origine , la Guinée, par l’entremise de votre compagnie. Gassama vit depuis dix ans en Europe, il n’a plus aucune famille au pays et il refusera pour la seconde fois d’être déporté.
Nous vous demandons expressément de refuser cette expulsion et de ne pas participer à cette violence exercée par notre gouvernement à l’encontre de personnes qui cherchent ici asile et protection.
En vous remerciant,
NOM
et Copie ou autre courrier à :
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be/ Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be/ milquet@milquet.belgium.be/ Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
E-mail info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Many are currently being picked up at home very early in the morning, regardless of their nationality, by the local/federal police on the authority of the Foreigners’ Office SEFOR Service, because they had received an Order to Leave the Territory one day, even though appeals or new requests are ongoing. http://www.foyer.be/?lang=fr&page=article&id_article=9574&id_rubrique=118 http://www.sefor.be/
They are brought to detention centres where they wait for new decisions regarding their requests in progress and are likely to be deported anytime, sometimes illegally, being non-deportable and/or without free pass, at the mercy of the decisions by the Office.
The latter does not hesitate to extend their detention time, month after month, with no declared reason. Even when a court orders a release, the Office or the State systematically appeal against the decision. For some detainees, it may mean a retention period of 3, 4, up to 9 months before they get released! It seems that the Office finds it awesome to keep these people in detention!
-‘Time is long madam’
Imprisonment in itself represents a first serious intimidation. Other sorts of intimidation, pressure, blackmail, threat and deportation attempts almost systematically happen in the centre. Deportation procedures are being explained to them by showing them a video on the escort work during a deportation, even when their deportation is far from being on the agenda. They are also being explained what would happen if they refused!
Another type of intimidation for all those who dare questioning the procedures or raise the fist is ‘isolation’ (they call it solitary confinement) for several days, even weeks for some.
We were told that when handcuffing or scoth-taping the person to be deported, the police and personnel of the centre say:
‘This is the procedure, do not resist and it will go well’
‘This is for your own good’
As for the ban to come back to the European territory for five or seven years, they are bein reassured and told that ‘they will be allowed to come back, that it is ‘just’ a roundtrip’! which is not true: they are banned to enter the Schengen area for 5, even 7 years and they will not get a visa.
-The return of some
Some of them come back to Belgium. One deported guy told us: ‘they followed their procedure, we follow ours: I came back several days later’.
-Group deportations
Sometimes, specific nationalities are targeted and arrests organised in view of group deportations. Belgium seems to be one of the European countries to organise the most group deportations. In 2012, Belgium chartered 11 military planes for that purpose
« In 2012, Belgium organized 11 secured flights to remove illegal immigrants to DR Congo, Guinea, Kosovo, UK and Albania. Other European countries participated in 2 of these 11 flights. In March 2012 Belgium organized a flight to Kinshasa in which the Netherlands also participated. 18 people were removed from Belgium and 1 person from the Netherlands. Another flight was organized to Kinshasa in December, this time with the participation of Ireland and Germany. This flight removed in total 17 persons. Belgium also participated in one secured flight organized by Germany in cooperation with Frontex, with destination Serbia »
At present, many Guinean and Senegalese people are being arrested and imprisoned, mainly in the closed centers .
Everyday, Afghan people continue to be arrested and brought to centres (currently there are around 20 in the 127bis closed centre, still a dozen in Bruges and Vottem).
The threat is still tangible even though the Foreigners Office said “On the side of the Office we try to let cooler heads prevail by assuring that no group deportation project is foreseen. Their spokeswoman even asserted that deportations to Afghanistan are ‘limited and prudently dealt with and that Afghans are being deported to certain areas of the country’. http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/expulsion-collective-vers-l-afghanistan-51e4c05835701ac301a89131
Questions arise: why are dozens of Afghan adults and families being confined in closed and return centres for months? Why would Belgium not follow the current deportation trend to Afghanistan that is dictated by the European Union? http://kabulblog.blog.com/
When the Office mentions limited and prudent deportations of Afghans (21 in the first 6 months of 2013 i.e. more than the double in the same period in 2012), why do the hundreds of Afghans who have sometimes been living here for years not get a residence permit?
-About the manufacturing of undocumented
The Secretary of State Maggie De Block excels in her press releases with gross figures with no nuance.
According to these, in 2012:
76,497 Orders to leave the Territory; 30,000 refused regularisation requests (and 3,870 accepted); 16,000 refused asylum requests (and 4,500 accepted)
5,000 deported people and 5,000 ‘voluntary returns’ often forced, under constraint after several months in a closed centre (which of course is not mentioned in the reports!)
The ‘lucky’ ones who slip through the net of this manhunt become the new undocumented living in clandestinity!
Not to mention all these people who do not introduce any request, plus the newcomers!
The closed centres for ‘foreigners’ and the deportations only are of a symbolic utility, they tell us, and are deterrent for asylum or regularlisation seekers.
Hundred thousands of people live in clandesinity in our country. Thousands of others arrive here despite the European restrictions and the construction of this fortress, trying to find a somewhat better place to live.
It will not be the imprisonment nor the deportations of several thousands (5,000 in 2012) that will prevent this migration flows.
The auhtorities and Secretary of State proudly use these figures that do not mean anything to satisfy their electorate, inject a barely hidden racism and increase the tendency of nationalist and/or community withdrawal into oneself.
No to deportations, nobody’s illegal, No world without migrations!
For the fifth time, the Dutch state will try to deport Cheikh Bah to Guinea. He has been on hungerstrike for 72 days now; four times earlier they tried to deport him. Two of those times, a doctor declared him NOT fit to fly. He needs support from France!
He tells us they have denied him access to the flight data (such as flight number + deperture time) because they are afraid his doctor might try to book the same flight in order to be with him and protest against the deportation. The last time the doctor tried this, she was rejected to board the plane because she would be a so-called “safety risk”.
Bah has been beaten up by detention guards twice in May, when he was already in hungerstrike. At least once, they falsified his papers. Bah says they did that again for the upcoming deportation on Wednesday.
Bah is in huge need of international support!
Because they have not shown him the flight data, it is hard to tell on which plane he will leave. It is most probable that he will be deported to Nouakchott (Mauritania) via Paris, as they tried the last time.
What he needs from France, is people who will go to the airport in Paris who will try to meet passengers of flight AFR748 of 1.30 pm to Conakry (not confirmed that this is the flight) on Wednesday July 31st to tell them about the deportation, so they can maybe help get him of the plane.
For more info, contact info [at] deportatieverzet.nl
Many thanks in advance.
In solidarity,
Deportation Restistance Group (Netherlands)
They are being retained in the Caricole. They came from Sri Lanka to seek asylum. They are Tamil, an ethnic minority being discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority.
They were not able to explain their situation correctly during their interview in CGRA because their interpreter did not speak their language. The Office will try to deport them together for the second time via Beyrouth this Tuesday 23 July at 11 a.m.
They really risk their lives in Sri Lanka and ask for our help to prevent this deportation.
After the threat of group deportation flights to Kabul, 200 to 300 Afghans have launched one week of awareness-raising in the Church of Le Béguinage in Brussels on the 15th July 2013. They want to stand up against these deportations and put pressure on the government to cancel this (more than possible) group deportation flight to Kabul. Several families with children are concerned.
The motto of the Afghan community that occupies the church of Le béguinage is “No deportation to Afghanistan”, a country that has been at war for many years and where the situation keeps deteriorating. The UN Secretary General reports that in Afghanistan at least 414 children have died because of the conflict between January and April 2013; which represents an increase and raises many serious concerns.
Currently, according to our sources, at least 25 Afghans are being detained in closed centres: 15 in the 127bis centre in Steenokkerzeel, 10 in Bruges, and a dozen in Vottem. We don’t have any information on the closed centres of Merksplas and the Caricole because it is difficult to get in contact with the detainees there.
A few families fled the centre of Holsbeek after they learnt about the possible group deportation flight. The return centre in Holsbeek is the place where the Foreigners Office gathers people and families who got an order to leave the territory to prepare them to a so-called ‘voluntary’ return.
In the Netherlands also, a lot of Afghans were arrested and detained in their ‘retentiecentrum, which leads one to believe that a group flight is being planned in collaboration with other European countries by the respective governments and/or Frontex (European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union).
Migrants who are looking for asylum in our European countries all have their reasons, may they be economical, ecological, or political. Only a tiny minority of them comes to Europe whereas the majority finds asylum in the adjacent countries and lives in ‘camps’.
Each community tries to react to these individual or group deportations to preserve their compatriots by demonstrating, going to the airport or in front of the closed centres. As it was the case for Guineans or Congolese people during previous group deportation flights.
This division between communities is not a mere coincidence. By setting different criteria according to the different nationalities, the Foreigners Office confers different positions to migrants; which breaks any chance of solidarity, and this without denying that each community have their peculiarities, problematics and solidarity networks.
Mr A has been detained for 8 months in Belgian closed centres. He was arrested in November 2012.
On March 15th, on his return to the closed centre of Merkspas after a third deportation attempt, he had an argument with the manager of the centre. They called the security. He was beaten and isolated in a cell. He stayed there without care, with strong pains in his arm and foot that prevented him from sleeping. After one week at last he was brought to the hospital: humerus fracture. After being taken care of, he was transferred to the closed centre in Bruges to avoid his co-detainees could see him in such a state. He spent a few more days in a confinement cell in Bruges. He lodged a complaint that has remained unprocessed until now.
The fracture is not yet consolidated and he still needs follow-up care.
They wil try to deportate again him on 10 july to Conakry via Dakar
Flight SN235 11.25 a.m. to Dakar
Mr A opposes to this deportation and is asking for our help!
Let’s meet at the airport this Sunday at 9.25 a.m. to speak to the passengers and the crew.
Fax and email campaign sometimes very efficient to do as of now:
———————————
Meneer, Mevrouw,
Wij hebben vernomen dat een man sinds 8 maanden opgesloten in het gesloten centrum van Brugge een vijfde poging tot uitzetting zal ondergaan naar het land van oorsprong met uw maatschappij.
Het gaat over de vlucht SN235 naar Dakar op 10 juli
Wij vragen u dringend om deze uitzetting te weigeren en niet deel te nemen aan het geweld dat uitgevoerd wordt door onze belgische overheid bij het uitzetten van mensen die zij ongewenst vinden.
wij danken u,
NAAM
————————————
en copie of andere brief naar:
Meneer F. Roosemont,Directeur van Vreemdelingendienst T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Een Afghan man free, Ten new Afghans are in the closed center of Bruges. It is more and more sure ther will be a collectif flight (with the Netherlands?)
07/07
15 Afghans are in the closed centrum 127 bis and a Few in Vottem. They ask help from the associations
In Netherland many Afghans were arrested the last days and are also in detention
05/07/2013
We’ve heard from reliable sources that a lot of Afghan men, women and familys care currently being arrested and detained in several Belgian closed centres. One family with 5 children is in the return centrun in Holsbeek, waiting for her return to Afghanistan.
It is more than likely that a group deportation to Afghanistan is being planned for the days or weeks to come.
The last months, our Foreigners’ office and Ministers have shown an unfailing efficiency to organise group deportations to several countries (Guinea, DRC, Albania, etc).
This time it seems that Afghan people are being targeted.
Will it be a Frontex flight, a flight organised by the government, a flight jointly organised with other European countries ? We might know but much later, for the sake of State secret again…
We will have additional information on this new killer initiative in the coming days and we ask each and everyone of you to pay close attention, to get informed, to spread the news and to act for that flight not to leave!
Quand la police met Barbès en état de siège pour rafler des sans-papiers
Mathieu Molard le 13 06 2013
Jeudi 6 juin, plus de 80 interpellations
Info StreetPress
C’est une gigantesque descente qui a eu lieu à Barbès, jeudi 6 juin. Pendant une heure et demie, une centaine de policiers bloque 4 rues du quartier, dispose des check-points et fouille les bistrots du coin à la recherche de sans-papiers.
quand-la-police-met-barbes-en-etat-de-siege-pour-rafler-des-sans-papiers
“J’avais l’impression qu’ils arrêtaient tout le monde”
Métro Barbès – 15 heures. Ce jeudi, Kamel* est posté comme chaque jour face aux tourniquets de sortie de la station. Il tente d’alpaguer le chaland -« cigarettes, cigarettes ! » – quand il voit « des dizaines de fourgons de police arriver par tous les côtés. » En un instant c’est la débandade. Les vendeurs à la sauvette courent dans tous les sens, semant derrière eux des paquets de clopes et quelques babioles. Le jeune Tunisien, comme bon nombre de ses amis, n’a pas de titre de séjour. La plupart se précipitent à l’intérieur du Tati situé de l’autre côté de la rue.
Du premier étage du magasin, ils assistent au déploiement des CRS. « Ils ont mis en place des barrages », raconte Karim. Harnachés « comme Robocop », ils prennent position en travers de la rue, formant un mur d’uniformes. Impossible de passer. La même scène se répète dans les rues voisines : les forces de l’ordre établissent un périmètre. A l’intérieur : une partie de la rue de La Goutte d’Or, la rue des Islettes, la rue Capla, la rue Charbonnière et une partie du boulevard Barbès. En un instant, le quartier est bouclé.
Violence
A l’intérieur du périmètre, c’est la panique. Certains se faufilent dans les halls d’immeuble, les cours ou les commerces. Mohamed, sans titre de séjour, tente sa chance en direction du boulevard Magenta. « Je voulais traverser ici. » Index tendu, il désigne un passage piéton sur le boulevard de la Chapelle. Il court sur le trottoir. « Un policier m’a mis un coup de pied », il exhibe alors un bleu sur l’arrière de sa cuisse tandis qu’un strap maintient son épaule blessée. « Ensuite, il m’a poussé contre les barrières en me tirant le bras dans le dos », continue le Tunisien de 29 ans. « Et puis, je ne sais pas pourquoi, il m’a relâché en me disant ‘vas-y dégage’ ». Sans demander son reste, il s’éloigne du quartier.
A chaque intersection, les riverains racontent la même histoire : un cordon de CRS prend position en travers de la rue. Progressivement, une queue se forme au check-point. « Pour entrer ou sortir du périmètre il fallait présenter ses papiers », explique un bistrotier de la rue de la Goutte d’Or. Lui comme ses clients sont priés de rester dans l’établissement, limitrophe de la zone bouclée. Ils regardent médusés l’opération. « Il y avait des dizaines de fourgons de police ici et autant par là. Au total plus de cent policiers », raconte un client, la quarantaine grisonnante et du plâtre plein le t-shirt. La préfecture de police, contactée par StreetPress, ne « souhaite pas communiquer sur les effectifs déployés ». A l’intérieur du périmètre, CRS, police de quartier et agents de la brigade anti-criminalité sillonnent les rues, pendant près d’une heure trente.
Rafle Personne ou presque n’échappe au contrôle. « Comme s’ils cherchaient quelqu’un », raconte un vendeur de téléphone. Femme, enfants, personnes âgées… les policiers vérifient méthodiquement l’identité de chaque passant. Pas de papiers, immédiatement les talkie-walkies grésillent : « J’en ai un ! ». Mickaël et sa bande sont posés sur un muret rue de la Goutte d’Or quand quatre agents en civils – « en sweats, déguisés en jeunes, quoi ! » – leur tombent dessus. « Vos papiers, les jeunes ! » Deux d’entre eux n’en ont pas. Face au mur, les bras dans le dos, ils sont menottés. En guise de bracelet, des lanières de plastiques leur enserrent les mains. Enfin, deux policiers les escortent jusqu’à l’un des trois bus garés un peu plus loin. A l’intérieur, des dizaines de sans-papiers s’entassent. « Plus de 80 », racontent de nombreux témoins. Certains parlent d’une centaine de personnes. La préfecture de police ne souhaite pas communiquer le nombre exact d’interpellations.
Du premier étage du magasin Tati où il se cache, Karim observe le ballet incessant des policiers. Tous ceux qui sortent du métro sont contrôlés, impossible par ailleurs d’y entrer. « J’avais l’impression qu’ils arrêtaient tout le monde. Je les ai même vus embarquer un touriste avec son appareil photo. » Certains sans-papiers se sont glissés dans les cours ou les halls d’immeuble. « Ils allaient les chercher à l’intérieur, on les voyait ressortir menottés », raconte Frank, lunettes de soleil vissées sur le visage. Saïd, patron du Barbès Café, est posté derrière son comptoir quand une dizaine de policiers « tous en civil », font leur entrée dans l’établissement. « Ils ont fermé la porte derrière eux. » Dehors, le soleil est au beau fixe. Pas grand monde à l’intérieur. « Une dizaine de clients tout au plus. » Table après table, les agents contrôlent les papiers d’identité, jusqu’à tomber sur un sans-pap’. « Au total, ils ont arrêté trois personnes chez moi, dont deux mineurs », raconte Saïd.
Pendant ce temps-là
Jeudi 6 juin, toutes les caméras du pays semblent tournées vers la rue Caumartin où la veille, Clément Méric, jeune militant antifasciste est mort. En milieu d’après-midi quelques centaines d’antifas viennent lui rendre hommage. Une heure plus tard, ils seront près de 6.000 place Saint-Michel. Anne Hidalgo, candidate socialiste à la Mairie de Paris tente une apparition. La foule scande alors « PS hors la manif, socialos trahison » puis quelques instants plus tard un autre slogan est repris en cœur « les fascistes assassinent à saint Lazare, le PS rafle à Barbès ». Des militants de retour du 18è font circuler l’info : des dizaines de sans-papiers sont interpellés au même moment. Anne Hidalgo décide de rebrousser chemin.
Hygiène
La préfecture confirme bien être entrée dans les cafés et restaurants du quartier. L’opération était menée en collaboration avec les services administratifs. Le motif ? « Vérifier le respect des normes d’hygiène, de licence, la vente d’alcool aux mineurs… Neuf établissements ont été contrôlés », explique la préfecture. Deux établissements ont été immédiatement fermés, « deux autres ne devraient pas tarder à l’être ».
En plus de ces « contrôles administratifs », on évoque deux autres objectifs : « lutter contre l’accroissement des cambriolages dans l’arrondissement » et combattre les « receleurs, nombreux dans le marché sauvage autour de la station de métro ». Bilan officiel de l’opération : 16 gardes à vue pour « des questions de droit commun » (« un port d’armes prohibées, du recel et plusieurs individus inscrits au fichier des personnes recherchées. ») La police se refuse à communiquer le nombre total de personnes amenées au commissariat pour vérification d’identité, puis pour certains placés en centre de rétention.
GAV
A 16h20, la police lève les barrages. « A la sortie des classes, encore beaucoup de policiers, mais c’était possible de passer », raconte l’un des employés de l’école du quartier. Certains sans-papiers se glissent hors de leurs cachettes. « Il y avait toujours des mecs en civil. Ils en ont encore cueilli quelques-uns qui pensaient s’en être sortis », raconte un commerçant. Pour tous les interpellés, direction le commissariat de la rue de Clignancourt. Les militants de plusieurs associations d’aide aux sans-papiers dont Réseau Education Sans Frontières ont pu recueillir par téléphone quelques témoignages. L’un d’entre eux raconte avoir été placé en cellule pendant « trois ou quatre heures » avec une vingtaine de personnes. Le temps de vérifier l’identité des 80 interpellés (chiffre approximatif). Finalement, en plus des 16 GAV, 33 personnes devront passer devant le juge des libertés pour défaut de titre de séjour. Pour eux, direction le centre de rétention administratif de Vincennes.
Je les ai même vus embarquer un touriste avec son appareil photo !
Au tribunal Mardi 11 juin, tribunal de grande instance de Paris. Au dernier étage du bâtiment après une interminable montée des marches, un portique de détection de métaux et un gendarme gardent l’entrée sur un petit couloir. Une dizaine de militants s’y entassent. Depuis quelques jours, l’info circule sur les mails d’alerte des collectifs d’aide aux sans-papiers : les clandestins de Barbès passent devant le juge des libertés. Derrière une porte, à l’abri des regards. Les sans-papiers attendent leur tour, alignés dos à dos sur un banc en bois. Quelques avocats consultent les dossiers sur leurs genoux. Les trois boxes d’entretien sont occupés. Chacun est prié de faire vite. Jour d’affluence pour la justice, 36 cas doivent être tranchés dans la journée par les deux magistrats. A trois exceptions près, tous ont été interpellés le 6 juin dans le 18e.
Les audiences se suivent et se ressemblent. Dans une petite pièce, la magistrate, la cinquantaine coiffée avec un chignon. A sa gauche, la greffière, plus jeune. Face à eux, quatre chaises. « Monsieur Singh », la vingtaine, prend place sur l’une d’entre elles. A sa gauche, une traductrice lui chuchote à l’oreille. A sa droite, son avocate. Juste à côté, l’avocat de la préfecture. Maître Kornman compulse le dossier de son client. Commise d’office, elle n’en a pris connaissance que le matin même, comme les quatre autres cas qu’elle défendra dans la journée. Son argumentaire est très technique. Elle pointe les défauts du dossier. Ici une signature qui manque, là un délai de quatre heures entre la sortie du commissariat et la notification d’arrivée en centre de rétention… Jurisprudence à l’appui, elle tente de faire valoir la nullité de la procédure. L’avocate de la pref’ a pu consulter à l’avance les arguments de sa consœur. Elle répond point par point, précédent à l’appui. Maître Kornman tente de reprendre la parole pour répondre. « Vous avez déjà plaidé, si on fait toujours ça, on n’en finit jamais », coupe la juge. Elle réussit à placer une phrase avant d’être coupée à nouveau. Après 25 minutes d’échanges, tout le monde dehors. « Monsieur Singh », n’a pas dit un mot. Seule question qui lui est posée : « Etes-vous prêt à rentrer dans votre pays ? »
Expulsions
Dans le couloir, les militants s’échangent leurs notes. « Sur un document, ils avaient écrit qu’ils avaient procédé à un menottage permettant l’usage d’un téléphone. J’ai du mal à imaginer ! », ironise l’un d’entre eux. « Le dernier charter est parti hier et le prochain est seulement dans vingt jours ! Alors ils ont demandé un délai pour organiser le retour dans son pays ! » Les tristes anecdotes se succèdent, dressant en pointillés le portrait d’une police débordée par le nombre de dossiers. Des procédures traitées à la va-vite. « Lui, pendant la procédure, il avait un interprète tamoul alors qu’il parle ourdou. Ils vont l’expulser quand même. » Pour « Monsieur Singh », même traitement. La jeune avocate, visiblement fatiguée et dépitée, sort en courant « s’en griller une ». « De toute façon, cette juge expulse tout le monde », commente un militant, cheveux longs et carnet de notes à la main. Ceux qui échappent à l’expulsion doivent encore patienter 6 heures. Le délai pendant lequel la préfecture peut faire appel. Les autres tenteront leur chance en appel.
Warning Les sans-papiers cités dans l’article ont préféré voir leur nom changé.
Mr M has been retained in the closed centre of Vottem for almost 4 months.
He arrived in Belgium three years ago. They already tried to deport him a first time but it failed.
His lawyer introduced an appeal to the Supreme court that is foreseen on July 2nd 20103.
However, the Office of Shame will try to deport him before that date, and the Senegalese embassy has provided him with a pass.
On the 28th of June they will try to have him fly to Dakar at 11.25 a.m.
SN Airlines Flight 237
Mr M is desperate, he doesn’t want to go back to Senegal. He is asking for our help to prevent this deportation.
Meeting at the airport on 28th June at 9.25 a.m. to explain the situation to the passengers and protest towards SN Airlines’ Crew.
Really, it is a bad taste serial story that goes on and on… While around 30 Congolese people coming from Belgium, Ireland, France and Germany were deported on a Frontex flight to Congo last week, this Sunday 23rd of June, a new military flight was planned to deport 4 others; those Congolese who had not been deported the week before! Determination, did you say determination?
One Congolese woman among them could escape deportation at the very last minute thanks to her lawyer’s persistent intervention but on Saturday, the same woman, still at the 127bis centre, was again isolated in anticipation of a new deportation attempt, and on Sunday, she was again taken out of the isolation cell and told that she would not be deported that day! Needless to say that this treatment is highly devastating!
This somehow illustrates the way human beings who are not from our regions are being treated, human beings who are forbidden to reside among us.
Thus, the Foreigners Office confirmed that there would be three persons on a military flight on the 23rd, at the same time as fright for development cooperation purposes, and reassured that there would even be a doctor and an escort…
To express their indignation, around twenty people gathered in front of the military airport in Melsbroek.
And at 9 p.m. on the same day, we learned that the 127bis centre was filled again with Congolese people and that around 20 of them had been arrested!
What an obscurity aroung the authorities’ schemes! Communications are too much fragmented! Who are the people who are quickly detained in a closed centre in view of a deportation and where do they come from? Was there a need to make the expenses profitable?
The Office of Shame assure they were not aware of the problems the deported people would have encountered, but did they enquire about he situation? Do they care?
This is just another chapter of the barbaric story that writes itself daily under the indifferent look of those who do not really want to see…
Mr Bah is back! Yesterday, the Dutch immigration service tried to deport mr Bah for thesecond time to Guinea and once again, the deportation failed! He was taken to Brussels Airport by two blinded busses, one with him, theother one empty (apparently, they tried to fool activists). He was in a very bad condition, he is in hungerstrike for more than five weeks now. Although the Dutch IND doctor declared him fit to fly (without even seeingmr Bah), the Brussels airport medical service examined him and concludedthat he was in such a bad condition that he was not fit to fly and the aircompany refused to take him on board. He was back at the penitentairy hospital in the afternoon.
We’re very very happy that mr Bah is back, but we also feel so sorry for him because they keep on dragging him from here to there, which must beexhausting in his condition. He called me this morning, he wants to thank everybody who helps him inany way. If people want to send postcards to mr Bah (and mr Koulibaly, who is at the detention hospital as well, in hungerstrike as well and alsofrom Guinea), you can send cards to this adress:
dhr. Bah / dhr. Koulibaly PI Haaglanden, Justitieel Medisch Centrum (JMC) Postbus 87810 2508 DE DEN HAAG, the Netherlands
Tomorrow, tuesday 25th of June, the Dutch immigration service will try for
a second time to deport mr Bah. Mr Bah comes from Guinea and has been in
hungerstrike for the last six weeks, protesting against migration policy
in the Netherlands. He plays a key-role in the discovery of the Guinea
LP’s, falsified by Dutch immigration service. His own papers have clearly
been fotoshopped.
Last week, state tried to deport him. He resisted in the airplane
Amsterdam-Paris, by explaining his situation to the passengers (too weak
for physical resistance because of the hungerstrike) but none of the
passengers reacted. Dutch military police tiewrapped his wrists and
anckles, slipped belts through the tiewraps and carried him like this. In
Paris, they asked for assistance from the french military police, who
refused because, I quote: they wouldn’t even carry animals like this.
In the plan from Paris to Conakry mr Bah resisted again and this time it
was succesful. The passengers started to protest, the pilot refused him on
board and he was brought back to the Netherlands and the detention
hospital again.
Tomorrow, he will be brought by car from Scheveningen to Brussels. On
Brussels Airport, he will be brought to flght SN 205, departure 11:25am
from Brussels to Conakry. As his resistance was succesful last time, we
expect the guards to show even more repression this time.
We call on our brothers and sisters activists in Brussels to protest
loudly against this deportation and try to inform passengers of the same
flight!
24/06: We were around twenty people making noise in front of the airport so that the deported people could hear us. The Foreigners Office misled us: the same evening, around 20 other Congolese were gathered at the 127bis centre (where were they coming from?) and at 9 p.m. they were escorted to the airport by a group of policemen to fill another plane.
Exactly one week ago 34 Congolese from different European countries were deported via Brussels to Congo. According to our info, some of them are still being detained in Kinshasa.
We learned today that several women and men of Congolese origin have been isolated in the closed detention centre 127bis in view of a new deportation this Sunday 23/06 at 6pm departing from Melsbroek airport! Among them, a man who was taken off the plane last week after an emergency appeal. Now that his emergency appeal has not been pursued they are trying to deport him again!
Nothing will stop the determination of the Foreigners Office (Office des Étrangers) who as well as deporting more than 30 people per day take part in charter deportations!
They have become standard practice and are in all probability trivialised by everyone: politicians, charities and NGOs. The defeaning silence suits the authorities and allows them to achieve their aim unhindered!
Sound the end of deportations and all the machinery which accompanies them, and blow the wind of freedom!
Gather at Melsbroek airport this Sunday 23/06 5pm . Chaussée
de Haecht,138 1820 Steenokkerzeel
Bus line 270 to Keerbergen 4.05pm Gare du Nord, 4.11pm Botanique, stop:
Geerenstraat Melsbroek
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d?Etat à l?Asile, à l?Immigration et à
l?intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : Téléphone : 02
542 80 11 Fax : 02 542 80 03 info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
The secret was well kept, a state secret as one can imagine, and we learnt later that the flight was chartered by FRONTEX (the European agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders) and organised by Belgium and its Foreigners’ Office.
It was the thrid grouped flight coordinated by the Foreigners’ Office from Brussels to Kinshasa within one year, the other two took place in March (6th) and December (12th) 2012.
On 16th of June 2013, 35 Congolese migrants were grouped together in the closed centre 127bis. Among them, twenty were coming from various Belgian closed centres, 3 from France, 10 from Ireland and one from Germany.
The police in number (a hundred according to our sources) arrived to the closed centre 127bis at 12 a.m. to take the persons designated for the flight. According to our sources again, the police was extremely violent, taking each one of them by force.
‘They are like thieves coming to steal cattle’, said one of the detainees.
In the afternoon, other buses arrived, bringing other Congolese peopole from other countries. It took four long hours to the police to settle the 34 handcuffed Congolese people in their several vehicules.
All the prisoners of the centre were outraged to see this violence and were shouting against this injustice. A man who certainly shouted too hard was grasped round the waist and handcuffed by serveral policemen. When one of them hold him at the throat he believed he was going to suffocate and he bit him. He was thrown to an isolation cell for 48 hours. The detainees continued demonstrating, taking the mattresses outside and shouting.
‘It was tough madam, it was really tough’ said a detainee.
The impressive police escort with two buses left the centre at 5 p.m. towards the military airport of Melsbroek.
At the airport, several Congolese had come to support their friends, protest loudly and denounce the collaboration between Belgium and the DRC.
Military police was all over the place at the airport, on the lookout for any suspect activity.
Three persons were taken out of the plane after their lawyer’s urgent appeal got sucessful. They were brought back to the 127bis centre and put in isolation!
The plane took off at 6.30 p.m.
127 BIS
‘The tension stays high in the centre after this limitless repression.’
‘We’re full of hatred’
‘We do not stand being mistreated’
‘Enough now’
News from Kinshasa
Message of 17th June 6.39 a.m.
They have been taken to the Presidential Palace where they will be questioned.
The laws, conventions and treaties voted by Belgium and Europe enable these so-called grouped or collective deportations in a certain legality. Nothing will stop the EU and its Member States to doggedly control migration flows.
We do not want this State terrorism that deems it has the right to define who on earth has the right to move, to breathe and to live.
Between 30 and 40 people of Congolese origin are going to be taken on a collective flight this Sunday (tomorrow).
They have been taken to several closed centres in Belgium in recent days. 15 have been taken to closed centre at Merksplas. At this moment some of them have been put in isolation, though not all since there are not enough isolation cells for them.
Many of them do not have a laissez passez.
Some of them have women and children in Belgium.
Many of them have been here for some years. One of them has been here 21 years.
Some of them are (opposition) political activists.
One of the women is pregnant.
For many it is the first time that Belgium has tried to deport them.
They are refusing this collective deportation, want to resist and demand help! See here the way that charter flights are used:
According to our sources the plane will leave between 9am and 10am from Melsbroek military airport, Chaussée de Haecht 138, Steenokkerzeel.
Without doubt the detainees will be transferred to the closed centre 127 bis at
Steenokkerzeel between 7am and 9am, Tervuursesteenweg 300,1820 Steenokkerzeel
In view of the lack of available time, we call on everyone to act:
in front of the military airport at 9am
at the closed centre 127 bis at 7 a.m
Send faxes to the closed centre 127bis +32 2 7598168, Tel. +32 2 7550000
And fax, mail those responsible:
15 Wing Transport Aérien
Quartier Groenveld
Chaussée de Haecht 138
1820 Steenokkerzeel
It seems that a majority of arrests, detentions and deportations are currently reserved for Morrocans and Tunisians.
It seems that the Foreigners’ Office is again targeting both nationalities, after having bothered Guineans, Albanians, Kosovars and many others before.
Today, Belgian closed centres are full of people of Morrocan and Tunisian origin. They got arrested during raids or at home.
They are quickly deported thanks to a close collaboration with our Ministers, the Foriegners’ Office, the Morrocan or Tunisian Embassies, and the Air Maroc/SN Airlines.
They are of all ages, and have sometimes been living in Belgium for over ten years.
Any argument is valid to offer them an Order to Leave the Territory; ‘judicial’ antecedents, suspicion of ‘marriage in name only’, suspicion of moonlighting, etc.
Many have worked for years in Belgium, they got regularised and obtained a work permit.
The Office will do their best to find the smallest fault in their lives to grant them an Order to Leave the Territory.
A 57 year old man arrived in Belgium in 2002. He got married to a Belgian woman in 2003, worked for years and years, bought himself a house, a car and a cat. He is being accused of marriage in name only in 2003 because the couple got divorced! He got arrested and imprisoned to be deported. He thought he was a good and well integratred citizen. He now wonders what the words citizen and integrated actually mean…
Isn’t the true explanation that this man will no longer be able to work and produce? Indeed, he got very sick after many years of a very demanding work, he has got diabetes, a very incapacitating slipped disc and a serious heart failure that requires an oxygen concentrator in his everyday life.
Warn your friends about this new migrants hunting with an ID or undocumented, employed or unemployed, orchestrated by the Foreigners’ Office!!!
07/06 5p.m.: the deportation is annulated. We do not know why.thestate secretsare wellguarded
Mr A has been detained for 7 months in Belgian closed centres. He was arrested in November 2012.
On March 15th, on his return to the closed centre of Merkspas after a third deportation attempt, he had an argument with the manager of the centre. They called the security. He was beaten and isolated in a cell. He stayed there without care, with strong pains in his arm and foot that prevented him from sleeping. After one week at last he was brought to the hospital: humerus fracture. After being taken care of, he was transferred to the closed centre in Bruges to avoid his co-detainees could see him in such a state. He spent a few more days in a confinement cell in Bruges. He lodged a complaint that has remained unprocessed until now.
The fracture is not yet consolidated and he still needs follow-up care.
On 6th of June, when he came back from the hospital, the social assistant told him that a new flight was planned for him on Sunday 9th June to Dakar and then Conakry!
Flight SN235 and Senegal Airlines DN237 11.25 a.m. to Dakar
Mr A opposes to this deportation and is asking for our help!
Let’s meet at the airport this Sunday at 9.25 a.m. to speak to the passengers and the crew.
Fax and email campaign sometimes very efficient to do as of now:
————————————
Meneer, Mevrouw,
Wij hebben vernomen dat een man sinds 7 maanden opgesloten in het gesloten centrum van Brugge een vierde poging tot uitzetting zal ondergaan naar het land van oorsprong met uw maatschappij.
Het gaat over de vlucht SN235 naar Dakar op 9 juni
Wij vragen u dringend om deze uitzetting te weigeren en niet deel te nemen aan het geweld dat uitgevoerd wordt door onze belgische overheid bij het uitzetten van mensen die zij ongewenst vinden.
wij danken u,
NAAM
————————————
en copie of andere brief naar:
Meneer F. Roosemont,Directeur van Vreemdelingendienst T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur A va subir une deuxième tentative d’expulsion ce 7 juin
Vol (TK1942)
Il vit depuis 5 ans en Belgique avec sa future femme.
Il est enfermé dans le centre de Merksplas depuis plus de deux mois.
Il demande depuis longtemps d’être transféré au centre de Vottem pour être plus près de ses amis, mais la direction refuse.
Il n’a pas non plus d’avocat, n’ayant pas les moyens de s’en payer un et n’ayant pas confiance dans les avocats donnés par le centre.
Il ne veut pas être expulsé de force vers l’Algérie, où il n’a plus rien à faire…
Il demande notre aide pour résister à cette expulsion forcée…
Vol (AH2061) Air Algérie de 15h pour Alger
RDV à l’aéroport à 13 h pour parler aux passagers de l’avions lors du chek-in…
N’hésitez pas à envoyer des fax et des mails à :
Air Algérie
FAX : + 32 22198233
Et aux responsables
et Copie ou autre courrier à :
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be/ milquet@milquet.belgium.be Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
E-mail info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
So, you were deported at the beginning of the week, weren’t you? You were at the closed centre in Bruges, what happened?
Yes I was. On the 15th they came to pick me up in the morning, they had said around noon, they told me to go and see the assistant. The latter told me that I had to take my luggage and go to the airport.
That is when I contacted my friend Francesca, once at the airport I also contacted my lawyer. He told me that he had not received any answer, because he had introduced a request but he got no answer. He had said he would do something but… I could not refuse, I really had to go to the airport.
Once at the airport, they asked me whether I wanted to leave. I said I did not have the choice since I had a request pending, that remained unanswered, therefore I did not have the choice, I was going to leave.
Then they sent me to a room where they searched my bag. Then the worse thing happened when they asked me to undress completely. I asked why and they answered it was for security reasons. But what did they think I, a little girl, would do to the people in the plane?
It was awful, it’s really what marked me most, suffer this treatment, stand naked in front of people so that they may search you. They even handcuffed me! There I said no, I do not oppose my return therefore I don’t want these things around my hands! They said it was the procedure, that they didn’t have the choice, they had to do it.
Two police men escorted me to the plane and I remained handcuffed until Burkina Faso. It was such an abasement to me, because they really didn’t have to come to that, it was hard, really hard, it was violent. On the plane I asked them to remove the handcuffs but they refused, again because of the procedure. It is their procedure to mistreat people like that. Even if you do not refuse to leave, in spite of that they will make you suffer these things. It was really humiliating to undress for no reason, there are people who are even searched in their genitals.
How is it in your country?
Actually, I’m not with my family, I did not go back there of course. I am at a friends’s in a host family, a friend of mine had told me that if was coming back I could stay at her’s in the meantime. I am there all day, at home, I do not go out.
You had been on a hunger strike for two or three days in the closed centre of Bruges, do you think it is linked?
Honestly I don’t know, but it can be, because the people there just pretend, but they follow all your movements.
Were you heavily watched in the centre?
Yes we were! Too much! The least movement and they were making a report, all the time! So I don’t know if they forward them or not, I really don’t know.
You are in the closed centre of Bruges. Can you explain since when you’ve been there and how/why you arrived in Belgium?
When I arrived at the airport, they directly brought me to the Caricole; it is also a detention centre not far from the airport.
In fact, regarding the purpose of my travel: I was running away from a tricky situation; a forced marriage in my country. I wanted to escape this union and find refuge somewhere. But I didn’t know there was a place where one could request asylum, I was just running away from that situation… When I got to the airport, I was arrested because I did not fulfil the conditions of travel; I didn’t have any hotel reservation etc. hence they sent me to the Caricole. There I was informed that one could request asylum and everything started from that moment.
So, you requested asylum at that moment, right?
Yes, I did. I was running away from a particular situation and I totally ignored that it was possible to request asylum, if I had known it I would have done that directly.
Since when have you been there ?
I’ve been here for two months and a few weeks, I arrived on the 11th of February.
So, you were running away from a forced marriage with a man who is older than you I suppose?
Yes, the man is older than me and he even has two wives and big children. He is a longstanding friend of the family and he is also my boss because after he wanted me to work for him at his workplace.
I ran away! I asked for some help from a friend, because I had tried several times, it was the only way… but it made me do bad things because… I needed money for the travel, I had to steal money from where I was working, to be able to organise all that…
And now you are in the detention centre of Bruges, right?
Yes I am. I introduced my first asylum request, they refused, I had a first interview, and then a second interview, negative. We appealed to court, they refused and they told me I had to return.
The latest news, when I rang my friend to tell her it didn’t work, she said I’d better not come back because it was hectic over there, they even called herself in and they were looking for me everywhere.
Once at the airport I said I could not return.
A friend told me that I had the right to introduce a second asylum request. I did not know. I refused that one and this is how I found myself transferred to Bruges.
They tried to deport you twice already, didn’t they?
Yes they did. They even told me that the next time they would handcuff me and send me back home. I tried to explain my situation, I tried to make them understand that all I wanted was to be protected, that I was not there for another reason. Because the general consulate refused, they said that at my age and seen my level of studies I could not be forced… but they forget that we have traditions, back home they don’t care about your age, they don’t care about your level of studies; if your family decides so, there is nothing you can do about it… this is what they don’t understand, there is nothing you can do about it!
According to the news we got today, the police arrived in big number this morning and searched all the prisoners of the centre and their cells.
In one wing,two men were arrested with violence and bring to the police office in Brugge, where they stay a long time. One of him was bring to the closed centre in MERSPLAS and take violently in isolation.The other was bring in the closed center 127bis in Steenokkerzeel.
Some of the detainees might still be on hunger strike but information are extremely difficult to obtain because most of the mobile phones of the detainees are either locked or have been confiscated.
Vottem
Following the hunger strike in Bruges, movements of solidarity took place in Vottem but also acts of despair. A man tried to commit suicide; he slashed all his body and swallowed keys. He was taken to the hospital from where he escaped last night in a very worrying state.
The atmosphere in Vottem is extremely tense these days. A hunger strike was started in two wings of the centre in order “to protest against the arbitrary decisions of the Foreigners Office who want to deport at all costs, against their detention, and against the extremely repressive attitudes of the centre staff”.Rapidljy the movement was repressed. Some where bring in isolation.
The people detained at the detention centre in Bruges ‘De Refuge’ on wings A, B, C and D have informed us that they have today, 23 May 2013, begun a hunger strike for a determined duration.
The majority of them were arrested at their place of residence for sometimes questionable or even illegal reasons. These arrests were often accompanied by violence.
Their conditions of detention are worthy of a concentration camp. This detention has been accompanied by systematic controls of all their actions and movements. Every movement, behaviour, conversation, phone call has straight away been considered suspect. People are placed in solitary confinement on a daily basis for uncertain reasons.
The follow-up care is either non-existent or inadequate: if they have health problems, they receive, without prior medical examination, unnamed medication which has no effect or an effect which makes them incapable of reacting or moving around.
In the case of scheduled expulsions by the Immigration Office, they are rarely forewarned. The evening before their expulsion, they are put in isolation often without the possibility to warn their lawyers, families or friends although the rules clearly state that in the case of expulsion, they must be given 48 hours advance warning.
They wish to make themselves known to those in charge of migration policy and to meet journalists to document their stories.
Hello, you were deported on the collective flight in April 2013, weren’t you? Can you tell us what happened?
Yes I was. Well, it happened on the Tuesday. I didn’t even know I had a flight. So, on Tuesday around 1 p.m. the guards came into my room to tell me that I had been called to the office. I didn’t know why. I was on hunger strike so I thought that might be the reason.
Was it in the 127bis detention centre?
Yes it was. I stood up and followed them into the office where I found my assistant. One guard shut the door and my assistant said ‘OK, you are travelling tomorrow, you have a special flight.’ I answered ‘but why a special flight, why must I leave tomorrow, I have been here for all this time, and you did not inform me?’
She said that’s how things were, and that they would send me to another isolated room where I would have to stay until the following day.
– ‘I’ll go and get my luggage so we can go wherever you want me to go.’
– ‘No I’m afraid you can not go back to your room, we will deal with that ourselves.’
I insisted ‘but listen, I’ll go and fetch my clothes, there is no problem, I’ll take what’s in the wardrobe and that’s it!!’.
– ‘No, tonight you are coming with us, one way or another…’
– ‘Listen, you’re going to take me with you, but I’m not going there of my own free will…’
They sent me to a room where I was undressed, naked, they checked I wasn’t hiding anything. They saw there was nothing. Then they sent me to another room where there was another guy. Actually, they sent all the people from the other centres – Vottem, Bruges, Antwerp- to the detention centre here.
We spent the night there. I stayed for a while in that room with the guy. Then the social assistant came to show us the video explaining deportations on a special flight.
I watched the video. I asked them if I could ring my country to check if someone would be waiting for me at the airport because I didn’t know where to go at all once back there.
They said ‘OK, no problem, we’ll give you a telephone, you will call later’. Then they said that I could not call them from Belgium but from Guinea only. I asked several times but they kept saying ‘wait, you will call, don’t worry’. I insisted each time until they told me at some point ‘No, the telephone is broken, you can not call anyone anymore…’.
Then the guards supposedly went to arrange my luggage… They took whatever… because when they arrested me at the Immigration Office I had nothing, only what I was wearing plus pants… They took everything and put it in my bag.
The day after they came to wake me up, they took the sheets etc. They were taking one person at a time. When my turn came, we went downstairs to meet the policemen who were going to escort us. They brought us to a small room where we got undressed, naked, again, supposedly because I could still be hiding something despite having spent the night with them and they had searched me the day before!!!!
I undressed, they did not find anything. Then they handcuffed me like everyone else. They sent me to the bus with two policemen, then to the airport. A police car came and we were escorted as if we had committed a crime. We left for the airport, they made us get out of the car one by one to go to the plane. Once in the plane, you are put in the middle, two policemen sit either side of you, a third one across the aisle just in case one of them needs to go to the bathroom he can be replaced. So, three policemen per person.
Were you still handcuffed?
Yes we were. When the plane began to move, I often asked until when we would remain handcuffed. One policeman said ‘we’ll wait for the take off, it is the big boss who decides…’ He showed me the big boss and told me it is him who would decide, they can not do anything… maybe when the lights of the security belt are switched off…’. We stayed like that for one, even two hours with our handcuffs on the plane. Then they removed them to give us food. When we landed in Conakry, at around 3 p.m., there was someone representing Guinea, maybe from the government, I don’t know.
Each person was called, you hear your name and you go. Men in uniforms were waiting for us downstairs, aligned in two ranks, we had to pass through the middle and enter the bus that was there for us. Once everybody was in the bus, they drove us to the national airport because we did not exit at the international airport, they sent us to the other side. We stayed there in a room for a while, then they said let’s go and we went to recover our luggage.
Did they give the asylum requests to the authorities?
No they didn’t. The things we had sent, they gave them back to us on the plane. For me for example, they gave me back the proof I had sent on the plane, with the telephone we had, etc. before we got off the plane. They did not control that. I think everything had been clarified to make it seem like the government did not know anything.
A few days later I was listening to the radio, a government representative said he did not know anyting about the special flight from Belgium to Guinea.
However there were people waiting for us when we arrived…
Then you got released and everyone went back home?
Yes, they released us, one by one… I think nobody could inform anyone to be there to welcome them at the airport.
And some of the others got into trouble, didn’t they?
No, this I don’t know anything about…
When we came out of there, we all split up. I think there was no retaliation because the government certainly had to have an argument… in order for the people not to know they are busy repatriating nationals. Therefore, they preferred to let us go like that, so they can really protect themselves. After that I listened to the radio and they were saying they really didn’t know anything about this flight… however, when one knows the procedure, one can see everything was extremely well arranged. When you go to the embassy with no identity card, no name card… and the ambassador allows you to get a pass, it means that all has been pre-arranged… so if they say they do not know anything… at least we understood why there was no retaliation when we arrived, because we were extremely worried about that…
And were some of you mistreated before the departure?
Yes they were. At least they were determined to mistreat some but… in the end I don’t know if there was violence because they sent us one after the other so I don’t know what happened to the others. When they come to pick you up, you are alone. In the small room where you get undressed there are policemen, then when you leave that room you go to the bus, so the one who follows me… I don’t know what is going to happen to him… unless you tell your friend what happened to you, you will never know.
The women who had started a hunger strike on 7th of May in the closed centre in Bruges suspended their action on the 9th of May after strong pressure from the management.
http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/break-out-and-hunger-strikes-in-the-closed-centre-of-bruges/
They wanted to meet journalists to denounce their imprisonment and detention conditions. The management told them it was forbidden to speak to journalists for the sake of their ‘security’ and that retaliation would be tough if they defied the authority. They chose to interrupt their action after these threats but they remain very united.
They are very scared of being put into an isolation cell and also of the retaliation measures by the Immigration Office in relation to their personal file, or to a ‘surprise’ deportation; which happens daily in the centre. They are being called by the social assistant who tells them that they have a flight the day after; then they are immediately being isolated in a cell, without being able to warn their lawyer or co-detainees.
A Congolese woman was taken and deported under escort two days ago in total secret. She had an appointment at the Litigation Office that week. Her lawyer was not warned about this new deportation attempt and there was nothing he could do.
A group of activists came on the 8th of May to show their solidarity with the centre, singing Samba and Freedom when they were in the inner courtyard. The detainees were quickly taken back to their rooms, again for ‘security’ reasons as explained to them by the staff. This little demonstration made them really happy. They didn’t know that people from the outside are fighting against these prisons and they were extremely happy to discover it.
CALL FOR SOLIDARITY WITH HUNGER AND THIRST STRIKERS IN DETENTION CENTERS IN THE NETHERLANDS
public indictment against the system of repression we call Fortress Europe.
About 60 asylum seekers in detention center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, have been in hunger strike for four days now. 18 of them also stopped drinking since Wednesday 6th of May. They are protesting against the asylum policy that criminalizes refugees: they get thrown out on the streets without money or shelter and they get detained in prisons for up to 18 months. The refugees on hunger strike demand not to be treated as criminals anymore. They clearly statedthey want freedom and protection.
Wave of hunger strike
Wednesday May 1st, twenty refugees in detention center Schiphol went on hunger strike. While the guards brutally broke down the strike in Schiphol, by putting the hunger strikers in isolation cells, about 80 refugees in detention center Rotterdam started a hunger strike on Monday 6th of May. One day later,fifty women in detention center Brugge (Belgium) also went on hunger strike.
A thirst strike is even more dangerous than a hunger strike: the latter can last for 40 days before people get in a critical situation, whereas a person who does not drink will be dead after one week.
Government arrogance
The Dutch government has shown an unbelievable arrogance in this matter.
At first, they did not respond to the demands of the refugees at all. One parliament member of the ruling party People’s Party of the Freedom and Democracy (VVD) even went as far as to say the refugees “were taking the government hostage” by going on hunger strike. Then, as late as Thursday 9th May, they “provided” a worthless “offer”. In return for the end of the hunger strike, the government “offered” to shorten the usual17 hours a day detainees are locked inside their cell with a few hours.
The hunger and thirst strikers of course rejected this ridiculous proposal and they will continue with their protest.
But things are getting very serious right now. As of Friday the third day without water begins for the refugees who have no other means of getting their voice out than to go on a hunger or thirst strike.
Refugees searching for a better life get thrown into a Kafkaesk bureaucracy of having to provide proof that doesn’t exist in order to get their permit to stay. Once rejected, undocumented refugees get thrown
out on the streets and get denied basic human rights, such as food, shelter, work and health care. Racist police hunt them down and jail them. In detention, refugees are stripped from their dignity , their autono-
my, their lives and their future. Once deported, no one ever hears from them again. Right now, refugees in detention center Rotterdam are
directly and unmistakeably demanding their rights and their freedom.
The government will have to respond very quickly and adequately, if they don’t want to be held responsible for dozens of deaths.
Call for solidarity
We are strongly calling for solidarity from our friends throughout Europe. Solidarity with the hunger and thirst strikers in special; and with refugees in general. The state is aimed at excluding everyone who is not directly exploitable by capital. Make it known how this insane migration policy of repression destroys the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Show your solidarity by spreading this message.
Print this letter and glue it
everywhere
, preferably to walls that symbolize exclusion by Fortress
Europe: parliament buildings, embassies, deportation offices, immigration offices, etc.
Around 50 are on a hunger strike and they are extremely united. A few women do not strike, either because they are pregnant or sick. The management seems to currently accept the action, the only conditions are that the women must continue to follow the daily routine of the centre and go to the canteen at 1 p.m and 7 p.m where they are supposed to eat, and to their courtyard at 1.45 p.m and 7.45 p.m.
We heard that yesterday, Monday 6th of May, a dozen of prisoners from the closed centre of Bruges climbed to the roof of the centre. Three of them managed to escape and vanished into thin air.
After that, the women of the centre started a hunger strike on Tuesday 7th of May to protest against their detention conditions. They say that they live in inhuman conditions, that they are isolated and then taken to the airport without notification, without even being allowed to warn anyone. They deem their place is not in a prison, they are asylum seekers or waiting to be regularised, there is no reason for them to be imprisoned.
They ask the possibility to speak to journalists to make their living conditions known.
Three other detainees have been on hunger strike for several days in the closed centre of Vottem in Liège. They also protest against their detention conditions.
In the Netherlands, a movement of hunger strike is ongoing in the detention centres of Schiphol and Rotterdam.
Ces dernières semaines, nous avons eu des nouvelles de l’intérieur du centre par le biais d’une personne enfermée dans le cra 2 qui a appelé sur le téléphone de l’émission de radio Sans papiers ni frontières. Il a malheureusement été expulsé aujourd’hui, sûrement vers l’Algérie (il est Tunisien…).
Malgré la difficulté de mettre en oeuvre des réponses pratiques face à ce genre d’appels, c’est important que le numéro continue de tourner et que les infos sortent de l’intérieur, en ne désespérant pas d’être capables de construire des formes de solidarité plus concrètes à l’avenir. Je rappelle le numéro, à diffuser largement : 06.50.07.52.32
En ce moment, et comme souvent, la colère ressentie par certains retenus se mélange à un fort sentiment d’impuissance. Les expulsions ont l’air de battre leur plein, et notamment grâce à la complaisance du consulat algérien qui semble délivrer des laisser-passer à tour de bras pour tous les ressortissants du nord de l’Afrique, peu importe leur nationalité. Les flics usent toujours des mêmes sales méthodes. Le 13 avril, deux retenus refusent un vol. L’un en est à 22 jours de rétention, l’autre à 44 jours. Quand ils réintègrent leur chambre, les flics viennent chercher celui qui en est à 44 jours pour lui demander de “venir signer un papier”. Quand il sort de la chambre, ils lui sautent dessus et le scotchent pour le mettre dans l’avion. De leur côté les juges font fonctionner l’abattoir judiciaire et collaborent avec la préfecture, avec l’aide des avocats commis d’office qui, comme d’habitude, n’ont “rien à dire” pour la défense des retenus.
« Y’a des gens qu’ont des maladies graves comme l’hépatite C, y’a trop de maladies. Là le médecin, j’ai parlé avec lui. Pour les gens qui sont malades vraiment, il a parlé avec la préfecture, il a dit « ce monsieur il est malade, vous n’avez pas le droit de le garder, de renvoyer une personne comme ça avec une hépatite C . Le médecin il envoie trois certificats médicaux pour la préfecture, la préfecture n’est pas d’accord, ils ont renvoyé cette personne. On dit il y a la loi de l’homme, mais moi j’ai pas trouvé la loi de l’homme, la préfecture elle fait ce qu’elle veut. Les gens ils sont malades, ils les envoient pas à l’hôpital. Ils font là le traitement, toute la journée on est défoncé, on n’arrive pas à parler, on arrive à faire rien du tout. Vraiment y’en a marre. On est tout fatigués, on est tout faibles. On n’a pas le droit au médecin pour examen, mais pour le valium, le seresta, les médicaments qui sont trop forts tu vois, pour les gens qui consommaient de la drogue… Ils nous ont envoyé au juge, il nous laisse même pas la chance de parler, même pas un mot. Le juge il parle il dit : « tu veux être libérer, ramène ton passeport, je te libère ». On a donné le passeport pour le juge, il donne le passeport à la préfecture, ils renvoient ce monsieur direct. Ca c’est pas correct qu’un juge il dit « bon, ramenez pour moi votre passeport, je vous promets je vais vous libérer ». Tu donnes le passeport, il le donne direct à la préfecture, demain il a l’avion. Ils ont renvoyé deux mecs marocains, un du cra 1 et un avec nous du cra 2, ils les ont renvoyés en Algérie, sans passeport, sans laisser-passer, sans rien du tout. Ils ont pris trois mois de prison en Algérie. Y’a personne qu’a un passeport, y’a personne qu’a une pièce d’identité, y’a rien du tout. Moi j’ai pas parlé un mot avec le consul, ni en Français, ni en Arabe, comment il retrouve quelqu’un qui n’a même pas parlé avec lui ?!»
Encore une victoire totale pour les Sages de l’Office des Étrangers et leur Oracle irréfragable : une fois encore, la Loi et les Citoyens leur auront donné satisfecit, et nul renégat n’aura osé s’écarter de Leurs Voies Impénétrables pour contester leur Interprétation de la Grande Carte de la Misère, de l’Oppression et de la Corruption.
Au moins 19 Guinéens.ennes l’auront appris ce matin à leur dépens, qui ont été réveillés aux aurores par les Exécuteurs des Basses Œuvres diligents et confiants dans le sens de leur Mission, puis entraînés avec leurs hardes et leurs maigres possessions vers la Porte du Royaume, celle par laquelle on entre avec des papiers et du fric, ou bien on sort avec des menottes aux poignets, une escorte et des larmes plein les yeux. Justice est faite.
Pendant que les Élus rigolent encore de notre requête en vue de suspendre l’expulsion collective et d’ouvrir une enquête officielle sur les accusations de corruption des fonctionnaires et de l’Ambassade, pendant que les journalistes tournent et tournent et retournent en derviches improbables dans leur comité de rédaction la question de l’opportunité de mener leur propre investigation, pendant qu’une poignée d’associations jouaient leurs subsides en ciselant toujours plus finement le texte de leurs protestations par voie de presse, pendant que les Isolés comptaient les minutes et priaient d’autres Dieux que les nôtres, le temps ne suspendait pas son vol, mais le préparait minutieusement : minutage précis, effectifs, procédures, coordination. Efficacité. Sur quels autres thèmes a-t-on déjà vu Administration plus performante, aussi soucieuse de masquer irrégularités, dysfonctionnements, mauvaises pratiques et mauvaise publicité ?
Pendant ce temps, Amnesty International organisait une action symbolique autour de la Place du Luxembourg à Bruxelles (cf. http://www.whenyoudontexist.eu/sos-europe-european-parliament-must-stand-up-for-migrants-news/), une procession d’Hommes Debouts marchant derrière un bateau et figurant chacun un disparu en mer, une de ces Victimes inconscientes de la Loterie Aquatique tirée chaque jour par le Grand Conseil de Frontex(it) et ses Vassaux nationaux. Ambiance bon enfant, costumes et tailleurs sombres, sourires respectueux et salamalecs obséquieux étaient au rendez-vous dans ce quartier convivial et populaire, pour remettre, sous les regards étonnés des banquiers, fonctionnaires européens et lobbyistes de tous poils attablés pour le déjeuner sous un soleil de bonne augure, la Pétition de 71 000+ signatures à un Représentant du Parlement Européen, puis écouter religieusement la Voix des Peuples de Mère Europe répéter son engagement pour les droits des migrants, réaffirmer sans pouffer le modèle social comme socle historique de l’Europe, et souhaiter un assouplissement des conditions d’octroi de titres de séjour, sans remettre en cause le principe d’une immigration légale. Peu nombreuses étaient les voix pour scander “No Border, No Nation, Stop Deportation !”. Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong People ? Pas un mot en tout cas de l’avion qui emportait, loin au-dessus de nos têtes benoîtes, les 28 Nobodies vers leur destin (funeste ?).
Nullement inquiets de cette micro-action insignifiante, les Sages ont usé de leur droit de réponse en déléguant une Porte-parole (sacrée) auprès de la RTBF, pour instruire les Ignorants (http://www.rtbf.be/radio/player/lapremiere?id=1817998&e=) : dans le cadre de la politique migratoire globale, il s’agit juste de réguler les flux, car l’on ne peut accueillir tout le monde, et vous êtes priés de le croire sur parole. D’ailleurs, la procédure est toujours respectée et les droit systématiquement garantis avant l’expulsion, y compris une visite médicale avant d’embarquer. Seuls les imbéciles et les incrédules par profession auraient pu croire que 18 grévistes de la faim qui n’ont rien absorbé de solide depuis 6 jours se seraient vu refuser la bénédiction du savant disciple d’Hippocrate mandaté tout exprès ! Tous reçus, comme à l’École des Fans ! Nous voilà bien rassurés, et notre confiance pour les Savants de l’Office encore renouvelée.
Ainsi s’achève un épisode de plus de ce Grand Livre d’Histoire que beaucoup d’entre nous ne lirons jamais à nos enfants. Comment les endormir avec un tel récit sordide, aussi bête à pleurer, si dramatique dans son inéluctabilité, écœurant dans l’image qu’elle renvoie de notre humanité perdue ? Comment raconter cette Histoire sans dire notre complicité, notre trahison collective, notre pendable lâcheté que de laisser au Pouvoir la responsabilité de prendre les décisions qui nous concernent TOUS ? Une bonne berceuse fera bien l’affaire…
Alors, à bientôt sûrement pour de nouvelles mésaventures…. Et en attendant, on peut toujours harceler les pouvoirs publics pour réclamer une enquête (comme suggéré dans les messages précédents), et demander que l’Ambassadeur belge en Guinée et au Sénégal s’enquière officiellement du sort réservé aux 28 Nobodies (dont nous avons une partie des identités).
La semaine dernière, Frontex, l'”agence européenne pour la gestion de la coopération opérationnelle aux frontières extérieures”, annonçait fièrement dans son rapport annuel que “les franchissements irréguliers des frontières extérieures de l’UE ont été divisés par deux en 2012 grâce aux renforcements des contrôles aux frontières”, au déploiement de 1 800 gardes-frontière en Turquie, et à la construction d’une clôture en fil barbelé à la frontière gréco-turque longue de 10,3 km chacune et d’une hauteur de 2,5 à 3 mètres : Quelque 72 430 franchissements illégaux ont été dénombrés en 2012, ce qui représente une baisse de 49 % par rapport aux 141 060 détectés l’année précédente. Etrangement, Frontex n’évoque pas, par contre, le nombre de migrants morts aux frontières de l’Europe. En 2011, j’avais contribué à créer une carte interactive répertoriant plus de 14 000 hommes, femmes & enfants “morts aux frontières” de l’Europe, depuis 1993. Printemps arabe “aidant”, l’ONG en charge de cette macabre comptabilité a depuis recensé 4 000 victimes supplémentaires, en seulement 2 ans… Une vingtaine d’ONG ont lancé, il y a de cela un mois, une campagne internationale pour dénoncer cette “guerre” que l’Europe a décidé de lancer contre “un ennemi qu’elle s’invente”. A l’exception d’un article sur Slate.fr, des articles et de l’émission « De Big Brother à Minority Report » que le Vinvinteur (l’émission de télévision où j’officie aussi désormais) a consacré à cette guerre qui ne dit pas son nom, aucun média n’en a parlé. Aucun. 18 000 morts en 20 ans, dont 4 000 ces deux dernières années. Aux portes de l’Europe. Dans l’indifférence quasi-générale…Pour échapper aux scanners rétiniens, et rester incognito, le héros de Minority Report se faisait greffer de nouveaux yeux. L’histoire se passait en 2054. Le tiers des réfugiés qui migrent aujourd’hui à Calais, dans l’espoir de se rendre au Royaume-Uni, préfèrent de même effacer leurs empreintes digitales en les brûlant au moyen de barres de fer chauffées à blanc, de rasoirs ou de papier de verre (voir Calais: des réfugiés aux doigts brûlés). Explications : la création de l’espace Schengen a permis d'”ouvrir” les frontières des pays membres de l’Union européenne, afin de permettre aux Européens d’y voyager sans avoir à décliner leurs identités, ni donc être obligés de montrer leurs papiers. Une révolution. En contrepartie, l’Europe a aussi créé une agence, Frontex, en 2004, afin de sécuriser les frontières extérieures de l’Union européenne. Qualifiée d’« organisation militaire quasi-clandestine » par Jean Ziegler, Frontex disposait en février 2010 de 26 hélicoptères, 22 avions légers et 113 navires, ainsi que de 476 “appareils techniques”… Frontex est aussi un service de renseignement, ainsi qu’un relais policier, militaire, et diplomatique, avec les autres pays de l’Union… et pas seulement : Frontex a en effet passé des accords techniques de coopération avec des pays comme le Bélarus (157e -sur 179- au classement de la liberté de la presse de RSF), la Russie (148e), l’Ukraine (126e), la Turquie (154e), et en prépare d’autres avec la Libye (131e), le Maroc (136e), l’Egypte (158e), la Tunisie (138e) ou l’Azerbaïdjan (156e, cf « L’Internet est libre »… mais pas notre pays). Le respect des droits de l’homme ne se résume certes pas au seul respect de la liberté de la presse. A contrario, on a du mal à imaginer qu’un pays qui ne respecte pas la liberté de la presse respecterait les droits des migrants… et donc à comprendre ce pour quoi, et comment, Frontex ait ainsi pu externaliser le fait de bloquer, et faire incarcérer, des migrants dans des pays peu regardants en matière de droits de l’homme.FrontExit, lancé par une vingtaine d’ONG de défense des droits de l’homme, réclame aujourd’hui “plus de transparence sur le fonctionnement de FRONTEX et le respect des droits des migrant.e.s aux frontières” : “Pour lutter contre une prétendue « invasion » de migrants, l’Union européenne (UE) investit des millions d’euros dans un dispositif quasi militaire pour surveiller ses frontières extérieures: Frontex.”Le budget annuel de Frontex a été multiplié par 20 en 5 ans, passant de 6 millions d’euros en 2006 à 118 millions d’euros en 2011. Un record, en ces temps de crise, sachant qu’il est aussi 9 fois plus important que celui du bureau européen chargé, non pas de refouler les réfugiés, mais d’harmoniser leurs demandes de droit d’asile…Une des missions de Frontex est de rendre nos frontières “intelligentes”, au moyen d’une batterie de nouvelles technologies, développées, pour la plupart, par des marchands d’armes : caméras de vidéosurveillance thermiques, détecteurs de chaleurs et de mouvement, systèmes de drones, etc., le tout pour un budget estimé à 2 milliards d’euros.2 milliards d’euros, c’est grosso modo ce que réclamaient les associations caritatives pour assurer l’aide alimentaire aux plus démunis, soit 19 millions de personnes en Europe, dont 4 millions en France. Austérité oblige, l’Union européenne a finalement décidé d’amputer l’aide alimentaire de 1 milliard d’euros… au grand dam des ONG humanitaires, qui ont un peu de mal à accepter que “les chefs d’État demandent (donc) aux pauvres de sauter un repas sur deux”… Pourquoi il ne faut pas “rigoler” sur sa photo d’identitéLe cauchemar décrit dans “Minority Report” est devenu réalité : pour échapper aux systèmes de surveillance, des hommes n’hésitent pas à se mutiler, voire à mourir…Pour l’instant, & à ce jour, il s’agit essentiellement de “réfugiés”, “sans papiers”. Mais les migrants et étrangers ne sont pas les seuls à être fichés : la “délivrance” d’un visa, ou d’un passeport, est aujourd’hui conditionnée au fait de donner ses empreintes digitales, plus une photo d’identité, bien “cadrée”, afin de faciliter la tâche des systèmes de reconnaissance biométrique… Vous ne le savez peut-être pas, mais s’il est interdit de rigoler sur vos papiers, c’est pour permettre à des logiciels de reconnaissance faciale de pouvoir vous identifier… (voir Il ne faut pas rigoler avec vos photos d’identité). Pour l’instant, seuls les sans papiers en arrivent à se mutiler pour effacer leurs empreintes digitales. Pour l’instant.L’Europe a décidé, de façon particulièrement cynique, de privilégier le fichage des étrangers, en limitant le nombre de consulats offrant la possibilité d’obtenir un visa biométrique (cf Tchernobyl: les enfants bloqués à la frontière française), tout en conditionnant l’obtention d’untel visa biométrique au fait pouvoir se le payer (cf La France refoule 12% des artistes africains).Résultat : en 20 ans, cette “guerre aux migrants” aurait fait entre 18 & 72 000 victimes… C’est le constat, effrayant, dressé par United Against Racism, une ONG qui, depuis 1993, documente dans une base de données les morts aux frontières de l’Europe. Début 2011, elle en avait répertorié 14 000. Printemps arabe aidant, le nombre de victimes serait passé à 18 000, soit 4 000 morts de plus en 2 ans… dans l’indifférence quasi-générale, ce pour quoi j’ai proposé au Vinvinteur d’en parler : Ghert est l’un des responsables d’United Against Racism, l’ONG qui dénombre les “morts aux frontières” de l’Europe. Il a préféré être interviewé de dos, plusieurs membres de son ONG ayant déjà été menacé voire tabassé par des militants d’extrême-droite. Non content de m’expliquer qu’il n’a pu documenter qu’1/4 des “morts aux frontières” -et qu’il estime donc que le chiffre réel serait trois fois plus important, aux alentours de 80 000-, Ghert m’a notamment raconté l’histoire de cette mère qui a choisi d’éborgner ses enfants -afin de leur permettre de rester en Europe. Dressant un parallèle entre ce que l’Europe traverse aujourd’hui et ce qu’elle avait vécu dans les années 1930, Ghert estime ainsi que ce qui se passe en Grèce et en Italie (notamment) pourrait potentiellement – Ghert estime aussi que l’on risque un jour de voir cette “guerre” se retourner contre “nous”. L’interview dure 40′, elle est en anglais, mais le constat est terrifiant : Pour Claire Rodier, que j’avais déjà interviewée en 2011 à l’occasion de la mise en ligne du mémorial des “morts aux frontières de l’Europe“, « la liberté de circulation s’impose comme une évidence au regard des ravages causés par la lutte contre les migrations “illégales” ». Juriste au Gisti et responsable de Migreurop, l’une des ONG qui a lancé FrontExit, Claire Rodier a publié un essai, « Xénophobie Business », analyse cinglante et alarmante du « marché » de l’externalisation sinon de la privatisation, du contrôle de l’immigration. Elle y dénonce les « profiteurs de guerre » de ce marché “très lucratif” où les agents de sécurité ne reçoivent souvent qu’une formation de cinq jours sur les techniques de contrôle et de contention, failitant d’autant les cas de recours excessif à la force, voire de tabassage en règle. Son interview dure plus d’une heure, mais je ne saurais que trop vous conseiller de la lancer, en tâche de fond, et de l’écouter, vraiment : Si d’aventure ces questions vous ont ébranlé, vous pouvez également consulter le kit de sensibilisation de Frontexit, les cartes issues de l’Atlas des migrants en Europe , la Transborder map, “carte de la résistance contre le régime des frontières européennes”, réécouter l’émission Liberté sur paroles consacrée à Frontexit (où l’on apprend que des garde-frontières ont tiré sur des bateaux de réfugiés pour les couler, et qu’il est question de doter les patrouilles de Frontex d’armes létales), acheter « Xénophobie Business », le livre de Claire Rodier (voir les 30 premières pages).
Mr TM arrived from Cameroon 3 years ago. He was 20 years old. He was arrested in January 2013 and has been detained ever since in our detention centres, firstly in Merksplas, then in Vottem and currently in Bruges.
On 4th April he was subjected to a third deportation attempt, which he resisted. The passengers on the flight to Douala reacted and refused to travel with someone who was being forcibly removed. On the same day, the Immigration Office tried again to put him on a flight to Casablanca without success. In light of Mr TM’s resistance, they gave up. Mr TM was struck and was taken back to the detention centre in Bruges. He is currently still suffering the physical after-effects of the violence experienced during this ion attempt.http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/appel-expulsion-3eme-tentative/
Mr B will experience a new deportation attempt this Thursday 2nd of May. Flight to Douala, 10.40 a.m, again organised by SN Airlines. He is well determined to refuse this expulsion, wishing to remain close to us. He is asking for our help.
In case of failure, the Immigration Office may try again to put him on a new flight, it will most probably be the Air Maroc flight to Casablanca at 17:40.
Let’s prevent the deportations and offer a helping hand to Mr. TM.
Meet at the airport at 08:40 on 2nd May to speak to the passengers of the SN Airlines flight to Duala and to SN Airlines staff.
Let’s also try to be present at the check-in for the 15:40 Air Maroc flight to Casablanca in case Mr TM is put on that flight.
Fax, phone and mail campaign to the company responsible for the flight and to the politicians in charge of these deportations;
For the attention of SN airlines
Brussels Airlines
zone General Aviation
b.house
Brussels Airport Building 26
Ringbaan
1831 Diegem Réception: 02 / 754 19 00
Dear Sir/ Madam
We have learnt that a man who has been detained for several months in Belgian detention centres is going to be subjected to a fourth deportation attempt on 2nd May 2013 back to his country of origin, Cameroon, by the means of your company.
We expressly ask you to refuse this deportation and to not participate in the violence applied by the Belgian government to deport those they deem undesirable.
Yours faithfully
YOUR NAME
And copy or send another message to:
-Monsieur M. F. Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers (Director of the Immigration Office) : Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 ,
– Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (Prime Minister) : info@premier.fed.be // Fax 022173328, 025126953
– Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs) : milquet@lecdh.be, milquet@milquet.belgium.be // Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
– Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice (Secretary of State for Asylum, Immigration and Social Integration, attached to the Ministry of Justice) : info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be // Tél 02 542 80 11 // Fax : 02 542 80 03Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre
For several weeks, Guinean and Senegalese people had been detained in Belgian closed centres. We heard a lot of testimonies during that detention period, both from the people concerned and from worried co-detainees.
It was not that difficult to see something was in the air: transfers, solidarity movements, nationalities being concentrated, systematic arrests at the Foreigners Office, etc. We were getting successive calls from all the centres for two weeks, reporting desperate situations and acts.
05/04
‘It is a plot organised by the Guinean government and the Belgian Foreigners Office against us’.
‘Undocumented or documented: still human beings’.
‘I don’t understand all these transfers, there must be a reason!’
15/04
‘A man of Guinean origin detained in the Vottem centre tried to hang himself. He had taken all the precautions to succeed: he had blocked the camera and chosen a moment when nobody was there. A co-detainee passed by accident and could save him narrowly.’
‘At the centre in Bruges, one guy detained for a week is in an extremely altered psychological state. He was arrested at Charleroi airport on his way back from Greece where had had been spending four years. His co-detainees try to do their best to surround him. ‘
Faced with this situation, many worried and tried to alert the NGOs concerned. Only a few answered, expressing their doubts on the information, and firstly requiring that it’d be confirmed.
The detainees concerned were desperate and angry not to be listened to. It was a collective distress call that just a few were willing to answer.
16/04
18 people started a hunger strike at the 127bis closed centre:
‘It is the only way for us to fight’
‘Documented or undocumented: we are all human beings’
‘We need help from the outside to continue our fight’
21/04
The Guinean community of Brussels demonstrated in front of the 127bis closed centre to oppose this discrimination, closed centres and deportations in general. One could feel the tension inside the centre and the police called for calm several times, for fear of destruction inside.
21,22,23/04
Progressively, Guinean and Senegalese people are being brought on April 21st, 22nd and 23rd from the different Belgian closed centres to the one of Steenokkerzeel and to le Caricole. It is co-detainees who felt something was wrong, that this was not going to be a ‘single’ deportation.
‘Several mini-vans bring dozens of detainees from the different centres to the 127bis centre in order to plan their deportation from the military aiport in Melsbroeck’ said some prisoners.
Transfers are sometimes extremely violent:
Testimony:
‘A Guinean man in Vottem refused his transfer: a nurse gave him an injection, he was handcuffed, scotch-taped on a wheelchair, they put a helmet over his head, and he was brought to the Caricole centre. They put him in an isolation cell until his deportation. The eyewitness of this violence also got deported and we are still without news from him.’
24/04 D Day
In the evening of 24/04, before the joint deportation, the whole area around Caricole and 127bis was locked down by the police according to some information we got.
The day after, Wednesday 24/04, ‘a huge military caravan’ says one detainee, ‘came to the closed centre with several buses and 15 police cars.
They came in high security to bring these candidates to exile and take them back to Africa’.
They will be put by force on a ‘joint flight’ at 10 a.m this Wednesday in Melsbroeck airport, deported handcuffed, tied up and each one of them escorted by three or four police officers.
Over ten of them could not fly because the plane was full so they were brought back to their respective closed centres.
One detainee in the closed centre wanted to interpose himself when the guards came to pick up the belongings of a friend who was going to be deported: he was put in an isolation cell during 24 hours.
Everthing was programmed and organised to avoid any reaction or movement of contesting, with the repression that goes with these processes ‘as if they were at war against us!’.
Different testimonies were given on the way the police behaved:
‘blows and violence at the time of the transfers’
‘violence when boarding, some got injured’
‘we were tied up to the seats and remained handcuffed during the whole journey’
The majority of hunger strikers have been deported. The others are desperate and stopped their strike.
‘I’m desperate, getting nuts, don’t know if I can make it through’
There are a dozen Guinean and Senegalese people left in the 127bis closed centre and probably some more in the other centres.
In 127bis, one of them is outraged, another one is overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do anymore, and a third one has been isolated for several days because of serious health degradation. His co-detainees are extremely worried and ask for assistance.
Some of the deported detainees gave them some news, they found their families back, while they stay without news from the others, which they find very worrying.
Here are the explanations by M. Freddy Roosement, Director of the Foreigners Office: http://www.mediaguinee.net/images/rub40/calb7342b
“The issue with Guineans who request asylum in Belgium remains a preoccupaton for the Guinean and Belgian governements as well as for the International Organisation for Migration” had said M. Roosemont at the beginning of April in Conakry.
In 2013, in the first three months, the Office recorded 442 asylum requests from Guinea against 444 requests from Afghanistan. According to M. Roosemont, this high demand by Guineans can be explained by the role of illegal networks that encourage people to get into illegal cases of asylum requests.”
Last words by the deported: ‘We are not livestock’ ‘One day Europe will pay for this’ ‘Stop imposing us this capitalism first’ ‘We all are human beings’ ‘Even our dignity is not being respected’ ’30 deported today and 50 new asylum requests by Guineans this week!’
– You are in the closed centre of Bruges. Can you tell us what happened, how did they arrest you?
– They arrested me, I had gone out to accompany a friend, Sunday at 11 a.m. They arrested me and asked me for my ID. I said I had none but that the regularisation was ongoing. They did not believe me. They took me and sent me to prison, it is prison, it is so bad!
– What happens there? Is it really a prison?
– Yes it really is! They locked me up there, there was nothing, not even toilet paper. They locked me up like a criminal, like if I had killed somebody. They didn’t even give me water, from 11 a.m until 7 a.m on the Monday, they didn’t give me anything. I didn’t eat.
I threw up, I fell down. I asked them to give me my medicine. They told me there was no medicine there but that I would get everything I needed where they were going to transfer me. I told them that in the meantime I needed medicine otherwise I was going to die. They told me they didn’t care, it was not their problem.
On Monday morning they came to send me to a closed centre in Bruges. What have I done for them to send me to a closed centre? Again they told me it was not their problem. They handcuffed me.
I asked them why they handcuffed me, I had killed nobody, I had done nothing wrong! They told me it was the way they proceed. This is not possible. I am not a criminal, you only handcuff me because of ID matters? When they handcuffed me I cried from there until Bruges. They even didn’t look at me. When I got there in Bruges, they asked me if had washed myself. I said I hadn’t, I also said I had not eaten, that I was like that since the day before.
They told me to stay there until they studied my case. I told them to ring my lawyer; I know my case! They told me I had to stay there. I’ve been here since Monday…
Yesterday, the assistant asked me to get ready, that on Monday I would have to go to the embassy to have an interview with my consul. I said OK. Then I rang my lawyer who told me to stay quiet, that he was busy reviewing my files and do what was necessary.
– You are sick too. You introduced a 9ter request but you got a negative answer?
– Yes they refused. The doctor there wrote some things, notably that the disease I have is only taken in charge for workers of the ‘caisse nationale de l’agriculture’ of Guinea. I don’t even know where this ‘caisse nationale de l’agriculture de Guinée’ is located. How am I going to proceed? I do not even work there. They tell me that I can only be taken in charge if I work there.
I do not even work, I did not even go to school, all I know is what I have learnt here. Since I have been here I followed training only. Even here I am forbidden to work. How would I work for the ‘caisse nationale de l’agriculture de Guinée’? So, they refused my 9ter.
My lawyer keeps saying that I can not go back to Guinea, that I am sick! Even my doctor wrote that I could not move, that I am sick and can not go back there!
It is here that I discovered my illness. When I arrived here and asked for asylum I said absolutely everything, that I had been raped, all the bad things that they did to me in Guinea, all those things that gave me this illness. They do not want to understand me.
Now they tell me to go to the embassy on Monday to get explanations. How shall I make it?
On the 21 of april a few hundred people demonstranted in front of the closed center 127bis in Steenokkerzeel.
They oppose the dentention of a few dozens of Guineans in diffrent detention prisons around Belgium, possibly with the purpos to collectivey deport them to Guinea.
A large majority of the demostarters were from Guinean oridgine. The demo was tentioned but held without any problems. A lot of detainees screemd out their frustartions and hate towards their planned deporatation to Guinea, a very unstabel counrty were they could possibly could be torrtured
and imprissoned.
The tention in the prison was felt.
Around ten of the detainees in 127bis have been in hungerstrike sinds 7 days now. Some of them drink very littel water and their health is alarming. The directors of the center refuses to send them to a hospital.
A collective deportation ?
A few people got a deporation notice for the 24 of april.
Other sources say that different Guinears in Vottem have been put in isolation for a tansfer to 127bis. Others information talk about a collective flight on the 24 of april considering 30 guinears.
Organised Crime
Know the hard repression practiced by the Guinean goverment on opponents in Guinea and know that most detainees in belgium are opponents of that regime, some talk about organised crime practiced by the Belgium authority’s.
Letters and protest fax can be send to
Lettre et fax de protestation
Mister M. F. Roosemont,Director of foreign affaires : T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Prime minister : info@premier.fed.be Fax022173328, 025126953
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Premier ministre et Minister from internal affaires :milquet@lecdh.be
milquet@milquet.belgium.be
Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Statesectertair of asylum, miration and social integration, assisting the minestry of justice.
Eighteen Guineans have been on hunger strike for two days at the dentention centre 127bis. They have been joined by an unknown number of other prisonners as a mark of solidarity.
For several months, tens of Guineans have been arrested and detained in preparation for expulsion from Belgian detention centres. This is in light of an agreement between Guinea and Belgium made on the occasion of a visit to Guinea in 2012 by Mr Roosemont, Director of the Immigration Office, who declared that the 10,000 Guineans residing in Belgium would be expelled.
The current situation in Guinea is very unstable. The latest protest by the oppostion on the 18th of April was harshly repressed, resulting in tens of arrests and injuries.
Here, the detained Guineans, of whom a majority are opposed to the Alpha Conde regime, are protesting by means of a hunger strike against the measures of arrest, detention and expulsion to a country where they risk prison, torture or disappearance. Several Guineans have already been expelled in the past few days. Their compatriots have no more news of them and are imagining the worst.
The hunger strikers from the detention centre in Steenokkerzeel (127bis) say that this is their only means of protesting and that they have no other choice.
They are asking for a show of external solidarity to support them in their action.
Mister A will go through his second deportation attempt to his country of origin, Turkey, tomorrow 17th of April. He has been detained in the closed centre of Vottem for two weeks.
Mister A has been living in Belgium for 28 years, he arrived when he was 20.
He has two Belgian children, one of them minor.
Mister A is calling for our help to resist this deportation.
Flight TK1942 7.50 a.m
It seems that Turkish Airlines deport their nationals almost every day on the first flight of the day, thus collaborating to the Belgian and European migration policies.
Let’s react to this!
Sales OfficeAddress:Cantersteen 51. 1000 Brussels
Or fax mail
Turkish Airlines
+32 2 511 76 76
FAX 025145096
Desk at the airport:
+32 2 720 34 68
and to the people in charge
and copy or other mailing to:
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be/ milquet@milquet.belgium.be Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
E-mail info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
While around 60 people are busy walking through Belgium in order to show their determination in fighting against fascit and racist policies, others are confronted head-on with repression.
Around thirty Guineans are gathered in six prisons for foreigners in Belgium. This huge concentration of a same nationality predicts the eventual collective deportation to Guinea on a military flight. Collective flights are regularly organised by Belgium, jointly with other European countries to Guinea, Nigeria, DRC, Albania, etc.
We are strongly opposed to these collective and also individual deportations !
Belgian and European authorities show a cruel lack of respect towards the migrants they persecute and dismiss as soon as they land on a ground they consider theirs. They take measures that are unfair and inhuman. As long as there are migration policies there will be raids, closed centres and deportations. We are pposed to any management of migration flows because we deem anyone should be free to settle and move wherever they want to.
We show our solidarity with all the migrants who are detained and deported by force, and in particular with Guineans in this case. Some of them have been living in Belgium for years, they have settled and built up their lives here. Others who recently arrived go from one persecution to another, notably the persecution of Guinea where there are serious political and ethnic conflicts or the persecution by European countries that have decided to wage unconditional war against migrants.
The Occident is absorbing the natural resources of the African continent. Guinea is one of the countries that was impoverished by the Western colonisation and post-colonisation. It is still being looted by European countries for its subsoils that are very rich in diamonds and gold and are one of the first world reserve of bauxite (used to produce aluminium).
We refuse the selective immigration by our politicians, where foreigners are only tolerated as workforce or during wars as cannon fodder.
We refuse that economic interests be the engine of social relationships. We refuse that only the rich may freely decide on the place they want to settle and open up.
We want:
The freedom of circulation and settlement for all
The end of the migrants/undocumented-hunting
The suppression of racist and discriminatory migration policies
Mr B will be subjected to a second deportation attempt on 13th April (FLIGHT TK1942)
He is 38 years old and has been living in Belgium with his family for 10 years. The police violently arrested him at his house in Charleroi. He has been detained in the centre of Vottem for more than one month. He does not see the point in going back to Turkey and wants to say with us.
He is asking for our help to resist this deportation.
Flight (TK1942) Turkish Airlines 7:50 a.m
Please be at the airport at 5:50 a.m!
or Fax/mail
Turkish Airlines
+32 2 511 76 76
FAX 025145096
Desk at the airport:
+32 2 720 34 68
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be milquet@milquet.belgium.be
Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
Even if an important solidarity rises up between prisoners, we seldom come to hear of real actions to be set up from the inside. Certain centres are very repressive and it is becoming increasingly hard to know what is going on inside because detainees are confronted with harsh measures of controle, intimidations and punishments if they dare to organise themselves or even speak to the ‘outside’.
Hunger strikes are started regularly, but quickly aborted as these people are put in prison, transferred somewhere else or even deported. This to ease tensions in the centres.
All testimonies that follow come from only partial contacts with prisoners in certain centres and show only part of the current situation seen the problems getting in touch with people ‘on the inside’.
The detainees report the presence of true racist staff in the centres. We also received appeals from guards who wanted to denounce certain individual cases.
Humanitarian grounds often remain the easiest angle to denounce deportations and imprisonment as associates, others and even guards feel. Is is easier for them to try and soften the system than to call for abolition (with the resignation of all guards???)
Even more, when reading between the lines, some should be released and others deserve to be in the centres or on a plane. It strenghtens the division between prisoners and applies the principle of good and bad immigrants.
This measure allows nauseating procedures and murdering checks at the borders of Europe or on the territory of Belgium or Europe to stay into existence.
Good news
During the night of 5th to 6th April, two detainees escaped the 127bis closed centre by cutting the wire fences. A new deportation attempt had been set for the two of them. According to our sources, they have not been taken back.
Following frenetic arrests by the Foreigners Office and its Sefor service (FO service closely working with the communes), some detainees who are better defended are released after 2, 3 or 4 months of detention.
For e.g, Mr B. whose flight had been cancelled following some lobby/pressure on Air Algeria, was released after three days of hunger strike. Actually, they can no longer deport him. The Foreigners Office nevertheless tried to deport him twice and to prolong his detention. This example clearly shows the spirit of “deportation at all costs” by the Foreigners Office.
A man from Kosovo, father of a three months Belgian baby, was released after two months of detention.
A man from Albania having lived in Belgium for 12 years got released after one month of detention.
A man from Cameroon has experienced four deportation attempts and is still detained in Bruges. He fears a new attempt in the coming days.
How many fall through the net and are deported?
Arrests are going full speed
Arrests during many raids,
Arrests during STIB or de Lijn daily routine controls,
Arrests at the airport : one woman with her two children came to visit his husband who works in Belgium, she was arrested at the airport and brought with her two children to the closed centre Caricole. She chose to go back to Serbia instead of inflicting this detention to her kids.
Arrests by civilians on the street (watch out, they are very discreet!),
Very frequent arrests at 5 a.m at home,
Arrests at the Foreigners Office during an ‘appointment’,
Arrests…
Detentions are longer and longer (up to 8 months)
Prolongations of detentions by two months for doubtful reasons (for a so-called deportation refusal for example although there was no deportation attempt) are systematic.
Two detainees report the presence on 5th April of at least one family with children for 3 days in the 127bis closed centre. They are appalled at the idea that children are put in prison!
A man WANTS to go back to his country: he has been detained for four months and is regularly transferred from one centre to another. His is being told to wait!
Violence in the centres : ‘what happens here is state secret’
A man from Afghanistan is detained in 127bis: on 8th of April he learnt that his appeal got rejected. He banged his head several times into the heavy security door and fell unconscious. An ambulance came to pick him up.
A man from Guinea was arrested at the Foreigners Office in the context of a notification for an interview. He was brought in a van to the closed centre of Bruges. In the van he could smell an odour of gaz and could not breathe anymore. He fainted. He says it was real torture!
By a screw:
“For M.: 31/03 end of deadline. If no news this Tuesday, warn the lawyer that technical irregularity possible”
By detainees:
“I don’t want to be deported and to leave my (3 months) baby here. I don’t want to be deported to Kosovo where I was not even born”.
“Miss Solidarity, the fight is going on here too. thanks!”
“If they bring me back I’m dead”.
“One can not separate parents from their children (a man detained with his four Belgian children)”
“We are in the death row.”
“What is this for a country?”
Testimonies
“What happens here is state secret”.
“We are all becoming psychopaths”.
“8 or 9 guards come to take the detainee with no warning, they scotch-tape him and tie him up to bring him to the isolation cell. The day after, several police officers come to pick him up, always by force, to bring him to the airport! I have seen this nine times in two months in the wing I’m staying in!”
“One prisoner taken by force by 8 police men to an embassy to get a free pass”.
“Isolation cell is provocation”.
Detainees’ serious doubts on free passes:
“A lot of embassies refuse to deliver free passes, but many are being deported with false free passes” according to several detainees.
Lawyers are very often put in question. Some detainees refuse to call one because they do not see any interest in doing so. Many complain about lawyers “who just fill their pockets with money”.
“One should post all this on Facebook and the Internet!”.
A young man was arrested and brought to the closed centre of Vottem a few days ago. He is totally stunned. He didn’t know it existed. He wants by all means to spread the word that these are prisons!
“A man with us here is extremely ill. We think he is going to die. He already fell twice since I’ve been here. He has serious health problems. He introduced a medical regularisation request which was rejected. He is going to die, I’m telling you, he makes me cry.”
“Each time I eat I throw up”.
“Everthing is very dirty here”.
“Food is disgusting. A dog would not eat it.”
“Toilets are blocked.”
On the 15th March, a man who was coming back from the closed centre of Merksplas after a third deportation attempt had an altercation with the manager of the centre.
The security was called. He was beaten and locked in an isolation cell. He stayed there without care, one arm and one foot hurting so much that he could not sleep. After a week he was brought to the hospital where they found out he had a humerus fracture. After he was taken care of they transferred him to the closed centre of Bruges so that his co-detainees could not see him in that state. He spent a few other days in isolation in Bruges. He lodged a complaint but without effect until now.
Collective deportations to Guinee ?
A lot of Guineans in the centres. It seems that many Guineans are currently being detained in the centres; around a little thirty according to our figures. Aware that the political situation in Guinea is very critical and that the legality of the free passes delivered to Guineans by the Embassy is always as doubtful, will they again try to organise a collective flight to Guinea? A major part of the Guineans who are detained are political opponents who risk imprisonment and even disappearance upon their return!
Testimony of an attempt to evict of a lady from the Ivory Coast, arrested on arrival at the airport and detained in the closed centre Caricole. Finally she did get deported to Egypt during another eviction attempt.
Our request for asylum was denied. They sent us a ticket to leave on Friday around 3 pm to Egypt. We agreed to return to our own country, but not to Egypt given the circumstances there.
We asked for a ticket Brussels-Ivory Coast. We talked to a social worker but he said that he could not help us at the time being. We told him that if they came to evict us, we would refuse.
It was better that we stayed until Monday to clarify the situation and then leave. We are willing to leave but only if we receive a ticket for the Ivory Coast. On Saturday our lawyer warned us that they were able to come, handcuff us and put us on a plane to Egypt. They came indeed and showed no mercy.
They started bullying us. We told them that they could not intimidate us and that they would have to face the consequences if they did.
Straight away they tried to take my badge. I refused to give it to them and hid it in my bra. They called in a woman. She was very nervous.
Then they called in another 4 people who started to fight to take the badge from me.
When the guard tried to take my phone, I tried to call my lawyer. At that moment I felt weak and I fell.
Because of this they managed to drag me in a car. The car parked at the parking lot of the airport.
5 people came and stood in front of the car.
My chest hurt and I sat down on a chair near the exit. They thaught I wanted to beat someone, so a man stood behind me and beat me.
I told him that the only difference between him and me was the colour of my skin. I told him: I don’t know whether you are white or red, but I know that you are mad to treat me this way. THe others told him to stop. I was out of breath and near a crisis, but I can’t use Ventolin anymore as it does not affect my body anymore. I was in agony for more than 2 hours. I stayed calm and lay down for a while.
You are now in the closed centre 127 bis?
Yes
And you want to return to the Ivory Coast, but not through Cairo?
Yes, at the time being the situation in Egypt is not stable. There is a crisis going on. Who can guarantee planes are taking off from Egypt?
Two days ago, two detainees in Coquelle detention center started a hungerstrike, that was today joined by 4 other detainees.
The refusal of food is, as many other hungerstrikes that have been held in Coquelle so far, a protest against the inhumane conditions inside this detention center.
The main demands of the protesters are:
– Getting food in sufficient amounts
– Serving halal food
– Respectful treatment
– Proper medical care
– An end to their injust detention
The protesters reported that another detainee had been been beaten up this morning – when No Border supporters tried to visit several people this was the only person the police “could not find in the computer”, so that it was impossible to check in what state this person is now.
The detention centers’ atmosphere is marked by strong repression and intimidation, the recent beating is only an escalation of that.
The protesters would be happy about signs of solidarity from the outside and about everyone spreading their demands and their reports about the treatment they receive. Messages of solidarity can be send to the CMS mail adress, we will pass it on.
The phone number of Coquelles detention center, for everyone who wants to give them a small feedback, is 00333 21 46 25 00.
Food is brought into prison by a private company, name so far unknown.
Monsieur M a résisté à son expulsion: des passagers ont réagit sur le vol vers Duala. Mr M a été sortit de l’avion sur ordre du commandant de bord. L’Office s’est empressé de le remettre tout de suite après sur un vol vers Casablanca. Là aussi les passagers ont refusé. Mr B a été ramené au centre fermé de Bruges. Il a reçu les coups violents qui accompagnent toute expulsion forcée
Monsieur MT est Camerounais et a choisit de vivre chez nous
Il est enfermé depuis plusieurs mois, d’abord à Vottem, puis à Bruges.
Il vient d’apprendre qu’une 3ème tentative aura lieu demain le 4 AVRIL 2013
Il demande notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion.
Vol SN Airlines 10 h 40 4 avril 2013 vers Douala VOL 371
RV aéroport pour parler aux passagers et aux personnels du vol à 8h40
Toute expulsion empêcher est une victoire !
Campagne fax, mail
Campagne de fax, tel, mail à la compagnie responsable du vol et aux responsables politiques de ces expulsions ;
A la compagnie SN airlines
Brussels Airlines
zone General Aviation
b.house
Brussels Airport Building 26
Ringbaan
1831 Diegem Réception: 02 / 754 19 00
Monsieur,
Nous apprenons qu’un homme enfermé depuis plusieurs mois au centre fermé de Vottem puis Bruges va subir une troisième tentative d’expulsion vers son pays d’origine , le Cameroun par l’entremise de votre compagnie.
Il s’agit du vol SN 371.
Nous vous demandons expressément de refuser cette expulsion et de ne pas participer à cette violence appliquée par notre gouvernement belge pour déporter des personnes qu’il juge indésirable.
En vous remerciant,
NOM
et Copie ou autre courrier à :
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be/ Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be/ milquet@milquet.belgium.be/ Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
E-mail info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
3 Avril: Après le vol annulé Monsieur B a entamé une grève de la faim ce 1 avril pour réclamé sa libération : Il a été libéré ce 3 Avril
Monsieur B , enfermé au centre fermé de Vottem depuis plus de 3 mois va subir sa deuxième tentative d’expulsion ce 27 mars 2013.
Il est en Belgique depuis 8 ans. Il a de gros problèmes de santé et plusieurs médecins à Liège avaient programmé une intervention chirurgicale que le centre a systématiquement refusé
Il est expulsé dans le cadre de leur “double peine”
Monsieur B avait déjà subit de graves violences lors de sa première tentative d’expulsion en Janvier
L’ambassade d’Algérie ne semble pas avoir donné un laissez passez pour Monsieur B.
Monsieur B est bien décidé à résister à son expulsion et demande notre soutien.
Vol Air Alger 2061 27/03 14 heures
RV pour parler aux passagers et aux personnels du vol au check in à l’aéroport à 12 heures ce 27/03
J’ai appris que Air Algérie va être impliqué lors d’une expulsion forcée d’une personne de la Belgique vers l’Algérie. Cette expulsion est programmée pour ce 27 mars, Vol 2061 Air Algérie.
A 14 heures ce Monsieur, qui présente de gros problèmes de santé et pour lequel les autorités Belges n’auraient pas obtenus de laissez passez, va être être remis aux autorités Algériennes. Cette personnes va avoir très difficile à survivre en Algérie, et plus important, va voyager avec Air Algérie contre sa volonté.
Cet homme a déjà subit une première tentative d’expulsion violente. Et si je comprends bien il est toujours décidé à refuser une expulsion.
Air Alger vend son produit sous l’éffigie de `always caring for you`. Je suppose que ce principe vaut pour tous les passagers.
Par cet écrit je vous demande d’urgence de ne pas collaborer à cette expulsion prévue ce 27 mars.
J’aimerais recevoir de votre part une confirmation que vous assurez la sécurité des passagers de ce vol Air Alger 2061 ce 27 mars 2013
Cordialement
Nomxxx
Adresse:
Copie à
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be/ Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’État à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à L’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Nous publions ci-dessous deux textes diffusés par un collectif de soutien crée suite à l’évasion de quatre personnes du centre de rétention administrative de Palaiseau (région parisienne) en décembre 2012. Ils racontent le procès d’Ibrahim, accusé de violences dans le cadre de cette évasion, et appellent à la solidarité.
D’une prison à l’autre…
Le 16 décembre 2012, cinq personnes tentent de s’évader du centre de rétention de Palaiseau. Quatre vont y parvenir mais la cinquième personne, Ibrahim, va rester dans les mains de la police qui le passera à tabac. Il est placé en garde-à-vue puis déféré devant un juge deux jours plus tard accusé d’avoir ceinturé un flic pour lui voler un badge magnétique qui a permis aux autres de se faire la belle. Il est ensuite incarcéré en préventive à Fleury-Mérogis jusqu’au 18 janvier 2013, jour du jugement où il est condamné à deux ans de prison ferme et à verser 1200 euros à deux flics qui se plaignent de violence. En centre de rétention, l’évasion n’étant pas un délit, les flics et les juges cherchent donc à charger sur d’autres chefs d’inculpation.
Ibrahim se trouve maintenant incarcéré à la prison de Fleury-Mérogis. Il n’a pas fait appel de la condamnation. Quand on est isolé, étranger et qu’on ne parle pas français, sans avocat, il est quasiment impossible de comprendre qu’on a dix jours pour faire appel. La justice écrase d’autant plus que l’on est pauvre et sans papiers.
D’une taule à une autre, de la prison pour étrangers à la maison d’arrêt, le chemin est tout tracé, et dans les deux sens. Le pouvoir profitera toujours des révoltes, des tentatives d’évasions, des refus d’embarquement, pour enfermer toujours plus les récalcitrants. Et inversement, quand on sort de prison et qu’on est sans papiers, ce qui nous attend c’est dans la plupart des cas, le centre de rétention et l’expulsion.
Quand on est enfermé dans un centre de rétention, quand tous les recours juridiques sont épuisés et quand s’annonce l’expulsion, la seule alternative c’est l’évasion et la révolte. C’est pourquoi ces histoires se répètent : quelques jours avant l’évasion de Palaiseau, sept personnes se sont échappées du centre de rétention de Vincennes, on espère qu’ils courent toujours. A Marseille, en mars 2011, des retenus ont mis le feu à la prison pour étranger du Canet. Depuis, deux personnes sont sous contrôle judiciaire après être passées par la case prison, dans l’attente
d’un procès.
Pour Ibrahim comme pour ceux de Marseille, il est important d’être solidaire avec celles et ceux qui se révoltent pour leur liberté, qu’ils soient innocents ou coupables. Car tant qu’il restera des prisons, des papiers et des frontières, la liberté ne restera qu’un rêve.
Feu à toutes les prisons !
Liberté pour toutes et tous !
Pour ne pas laisser Ibrahim isolé face à la prison et à la justice, il est possible de lui écrire :
Ibrahim El Louar
écrou n°399815
Bâtiment D4 – MAH de Fleury-Mérogis
7 avenue des Peupliers
91705 Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois
Des mandats lui sont envoyés. Si vous voulez y contribuer vous pouvez envoyer de l’argent à Kaliméro, caisse de solidarité avec les inculpés de la guerre sociale en cours. Le n° de compte pour faire un virement :
102780613700020471901 Clé 07.
Si vous voulez envoyer des vêtements ou des colis, ou pour tout contact, il est possible d’envoyer un mail à : evasionpalaiseau (at) riseup.net
Audience en appel du procès de l’évasion de Palaiseau : Pièce et Bouton cousus de fil blanc.
Le mercredi 20 mars 2013 a eu lieu le procès en appel d’Ibrahim El Louar, condamné à deux ans d’emprisonnement par le TGI d’Évry le 18 janvier pour “vol et violence en réunion sur agent dépositaire de l’autorité publique ayant entraîné une incapacité de travail de moins de 10 jours” et “soustraction à une mesure d’éloignement”. Il a également été condamné à verser des dommages et intérêts de 1000 et 600 euros à deux flics.
Le 16 décembre 2012, quatre prisonniers du centre de rétention de Palaiseau avaient réussi à s’évader après avoir subtilisé à un flic le badge magnétique ouvrant les portes. Suite à cela, un cinquième retenu, Ibrahim, a été arrêté et placé en garde-à-vue, accusé d’avoir participé à l’évasion. Frantz Pièce, maton au centre, l’a accusé de l’avoir ceinturé et maitrisé pendant que les autres lui dérobaient son badge et prenaient la fuite. Sa collègue, Coralie Bouton, arrivée en renfort l’accusait elle de l’avoir fait tomber au sol et d’avoir essayé de lui prendre ses menottes et son badge.
Après une courte instruction d’un mois, il a été jugé par le tribunal d’Évry, sans bénéficier de l’assistance d’un avocat bien qu’il en ai demandé un. Lors de l’audience les faits ont été requalifiés (de “tentative de soustraction à une mesure d’éloignement et violence ayant entraîné moins de dix jours d’ITT” en “vol et violence en réunion sur agent dépositaire de l’autorité publique ayant entraîné une ITT de moins de 10 jours” et “soustraction à une mesure d’éloignement”) de façon a pouvoir appliquer la récidive (sur une précédente condamnation pour vol) et donc faire passer la peine encourue de trois à quatorze ans.
Ce jour là, des vidéos des caméras de surveillance du centre ont été visionnées. Comme l’a fait remarquer la défense, le tribunal devait être en possession de “lunettes spéciales qui altéraient sa capacité de vision”. En effet, sur les images que nous vu lors de l’audience d’appel, on voit que rien ne s’est déroulé comme l’on déclaré Pièce et Bouton.
Déjà, on ne voit rien (les retenus qui ont dérobé le badge avaient pris le soin d’éteindre la lumière), ou presque : des ombres qui ceinturent un policier (reconnaissable à son uniforme) puis deux policiers qui tabassent quelqu’un dans un couloir. Ibrahim, qui nie depuis le début avoir participé à l’évasion, s’est par contre toujours reconnu dans la personne tabassée. Un PV établit en garde-à-vue constate d’ailleurs qu’il porte de nombreuses traces de coup. Lors de cette garde-à-vue, Ibrahim a essayé de se mutiler avec une lame de rasoir qu’il avait sur lui, ce à quoi les flics ont répondu en le gazant et en l’entravant aux pieds et aux mains jusqu’à ce qu’il soit déféré.
Lors de l’audience d’appel à laquelle une trentaine de personnes étaient présentes en solidarité, l’avocate a plaidé le fait qu’il n’avait pas pu se défendre en première instance et qu’elle même n’avait pas pu préparer la défense comme elle l’aurait souhaité (pas eu accès aux vidéos, pas pu bénéficier d’un interprète pour s’entretenir avec son client les jours avant l’audience…). Ibrahim n’a pas varié dans ses déclarations. Il a continué à réfuter les accusations des flics et son avocate a pu mettre en avant les nombreuses incohérences existant entre les déclarations policières et les images vidéo. D’ailleurs, lors de l’exposé des faits on remarque que les déclarations des flics ont changé au cours de leurs auditions.
Le procureur a demandé confirmation des chefs d’inculpation et de la peine. L’avocate a plaidé la relaxe. Le jugement sera rendu le 02 avril à 13h, sans qu’Ibrahim ne soit extrait.
Liberté pour toutes et tous, avec ou sans papiers !
Ni prison, ni rétention !
Evasionpalaiseau (at) riseup.net
Tiré du site : http://lenumerozero.lautre.net/article2537.html
A man has been detained in the closed centre of Vottem for 4 months. He insists to have an interview. They were supposed to release him on March 14th, after 4 months of detention. He was told that his detention would be extended for two months because he had refused a forced deportation on March 13th; which is not true: he was not taken to the airport that day and there was no question of deportation either!
You have been in the closed centre for 4 months now, can you explain how it is like?
I have been in the closed centre since October 3rd 2012. I was brought to the airport once and then I came back.
My lawyer asked for my release in front of the court of first instance in Liège. The judge had ordered my release. The Foreigners Office appealed against that decision. Then my lawyer appealed to the Supreme court and he obtained the suspension of the deportation to my country.
They were supposed to release me on March 14th. Yesterday, March 14th, the management of Vottem called me to tell me that I had refused a flight on the 13th, but this flight does not exist.
They are trying to keep me here for another two months, until May 12th, this is not normal. Hence I want to witness so that people outside know what they do to everybody here and that human rights are not applied at all in the centre.
Seven prisoners escaped from the closed centre of Merksplas during the night. The screws noticed their disappearance early morning. The escapees were already far away, vanished into thin air!
A man detained in the closed centre of Vottem for 3 months got the news that he was naturalised and became Belgian. Nevertheless, the Foreigners Office tried to deport him. Luckily enough, his lawyer reacted rapidly. He was finally released after a few days. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/naturalised-and-detained/
A man we had lost track of rang us. He is still detained, he will have been for five months and he has had enough. He already ‘visited’ four Belgian closed centres. He was supposed to be released on March 28th but the Office promised another prolongation of his detention of one month.
Deportations and attempts
Collective flight: A collective flight would have been organised to Albania end of February: one prisoner explained us that the closed centre 127bis was emptied of its occupants in January. Albanians were progressively brought there to then be droven in two police vans to the airport end of February. It seems that the Albanians have left the Caricole.
Apart from that, the 127bis centre was empty at the beginning of January to then be filled bit by bit again.
Deportations:
23/02
– A woman from the Ivory Coast experienced a first very harsh deportation attempt. She was to be deported to Cairo where she would have been in serious troubles (because according to the Chicago Convention, it is the aircraft who carries the person to Europe which is responsible, i.e Egypt in this case). She wishes to be offered the possibility to go back to the Ivory Coast as soon as possible even if she has to pay for it!
28/01
Dallah is deported to Senegal: http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/fr-urgent-2eme-tentative-dexpulsion-de-dallah-sur-le-vol-sn-201-ce-dimanche-0601-2/
“Handcuffed and all, there was nothing I could do”. Back in Senegal, he was detained for 24 hours and one of his friends succeeded in negotiating his release against payment because he knew the police officer. He now lives cloistered because he is still being hunted. His brother is now also imprisoned. He is looking for new contacts to leave the country “I can not stay here, it is too dangerous”, but he considers going to other countries than Belgium.
Another Tunisian/Algerian man was taken to the airport with Mounir. He was beaten and he saw everything but he doesn’t dare to bear witness.
One man from Guinea rings us: “They do whatever they want with us here, it is awful. The deportation of Mounir is shocking.” He was ready to bear witness but they deported him the day after.
Message by CRACPE
Yesterday morning, two Tunisian men were taken to the airport, one came back. The detainees told us that the one who came back was in a very bad state. According to the testimony of another person, another dozen of guards of the centre went to their rooms to take them very violently and they locked the others in the red wing.
THE CENTRES
Intimidation, blackmail, stratagems create a crippling fear in the detained undocumented. It is the aim of these incisive migratory policies.
In closed centres, this crackdown is very tangible. Contacts with the outside world are deterred by the management and staff of the centres and go along with threats and sanctions. As soon as a contact is taken with the outside, for e.g when people in front of the centre try to speak to detainees, the latter are taken away from the windows and they are not allowed to communicate. Despite the “official regulations” in practice one can notice the blatant lack of basic information such as one is allowed to call on a visitor or a lawyer.
Despite these daily repression measures, information is leaking. A few people organised a loud demonstration to show their solidarity with the detainees who reacted positively to their presence by throwing pieces of paper through the windows, shouting, hustling and bustling!
127bis
On March 3rd, an Afghan man had been on hunger strike for 15 days. They put him in an isolation cell. Not a single news since then…
The detainees speak of ‘surprise deportation’.
An Iraki man was beaten, they gave him injections by force and put him in an isolation cell. He lodged a complaint with the director of the centre and got deported. Once deported, his complaint will have no follow-up.
New cameras have been installed in the common spaces.
Bruges and Merksplas
Anxiety and fear in Bruges and Merskplas.
They say “it is another world” “Prison” “Torture” “They call us niggers” “Crazy”
Information by a visitor regarding the detention conditions in closed centres:
“I just spoke to a Morrocan woman detained in Bruges. She has been there for two weeks. She was quiet but when she understood that I was from the Ligue she didn’t want to give me her name to get a visit. She says she doesn’t want to aggravate her case. She complained about the following:
– obstructed toilets
– in the common room, the armchairs are dirty and torn-down, and she complained a lot about dirtiness in general
– she cannot accept food from people who come and visit her and is obliged to eat the same food of the centre all the time.
– they don’t do anything, there is no activity organised. Contrarily to the centre in Zaventem where she learnt from a woman who was transferred in Bruges that language courses are being given.
– Currently, there is a pregnant woman who does not see the doctor of the centre. She is not allowed to see a gynecologist.
– Another girl who just got released (or deported?) to the Netherlands lost her baby in the centre! She was pregnant and lost blood during a week after which she lost her baby.
There are currently around 35 women in Bruges.
Other testimonies:
– “We must wake up very early in the morning and then there is nothing to do, even the seats in the sofas are insufficient.” – “We are not allowed to go back to our rooms but at 10 p.m we must go back and at 11 p.m it is taps.” – “we are in dormitories of 10 bunk beds, so we are 20 per dormitory!” – “We are only allowed to go out three times 45 minutes per day” – “The medical follow-up is a disaster, we must fight to see a doctor” – “One of the social assistants is very rude and threatens us”.
To be noted: several detainees were arrested after asking for cohabitation or marriage, others are being separated from their children sometimes very young!
“One is forbidden to fall in love or to have children”. “They arrest for EVERYTHING” “Serious things happen every day” “We are going to burn it all” “If you speak: isolation cell” “Solidarity” “No trust at all in the centre’s staff” “The law is not respected” “Overwhelmed” “As soon as one shouts one is beaten” “Racist” “They speak bad to us”
The annual march organised by CRACPE in front of the closed centre of Vottem in Liège will take place on March 17th.
The testimonies of the centre’s detainees confirm the horror of imprisonments in general and more specifically here of the imprisonment of people whose presence on our “territory” is deemed undesirable by the Foreigners Office.
This Office of Shame which granted itself all rights has become a State within the State, granting itself the power to judge, imprison and deport people, using fascistic methods.
They organise real tracks on foreigners through their SEFOR service and the powers of big cities to get rid of all those whom they suspect want to settle here for some time.
These tracks, imprisonments and deportations go together with mistreatments, according to the testimonies we get, a total lack of respect for the human being, and tortures inflicted by the staff of the centre and by the federal police.
Call to participate to support the prisoners who daily fight against their prison guards, to ask for the shutting down of the closed centres and for the deportations to stop.
SOLIDARITY!
MAY THIS DEMONSTRATION BECOME A BIG CELEBRATION FOR THE PRISONERS!
CRACPE’s call is for Sunday March 17th at 2 p.m
Vottem, camp of shame, 14 years already..
I STILL CAN NOT ACCEPT IT!
GATHERING IN LIEGE, PARC DE LA CITADELLE, RUE DES GLACIS, 2 P.M AND MARCH TOWARDS THE CLOSED CENTRE FOR FOREIGNERS OF VOTTEM
12/03/2013: they are deported to Bulgarie after a long stop in isolation in the closed centre 127 bis
Testimony here:[audio:http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Enreg002.mp3|titles=Bulgares donc voleurs]
They were four in their car on the highway near Antwerp. One police car was following them, then other police cars came and asked them to stop for a complete search of the car and a control of the papers. The police could not find anything and their papers were in order.
They were brought to the police station of Turnhout. The reason they were given: theft attempt, adding that it was not the first time they had been controled on Belgian roads, that they are Bulgarians and that therefore they are thieves. They are being told that they may call a lawyer but that things will go faster without… In trust they accept and wait.
After 36 hours in the isolation cell without having got a single glass of water, they are brought to the closed centre of Vottem, always for theft attempt!
‘We do not understand why we are detained. Our papers are in order.’
‘No one can be imprisoned with no prior trial’.
They do not know where their luggage and car are. They were told that they would be deported next Monday.
In Vottem, they do not have anyone to talk to to explain the situation, no lawyer, no social assistant.
They would like to get their car and things back and leave Belgium as fast as possible!
We have more and more contacts with deported people who, as soon as they arrived to their country of origin gave themselves the means, within a few months, to do the return trip and come back here.
« They have got their friends and family here and they decided that their lives was here.’
Since their return they have been living in clandestineness with the help of their family, friends, neighbours, landlords and sometimes even their boss.
Their life here is not easy but for them it makes much more sense to live here than in their country of origin that they sometimes barely know and where they almost do not know anyone and have no financial resources.
Others do not have this possibility, they live cloistered, sometimes hidden in a country that doesn’t want them either. They watch out for any possibility to flee to a country where they could live and be free, to cross the borders that have been locked up by Europe and its army named FRONTEX.
Despite the construction of Fortress Europe, with its very sophisticated repressive system, the human being will continue to grant himself the choice of life and freedom where he wants to and as he wants to. «
15/02/2013: Mr Traore is free today. 10 days illegal detention for Mr Traore. Thousands days of illegitime detention for the others Freedom for all. Nobody is illegal.
Mr Traoré, of Guinean origin, has been living in Belgium since 2004. He had received the five years card but then they took it from him.
He was arrested on 11 December 2012 and brought to the closed centre in Vottem. They tried to deport him on 23 January 2013 but he refused.
On 3 February 2013 he got a positive notice concerning his naturalisation request: he is now Belgian!
He thought he would be released very quickly, but this was without considering the determination of the Foreigners Office! On 9 February, in spite of this naturalisation, they tried to deport him for the second time! Fortunately, the lawyer could intervene on time to cancel the deportation.
On 14 February, he is still imprisoned. He doesn’t have any residence permit but he is Belgian: it seems to be an unforeseen situation for the Foreigners Office.
In front of this administrative imbroglio, the Office will surely not take the risk to release him. Hence he is detained in the closed centre even though he has been given the Belgian nationality and can no longer be deported.
Mr Traore fears that the situation turns against him, “they are capable of everything” he says…
You have been at the Vottem closed centre for three months already, haven’t you?
Yes I have.
Can you explain how it is like in that centre?
Yes Madam. Well, today it is fine because there is a strike so there is not a lot of agents in here. But apart from that it is not fine at all. The food is disgusting, the agents do not respect the residents, we are being treated like animals, like if we had no rights at all, like the dregs of society. For example what happened to me here yesterday. In the morning when I woke up my back really hurt. I called an agent. He came and I politely asked him for pain killers. He asked me why my back was hurting and how I managed to have pains in my back! I asked him nicely again to give me two pain-killers but he told me that I could go to hell! In the rules, article 7 of the royal decree, it is strictly forbidden that security agents insulted the residents, but it happens very often, it was not the first time.
Concerning food, we only eat bread, it is only at lunch time that we get something slightly more substantial but apart from that it is only slices of bread.
From a medical point of view, things are more or less fine but here again it is only when you insist that you can see a doctor. If you just say you are sick they only give you dafalgan or paracetamol.
Are there a lot of deportations from the centre? Are there many people coming and being deported?
Yes, most of the people here are being deported!
All right, and are they people who have been in Belgium for long?
Yes they are! They have been here for ten sometimes twelve years. Personally I have been here for almost seven years and they want to deport me.
Did they try to deport you?
Yes they did. I was brought to the airport on January 23rd but if failed because I resisted.
So now you are expecting a second attempt?
Yes I am expecting their second deportation attempt. What hurts me even more is that they have agreements with embassies or that they bribe them to get let passes.
You are Guinean, that’s how it goes for Guinea, right?
Yes. They negotiate with the ambassador, they bribe them to get let passes and I am not the only one, all the Guinean people who come here are concerned.
What I would like in particular is that the Belgian population that is not aware of what is going on in closed centres gets to know it, that they keep an eye open and try to demonstrate against closed centres because according to the law centres might be legal, but what happens in the centres is really unlawful and illegal. They treat us like animals, not like human beings.
Petition: NO to the deportation of Patou NGOYI
Mr Patou NGOYI is 30 years old, he has been living in Belgium for 15 years where he arrived one day from Congo with his mother, brothers and sisters.
Because of administration winding and of the laws on family gathering he was not able to get a residence permit. However, all the other members of his family live here.
Today, after a negative answer to his regularisation request, he has been brought to the closed centre of Vottem and is being threatened of deportation.
We do not understand why someone who has his family and life here in Belgium suffers such a situation. We fully support his new request for a residence permit. Mr NGOYI is fully integrated in Liège and he should be allowed to stay within our community. In particular, the right to live in family should be respected.
12/02/2013: He was deported on the SN Airlines flight to Rome. He was handcuffed, scotchtaped and escorted by ten police officers. He was ill-treated and he was physically and morally broken when he got to Rome. He then had to take another flight to Nigeria.
A Nigerian man has been detained for 8 months in the closed centre in Merksplas. He has been living in Belgium for 3 years and feels good here. He wants to stay here close to his friends.
Unfortunately, the Foreigners Office have decided that he is undesirable and they’ll do everything possible to deport him.
He already went through two deportation attempts. During the second one he resisted so hard that they could not deport him.
He is going to suffer his third deportation attempt under escort this Monday February 11th. He is asking for our help to resist it.
Flight SN Airlines n° 3175 to Rome 07:30 a.m
Aware of the efficiency of SN Airlines in taking part to these deportations, it will be necessary to work twice as hard to make it fail.
Let’s meet at the airport on February 11th at 5:30 a.m to speak to the passengers and explain to them that they have the right to refuse to travel with a person who is brought by force on to the plane.
Fax, Tel, Mail campaign during the whole week-end to the company responsible for the flight and to the politicians responsible for these deportations:
A la compagnie SN airlines
Brussels Airlines
zone General Aviation
b.house
Brussels Airport Building 26
Ringbaan
1831 Diegem Réception: 02 / 754 19 00
Monsieur,
Nous apprenons qu’un homme enfermé depuis 8 mois au centre fermé de Merksplas va subir une troisième tentative d’expulsion vers son pays d’origine , le Nigéria, avec escale à Rome par l’entremise de votre compagnie.
Il s’agit du vol SN 3175.
Nous vous demandons expressément de refuser cette expulsion et de ne pas participer à cette violence appliquée par notre gouvernement belge pour déporter des personnes qu’il juge indésirable.
En vous remerciant,
NOM
et Copie ou autre courrier à :
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be/ Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be/ milquet@milquet.belgium.be/ Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
Téléphone : 02 542 80 11
Fax : 02 542 80 03
E-mail info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
The Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration is concerned about employment in Wallonia
Maggie De Block paid a visit to the centre of shame in Vottem last Friday. It is interesting to see how the media call the centre of shame of Vottem an ‘asylum centre’!
Who would have imagined that Ms De Block was going to enquire about the serious troubles and calls for help that detainees had recently expressed in an open letter or that she would have read the testimonies on Gettingthevoiceout website? No one of course! She went there to take a decision that is going to settle everything! The media (Belga) dare publishing the title ‘a closed wing in a closed centre’, that takes some doing! As you can see, they showed a lot of ingeniousness again.
And one has to admire the vocabulary that is used all the way… they speak about ‘a separate wing for illegal criminal immigrants’ in the closed centre for asylum seekers in Vottem! Later, it is made clear that they are criminals who just got out of jail!!
OK, now I understand, they got out of jail to go back there again, I see!!! But be aware, it seems that they ‘are a source of trouble for the other residents‘ (Het Nieuwsblad). They would be the ones provoking riots.
And another scoop: in the closed centre there would be ‘residents’, poor souls, and they would be disturbed by those ‘criminals’. Because you know, the possible riots can not be the result of the awful treatments inflicted in those centres, no no, put the blame on these illegal immigrants who got out of jail!
Fortunately, the good fairy Maggie comes to the rescue of the ‘residents’ (these other people who did not go out of any jail but who nevertheless are in jail) and after consulting the management and the trade unions – I was telling you, very beneficial for employment- she decides to create a separate wing that will ‘welcome’ the ‘criminals’ before their deportation: come on guys, get the hell out of here!!
As a result, 22 rooms will be created, isolated from the isolated, and 34 people will be recruited to keep them away from prying eyes. There will even be a shower and a garden or… a courtyard. All this should be ready for the summer.
“Please Sir do something for us, I’m begging you Sir.
We are living in dreadful conditions here. We are scared. Some women have been here for two, three, four months. It is awful here.
We can not give our name, we can not speak, it is too dangerous.
Please do something for us.”
Nous apprenons que 7 prisonniers se sont évadés du centre fermé de Merksplas la nuit du 2 au 3 février. Ils étaient déjà bien loin quand le personnel du centre s’est rendu compte de ces évasions et que les recherches ont débuté!!!!!!!!!!!!
Plus de traces des évadés!
They had used considerable resources: raid of 15 police officers, some of them in plain clothes, the night before at the closed centre of Vottem, he was beaten, scotch-taped and handcuffed. They violently put him into a van to the airport. Some of the detainees were shocked (it was most obviously the aim of the expedition). It was the third deportation attempt on Mounir.
At 6 a.m they put him on the Alitalia flight to Rome. He resisted so hard that the captain refused this passenger and his escort on his plane. Someone was at the airport at 4 a.m but he/she was badly intimidated by a civil man and then by the police so he/she decided to leave the place after having been able to speak to a few passengers.
The Office had decided that he had to leave. Mounir was put again with his escort on another flight with Tunis Airlines at 12:30 a.m. There again, he resisted and the passengers who seemed well aware of these processes loudly refused this deportation.
Mounir was brought back to the closed centre of Vottem this evening 31/01.
We must continue to resist these imprisonments and deportations. We must continue to go to the airport to explain everything to the passengers. We have noticed that more and more passengers are aware of the situation and that they do not accept these processes, hence deportations very often fail thanks to their reactions.
The State and its Ministers implement considerable means to satisfy a certain public opinion, publishing unverifiable figures to prove their efficiency.
The Foreigners Office has become a State within the State, using all possible means to satisfy our politicians.
The Human Rights defenders let them proceed and do not say a word.
Be it in prisons, in closed centres, in psychiatric hospitals, on the street etc, the freedom to breathe is only allowed to those who are ready to shut up in order not to lose their privileges… and the others can just die!
LET’S FREE OURSELVES, LET’S FREE THEM!
LAST MINUTE 01/02
This morning, 7 a.m, closed centre of Vottem All the detainees were locked in their rooms, their phones confiscated, while a police cohort had come to take Mounir by force and bring him to the airport! It is his fifth deportation attempt! We don’t know on which flight. Yesterday they tried twice!!!!! It might be the flight of ALITALIA 12:00 a.m or 02:00 SN airlinep.m to Rome!!! Mounir rang us: he will give up and leave them deport him. He is totally worn out! Finally ALITALIA refused to take Mounir but SN Airlines deported him: He has been strached, gagged and handcuffed and the little resistance from the passangers did not help
Detainees in the closed centre of Vottem warned us that Mounir had just been taken by force (30/01 08.00 p.m) by 15 plain clothes officers, that he was mistreated, scotch-taped, beaten and brought to an isolation cell. He is now in the isolation cell of the airport and will soon be brought to the Alitalia flight AZ157 to Rome at 6.10 a.m on 31/01 to then fly to Tunis.
Everything went really fast: 8 p.m: 15 police officers, among whom some in plain clothes, came to the closed centre of Vottem, threw him on the ground, scotch-taped and handcuffed him. We’ve heard that he would be brought to the plane at 6.10 a.m, much too late for us to be able to react!
It is their third deportation attempt on him.
We would need people at the airport at 4.10 a.m to speak to the passengers and tell them to be very watchful to what is going on aboard and to refuse this deportation. Mounir had been detained in Vottem for three months and a half and he was going to go to court for his release on January 30th! (he did not receive the decision on the verdict).
He had been in Belgium for ten years. He got arrested when he was submitting his wedding request with his girlfirend. LET’S BLOCK THE DEPORTATION MACHINE
Alitalia flight AZ157 6:10 a.m to Rome
Let’s meet at 04:30 a.m at the check-in desk.
If you can not make it, you may still send fax, tel, mails to the people responsible for this deportation:
Here is the letter:
TO ALITALIA Tel: 0032 (0)2 7204412 or 0032 (0)2 7144210 Fax: 0032 (0)2 7209306
To whom it may concern,
We learnt that a Tunisian citizen will be on AZ157 flight to Rome this 31/01/13 at 6:10 a.m. We know that this man refused his deportation, that he was roughly taken away by a police escort of 15 men from the closed centre of Vottem where he was detained. We also heard that he did not get any let pass from the Tunisian embassy for this deportation.
we urge you to oppose this deportation and not to take part in the violence enforced by the Belgian government to deport people they deem undesirable.
Sincerely yours,
C.c to
Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be / Fax022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à L’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
URGENT: second deportation attempt of a Palestinian asylum seeker
Mohammed came from Egypt with a visa for Romania. He was arrested while in transit and detained in the Caricole centre where he requested asylum.
The Foreigners Office considers that Romania is responsible for this case although he has never been in that country and rejected the first appeal that ended up in a first deportation attempt (refused) and in his imprisonment in the closed centre of Merksplas.
A second deportation attempt is foreseen to take place tomorrow Thursday January 24th at 10.20 a.m from Zaventem airport on a flight to Bucharest. Mohammed refuses to be deported to Romania where the detention conditions are known to be extremely degrading. On Friday there will be an audience for a (non-suspensive) appeal introduced by his lawyer. Hence it is urgent and necessary to get together on Thursday to inform the passengers on this new deportation attempt and help preventing it. Thank you for your support!
Let’s meet at the airport on Thursday 24/01 8.20 a.m to speak to the passengers of the flight RO 372 and SN4031
FAX, and mail of protest :Bruxelles
Agence TAROM
Bruxelles Aéroport, Terminal départs
OP 44, 1930 Zaventem
Tel: (322)2186382
Fax: (322)2198046
e-mail: financial@tarom.be
Vous pouvez aussi écrire ,Faxer, mailer à Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office de la Honte pour faire pression. Monsieur le Directeur général T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be et Aux autres responsables Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be )
Fifteen days ago: the riot police organised a raid with dogs in the closed centre. They were very harsh and beated the detainees event in the centre’s mosk. Some detainees showed resistance and 6 of them were put into an isolation cell during 7 days.
The detainees sent three claims to the management in the form of joint letters, they never got any answer.
“We know the law”
“Something is going to happen”
“This is racism”
Vottem:
15 Guineans live in Vottem on 23 January. One of them was handcuffed as soon as he arrived there and he got an injection by force. Fear prevails. They do not know what is going to happen (charter flight?).
The other detainees are appalled: self-mutilations, suicide attempts, etc. One week ago, a Tunisian man cut his throat, arms and belly open. They took him away but he never came back.
Others resigned themselves and accept a “voluntary return under escort”; the new way back!
Another one was subjected to a first deportation attempt: he stayed from 9 a.m till 9 p.m at the police station in the airport without being given anything to eat or drink. “It is not a hotel here” said the policemen.
“Bad things happen every day”
“We are going to burn it all”
“You speak, you’re isolated in a cell”
“There are no more laws for us”
127bis
A woman who was released tells us that it is hell in 127bis but she doesn’t dare to say more…
SMS 16/01/2013 from Kumar after his deportation: “Sir I’m in Nepal now. It’s bad luck I’m in jail.”
22/02/2013 : new text from Kumar deported on January 15th
“I was released yesterday. I had to pay 1,500€ and I will have to go to the police station every week. I don’t like it in Nepal. I plan to ask for a passport next week. I don’t know if I’ll get one. Best. ” Kumar
Kumar has been detained in the 127bis centre for more than 4 months. He was swindled by the promises of regularisation in 2009, and the State refused to grant him a residence permit and kept him imprisoned during 4 months, being obsessed with deporting him to Nepal.
However Kumar lives here where he has all his acquaintances, friends and projects. He does not want to go back to Nepal, nothing but civil war is waiting for him there where the population is confronted with kidnapping, murders, lost bullets, etc.
The State will try to deport him for the third time; the first attempt having been canceled in extremis and Kumar having refused the second one.
His third deportation attempt is foreseen for today Tuesday January 15th. Kumar has no official identity document from his country of origin but out of generosity the Sate has granted him an ad-hoc let pass enabling to deport him outside the borders of the EU and leaving him with no way out.
Kumar is asking for our help to prevent this deportation. He wants to resist and refuse this forced return. We know that strength will be used without ceremony to make it happen so the only way for us to prevent this deportation is to inform the passengers about the deportation on their flight so that they ask the captain to cancel it.
It will be flight TG935 Thai Airways to Bangkok, departure 12:45 a.m Tuesday January 15th
He will then be expelled to Katmandu through another flight from Bangkok.
Let’s meet at the airport to talk to the passengers of the flight to Bangkok at 10:45 this Tuesday January 15th at the check-in of Thai Airways, SN airlines and TP (partners of the flight, N°SN 8601 and TP8369)
He has been living in Belgium for 7 years but he was suddenly caught by the arbitrary and violent nature of imprisonment.
Vous pouvez aussi écrire ,Faxer, mailer à Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office de la Honte pour faire pression. Monsieur le Directeur général T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR), Fax 02 274 66 40 , Bur_Presse@dofi.fgov.be et Aux autres responsables Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be )
Jamal, ami et résistant en lutte pour la régularisation de tous les sans papiers se fait expulser demain sur le vol AT839 départ 12h45 vers Casablanca (embarcation 2h avant) Air Maroc.
RV à l’aéroport pour parler aux passagers ce samedi 12 Janvier 2013 à 10h45
Arrivé en Europe à l’âge de 11 ans, Jamal passe quelques années en Espagne. Il finit par devoir quitter le pays car il est pourchassé par la police là-bas. Décidé à ne pas se laisser faire, Jamal lutte à différents endroits pour la cause des sans papiers. D’abord à Calais et ensuite en Belgique.
La lutte, il la commence à Ixelles, avec une soixantaine de personne en occupant la place Fernand Cocq. Sur place jour et nuit, ils veulent “dénoncer la clandestinité dans laquelle les autorités belges et européennes les plongent et la précarité qui s’en suit”. Des assemblées sont organisées ainsi que des moments de tractage et d’information aux passants. Après deux semaines dans le froid, plusieurs hospitalisations et le poids du fascisme des policiers présents tous les jours, deux locaux sont ouverts. L’un à la VUB, l’autre dans une maison à Ixelles. Ils y seront entassé et bien que décidés à “continuer la lutte contre les politiques (anti)migratoires et pour leurs papiers”, le quotidien difficile les rattrape et la cohabitation à 25 personnes à la VUB est plus que tendue. Malgré un suivi des avocats, la situation pour ces personnes reste la même.
Ne voyant pas de perspective dans les nouveaux contacts avec des avocats, le groupe entame une grève de la faim. Ils veulent leur régularisation et annonce la grève au finish. Des “contacts avec les autorités” sont entrepris. Le cabinet de Maggie Deblock refuse de lâcher prise et maintient la décision de ne pas de papiers aux personnes en grève de la faim.
Jamal découragé mais surtout écœuré du mépris des autorités se coud la bouche pour “attirer l’attention sur la situation désastreuse des personnes considérées comme illégale sur le territoire”.
Malgré les 100 jours de grève de la faim, des manifestations hebdomadaires devant le cabinet de M. Deblock ou du parti socialiste et quelques actions dans la ville, rien ne change et le gouvernement tient fermement sa décision. Les grévistes excédés décident d’arrêter leur action.
C’est avec un Orodre de Quitter le Territoire qu’ils reprennent le chemin de la rue. Une fois tout le monde dehors, nombre d’entre eux sont suivis par la police. Jamal qui a été mis sous le feu des médias en se cousant la bouche, l’est particulièrement. Après une bagarre en rue, Jamal est jeté en prison.
Après six mois d’emprisonnement, alors qu’il aurait pu être libéré avec un ordre de quitter le territoire, l’office des étrangers décide de l’expulser directement à partir de la prison.
Contrairement à Jamal, nous ne luttons pas pour la régularisation des sans papiers. C’est bien pour la liberté de circulation et d’installation et la destruction de tous les centres fermés que nous nous levons. Plus largement c’est contre ce système qui expulse, fiche, rejette et emprisonne ses “indésirables” et ses insoumis que nous luttons. Si nos chemins se sont écartés sur la manière de lutter, nous sommes restés amis et solidaires face à la répression. Nous voulons donc le soutenir dans sa lutte contre son expulsion.
A côté des discutions à l’aéroport, il y a mille autres actes à poser pour contrer la machine à expulser : contre l’état et ses institutions, et tous les organismes qui y collaborent de près ou de loin.
A man wrote to us that he came to Belgium to celebrate the Christmas with his sister and had a valid visa. He was arrested at the airport, detained in the Caricole centre and sent back to his country!
He sent a message to the Belgian government:
‘Africa is not hell, we live there in dignity and with joyfulness. Not all of us dream for Europe, so if you grant us a visa, please treat us with honour.’
RETURN TRIP
One Algerian man has rang us to explain that he was detained for one month in Bruges and then deported to Switzerland (Dublin), but now he is back in Belgium again.
One Moroccan man who had been deported to Morocco tells us that he is back here and he had a pleasant journey!
IMPRISONMENT
A young Brazilian boy, 18, has been detained in Merksplas for almost three months now.
With the help of his lawyer they introduced a request for his release a few weeks ago and they have won their case. When he was ready to leave, had packed his luggage and was ready to join his family, his girlfriend, etc then he got the news that the Foreigners Office has appealed against the decision. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/we-are-living-like-animals-here-and-suicide-attempt-in-closed-center/
He has losted and the judge sentenced that he has to be sent back to Brazil. As always, the justice is doing its work, playing with the people’s life for sake of the freedom. He accepted to go back to Brazil the soonest as possible. He will come back very quickly to Belgium but he will fight for this time.
A man from Nepal has been detained for several months in the 127bis centre. Big gatherings and protests were happened in the court and in the airport as well, mainly thanks to his Nepalese friends. He is still detained, trapped in an infernal administrative circus. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/expulsion-call-for-kumar-on-saturday-22122012/
We have got a call from an Algerian man who is detained in Vottem; expplusion attempt was taken to deport him through a name he doesn’t belong to and a photo of him also taken at the 127bis. He refused it because it was not him on the papers (except the picture).
One of the persons who took part in drafting and distribution of this letter was attempted to deport right after. Following the first attempt he remained in an isolation cell for 24 hours and after they tried to deport him again. ‘They did that to weaken me and make me to leave more easily, but I resisted.’ The third deportation attempt will be send him back to Morocco.
A stateless man for many years has been detained for more than four months, at first at a closed centre in Merksplas and then in Bruges. He was finally released this 3rd of January. In the closed centres, he showed a lot of solidarity with his co-detainees; hence he spent several times in an isolation cell and got transferred to another centre.
Another good example of ‘mistake’ by the Foreigners Office of the terror that the State imposes to those who are not ready to leak its boots with which it beats them.
A Turkish/Kurdish woman spent several months in the closed centre in Bruges and was finally released through an energetic lawyer. Thanks to him.
A young Afghan suffered a highly violent deportation attempt and came back to the closed centre in Bruges with one broken rib.
Daily torture: a person suffering from hepatitis B has been detained for more than one month. The doctors of the centre refuse to give him the medicine at the hours required according to the treatment. They even had to wait for 3 days before he gets access for his medicine. « It is their way of torturing me (…), I tell them everyday, and I refuse to take my medicine at the wrong time but they don’t care at all… they are killing me step by step” he says.
ASYLUM
Clarisse tried to ring us several times to speak about the living conditions in the Caricole centre and about a movement project by the prisoners there. She very quickly disappeared and never answered the phone anymore. An attempt to visit her also failed. Later on we heard that she had been deported very fast.
Dallah, arrested at Zaventem airport in November 2012 was detained in the Caricole. Then he was transferred to Merksplas where he was subjected for his second deportation attempt. In spite of the threats, Dallah somehow managed to resist his second deportation attempt. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/expulsion-call-for-kumar-on-saturday-22122012/
A man from Chechnya detained in Bruges is in a state of panic: he heard that a Chechnyan friend of him, has been deported last month and got executed in Russia.
28/01/2013: Dallah was deported during the third attempt:
Dallah was deported “hancuffed and everything, there was nothing I could do”. Back home, he was remanded in custody for 24 hours and a friend on the spot could negotiate his release against payment. Dallah lives cloistered because he is still being hunted. His brother is now also imprisoned. He is looking for new contacts to leave the country “I can not stay here, it is too dangerous”, but he considers going to other countries than Belgium.
He was arrested in November 2012, imprisoned in the Caricole and then in the closed centre in Merksplas. He is Senegalese. The authorities of Senegal are looking for him after he did an investigation on his father’s murder (mayor of a Senegalese city). The government is now looking for him. His brother in Senegal recently got beaten because he didn’t want to give information on the place where Dallah was hiding and a letter of notification was also recently sent by the police to his family in Senegal.
After several legal steps and eveidence revealed on an internet site, the case of Dallah (just like the one of many other persons with different stories)is of no interest for the Belgian authorities and the Foreigners Office has been asked to do its deportation work.
URGENT meeting at the Zaventem airport on Sunday 6 Janyary at 12:35 a.m to speak to the passengers and staff of the flight SN201 to Dakar.
Dallah CAN NOT LEAVE!!
FAX and email SN AIRLINES may also help!
faxer, tél à la compagnie SN Airlines
sur leur site http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
ou Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 –Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
We the detainees of Vottem Closed Center wish to denounce the inhumanity of our arrests, detentions and deportations.
We were all arrested at our home or our work place. We have all been living in Belgium for several years.
Some of us have a wife and children here
Some of us have legal resident cards to another Schengen country
Some of us are seriously ill
Some of us were born in Belgium
Some of us have children that go to the same schools as our guards’ children
We have all asked for Asylum or a legalization of our situation in accordance with the criteria set by the law.
And We are all treated like criminals during our arrests : handcuffed and held in police cells for hours sometimes with no food or water.
We were transfered, in handcuffs, to prisons that are renamed Closed Center for Foreigners. On the walls of our prisons each person writes their story in their language. Like a real museum of the world’s misery.
Some have been subjected to deportation attempts, sometimes two in 24 hours and have witnessed or been subjected to serious police violence. We are kept in solitary confinement and taken to the airport bound by handcuffs and ducktape, without warning, without being given a chance to tell our lawyers or our families.
Others have left in handcuffs to a country where they can not or do not want to live, to a country that they sometimes don’t even know.
Some have lawyers that do nothing to defend them and are incompetent. They are seen as collaborators to these policies of detention. The incompetence or lack of action of these lawyers plays into the hand of the Foreigners’ Office, giving it the opportunity to deport as they wish.
We make the comparison in between the actions of the Foreigners’ Office and the behaviors during the Nazi occupation: The Office can arrest and detain indiscriminately and in full impunity, the targeted population this time being the Foreigner.
We denounce the power given to the Foreigners’ Office and the fact it is allowed to work in full impunity, with no accountability. They detain, deport any “foreigner” sometimes in total disregard of the law.
We denounce this Foreigner’s Office that has no problems violating the law and using dirty tricks to achieve it’s goals. It ignores decisions made by the Council for alien law litigation Mediation committee (traduction de ‘conseil du contentieux’ a verifier svp) as well as European decisions and international law.
We denounce this policy of indiscriminate efficiency : Deport everyone, keep the machine going, generate statistics.
We the detainees of Vottem Closed Centers wish to use this Call to show a face of Belgium that the belgian citizen doesn’t want to see.
This Call will be broadcast during the Christmas Gathering around the Vottem Closed Center on Monday 24th of December.
Kumar is currently locked in 127 bis. More than 03 months the government kept him in the detention center and they want him return to Nepal, the country of his origin at any cost, In spite of all his efforts to integrate himself in this society the Belgian authorities consider that Kumar is worthless.
Kumar has been living for almost 07 years in Belgium. Despite the possibility of regularization in 2009, the government refused to give him a residence permit. He has got an order to leave the country while he was arrested in his home under the false pretense of address verification. However, Kumar works here and he has links and projects. He has 03 employes who are working in his restaurant in Tienen. He is loved by his neighbors and even supported by the mayor of his city. He will not go back to Nepal where he has nothing. His life is here.
The government has already tried to expulsion him. They have refused his request for twice to release, although his lawyer has appealed against the negative decision of the Board of indictment but the Immigration Department decides that it is time for them to get rid of him. The second attempt for his deportation is scheduled on this Saturday, December 22.
Kumar seeks our help to prevent his deportation. He denied his return, but we all know very well that the force will be used to deport him to succeed. Our only way will be to inform the all passengers of the flight and the captain as well so that he can refuse the forced expulsion of Kumar in his plane.
The flight no. is 9W0227 Jet Airways to Bombay, at 10:05 am on Saturday, 22 Dec.
Finally, he will be deported to Kathmandu via another flight the next morning on
Flight 9W266.
So, go to the airport and to talk to the passengers on thant flight to Bombay
at 08:00 am on Saturday, December 22 at the baggage check-in of Jet Airways.
Fax and Mail of SN AIRLINES can also be used!
Fax, phone no. of Jet Airways:
E-mail: infobenelux@jetairways.com
Fax +32 2 709 09 00 – Tel +32 (0) 2 709 09 09
You can also protest to Monsieur M. F. Roosemont,Directeur de l’Office de la Honte.
and the others
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129,025048500, 025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :
info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
It often happens that courts decide on the release of an undocumented person from a closed centre because the detention has been too long, inappropriate, there was no risk of escape, etc.
Systematically, our authorities – i.e the Foreigners Office, the prosecutor or the prosecutor’s department- appeal against the decision, apparently with no distinction (did you say case by case?).
For the person concerned, this means a prolongation of the detention period of (maximum) 15 days and the appearance before the Chamber of indictment in Brussels.
This was the case for Kumar and G this week:
The Chamber of indictment decided that Kumar could not be released.
“20/12/2012 Kumar was not released by the indictment Chamber. For the Court, K should be kept imprisoned while waiting for his deportation. In spite of the non-existence of a passport or other documents proving his identity, Europe has made him an identity and a let pass would be ongoing or already expired! Nothing is clear and the Belgian office wants to deport him at all costs! http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/soldarity-gathering-for-kumar-this-monday-december-17-th-1030-a-m-1000-brussel/
K has appealed to the Supreme court but he is really scared that in spite of all this the Office manages to find a trick to get rid of him.” LAST MINUT: They will try to deport Kumar a second time on 22 decembre. Appeal follow!
And our Brazilian friend detained in Merskplas since October had been released by the Court this morning on 20/12. He was really happy. But then the news fell: he will have to stay in Merksplas and go to see new judges in 15 days who will decide on his release. After the feeling of sudden rage he pulled himself together and decided to continue fighting. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/we-are-living-like-animals-here-and-suicide-attempt-in-closed-center/
We were in contact with 7 people in Belgian closed centers. In the days preceding the deportation they were all taken to the 127bis center near the airport.
The day before the deportation 8 people were brought into a room : They were shown a video explaining how a group deportation takes place then they were put in solitary cells by groups of two.
The following day they were taken from their cells. Police officers and a large escort came to take them in buses along with 16 other congolese that were already in the buses, according to a deportee who is in Kinshasa and doesnt seem able to talk very much.
They don’t know where these 16 people were from (neither do we).
They were all handcuffed and taken to the military airport, except for two whose lawyer had initiated an appeal.
They were all placed on the plane, in handcuffs, along with roughly 100 belgian police officers according to our contact.
Their handcuffs were removed one hour into the flight.
Upon arrival in Kinshasa they were all taken in to custody for identification then released, according to one of the deportees who didn’t give us the impression that he was in a position to speak freely.
Media reactions in French and Dutch : http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland/article/detail/1546358/2012/12/10/20-Congolezen-gerepatrieerd-in-Airbus-met-300-zitjes.dhtml
20/12/2012 Kumar was not released by the indictment chamber. For the Court, K should be kept imprisoned while waiting for his deportation. In spite of the non-existence of a passport or other documents proving his identity, Europe has made him an identity and a let pass would be ongoing or already expired! Nothing is clear and the Belgian office wants to deport him at all costs! K has appealed to the Supreme court but he is really scared that in spite of all this the Office manages to find a trick to get rid of him.
December 17 th 10:30 a.m in front of the Court of Justice Place Poelaert (1000 Brussel)
Kumar is currently detained in the 127 bis centre. It has been over three months now that the state has taken it out on Kumar, trying to keep him imprisoned and deport him to his country of origin, Nepal. Kumar is unwelcome for the Foreigners Office.
It is not the case for his relatives and support among whom the mayor of his town, Marcel Logist (Tienen) who is asking with all his hearth the release and regularisation of Kumar who presents an added value to the city and its inhabitants
Kumar has been living in Belgium for almost seven years, swindled bij the promises of regulation in 2009. The State refuse to grant him a residence permit and gave him the obligation to leave the territory before arresting him at his house giving as a pretext the verification of his adress. However, Kumar works here, his relatives and his live are here. He employs three persons in his restaurant in Tienen. His neighbours like him. He has done everything to be well « integrated ». So what do they really have against him to prevent him from living here ?
The State already try to deport him a first time but in vain : Nepal refused to grant him a free pass. Since then, his lawyer got from the Court of Leuven that thh Foreigners Office would release him.
But the State made an appeal to this decision, a good predator never lets his preys en peace.
This monday there will be an audianced in front of the Chamber of indictment in order to give a ruling on the release.
Come all to support Kumar and make some noise in solidarity with him and for the freedom of movement and settlement for all
Meeting at 10:30 a.m. , 17 decembre On rthe stairs of the Court of justice, Place Poelaert in Brussels.
20/12 Our Brazilian friend detained in Merskplas since October had been released by the Court this morning on 20/12. He was really happy. But then the news fell: he will have to stay in Merksplas and go to see new judges in 15 days who will decide on his release. After the feeling of sudden rage he pulled himself together and decided to continue fighting.
12/12: How suicide attempts are dealt with in closed centres: last week-end he was desperate and tried to commit suicide by swallowing loads of pain killers. He fell into a coma and was placed in an isolation medical cell for several days. Once out of danger they put him into solitary confinement for 24 hours. In jail he again attempted suicide with a fork and is mutilated neck and arms
Testimony of this young Brazilian student detained in the closed centre of Merksplas, taken on 26/11/2012 .
So, you are being detained in the closed centre of Merksplas. Can you tell us what happened, why you are there and since when?
I was home on October 17th when three police officers from Braine l’Alleud came without warrant of arrest, they did not say anything and they took me to the police station of Braine l’Alleud.
There one police officer told me things like “We are in Nivelles here Sir, people are massacred like bastards. You foreigners, you come to Belgium to create mayhem”. In the morning you get a spade and you dig a hole for yourself.
I was accused of robbing a Chinese restaurant and that is why they contacted the Foreigners Office who directly gave me the order to leave the territory.
I was brought to the closed centre of St Hubert. I stayed there for five days, these were the worse five days of my life. In the morning you wake up early, you stay in the cell during the night, and several hours a day you do military exercices, your whole body hurts, and they left me with no food, no water to drink, no possibility to go to the toilet for 24 hours.
On October 22nd I went to the Court of Justice. The judge released me and told me “Sir, we do not have any evidence, you are free to leave, you may go and live with your family”.
They took me downstairs, in the Court of Justice they have glass cells. The policemen who were busy doing a transfer told me “Sir we have a transfer to the closed centre for illegals in Merskplas and you must go there”.
I arrived on the 22nd at 06:00 p.m. Today we are the 26th, I have been here for one month and several days. Honestly, people are living like animals here. The food is not good. We have bread and jam for breakfast and dinner, for lunch we have a normal meal, but we sleep when they decide so, we go outside to take some fresh air when they decide so, we live as they decide… If they say go and sit down, you go and sit down, like animals…
At the Foreigners Office, they really are racist. The judge considered that I was a minor but they decided I was not.
I was registered in a school here in Belgium. The French Community know me as a student and I have different documents attesting that I am going to school, that I have good marks etc.
My whole family is living here in Belgium, I don’t have anyone in Brazil.
The Foreigners Office told me to leave, they don’t care about my age, they say I must leave.
I have all my family here, my life is here in Belgium. If I go there, where am I going to sleep? How am I going to eat? I don’t even have one euro in my pockets… I don’t have a house, I don’t have family there, where am I going to sleep, in the airport?
Is life difficult in Merksplas?
Yes, life is really hard because the building is too old. We have three bedrooms in the bloc, each for seven people, but it is impossible to sleep at night because these seven people snore a lot!
Laughters…
Well, is it not funny!
No, definitely not.
If I want to sleep, there are 8 people snoring at the same time…
They are very strict here, i.e for anything they will put you in an isolation cell for 24 hours.
OK… we will stop the interview here.
OK no problem. I would just like you to add to the interview that I am a student in music production.
Urgent call for mobilisation – this Saturday December 8th at 04:00 p.m around Vottem. The aim is to intensify our weekly presence in order to support a person of Russian origin who has been detained for 4 months. Mr Andrey RAVEN, registered by the Foreigners Office under the name of VORONKOV, has been living in Belgium since 1998. In spite of several steps taken and because of mistakes in the procedures he still hasn’t got his residence permit.
Mr Raven is an artist, he defines himself as a Human Rights defender, already since the time of the former USSR, and is today associated to Poutine’s opposition ranks. He therefore fears serious persecutions if deported. From what we know from the current events in Russia, and from what happened recently with the trial of the Pussy Riots, we think that these fears are legitimate.
His second deportation attempt under escort was foreseen for December 10th, the day of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! This second deportation in reported because a new asylum requestThe mobilisation of Saturday and a press release aim at lobbying against new deportation. Besides, different legal steps are still in progress: request for release, for regularisation, and new asylum request introduced today and more importantly, Mr Raven is 60 years old and in a bad health condition (shingles).
This is one case among many others. We particularly want to denounce the collective deportation of 24 Congolese this Wednesday, organised in collaboration with authorities of the European Union, and also the fact that Belgium signs agreements with a series of countries of origin to ease the deportations! After the regularisation of 2009 and its effects in 2010, the government of Di Rupo and his Secretary of State Maggie De Block are working hard to refuse regularisations and organise deportations.
Let’s meet around Vottem this Saturday from 4 p.m to 5 p.m. Boots or ankle-boots, scarves, hats and warm clothes compulsory! 🙂 Visé Voie 1, 4041 Vottem
07/12: 8 people were transferred from other Belgian centres to the 127bis the days before. The other 16 were bring the morning of the deportation from other countrys. It was a FRONTEX flight.??
06/12: Latest news: 24 persons were foreseen for the flight! Two of them were not deported thanks to their lawyer who had introduced an appeal. They arrived in Kinshasa at 1 a.m. More news will follow.
04/12 evening: At noon today, 8 Congolese people were brought to one room, they were shown a video on how it all works and they were worked on so that they would not resist! said the daughter of one of them. Their luggage was grouped together and they were put in an isolation cell. They no longer answer the phone!!
GATHERING IN FRONT OF MAGGIE DE BLOCK’S PALACE
Boulevard de Waterloo 115 1000 Brussels
this Wednesday 05/12/2012 at 04:00 p.m
Besides the thirty daily deportations on regular flights, the Foreigners Office has adopted the bad habit of organising ‘secured’ collective flights to deport people whom our State deems undesirable.
We received a certain number of calls by Congolese who are detained in closed centres and who were warned they would go on a collective and military flight this Wednesday December 5th at 04:00 p.m.
The candidates to deportation are currently gathered in the closed centre 127bis in Steenokkerzeel.
Many are horrified: some are still in an asylum or regularisation request process, others were born in Europe, others have a Belgian child here, others risk jail imprisonment in DRC, and others have an audience foreseen at the court in the coming days.
These militarised flights are secretly organised in the framework of a bilateral cooperation between Belgium and DRC. They are accompanied by a disproportionate mobilisation of police military forces. Each deported person goes with two or three policemen according to the testimonies gathered during other “grouped flights”, and violence is frequent.
Once again Belgium is taking part in, organising or adopting an active and agressive policy to send those ‘undesirable’ persons back to their continent.
We will never accept these deportations that happen under fake security or economic pretexts.
We know that living together is possible in this world and that it may only enrich us all.
FOR AN IMMEDIATE STOP OF ALL THESE DEPORTATIONS, FOR A TOTAL SUPPRESSION OF THE CLOSED CENTRES, FOR THE FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT AND SETTLEMENT FOR ALL, FOR A WORLD WITH NO FRONTIERS, NO ONE IS ILLEGAL.
01/12 M is not deported. He is now in isolation in closed centrum 127bis
Mr M, being held in the 127bis detention centre will be subjected to his third deportation attempt this Friday 30/11/2012.
He is Libyan and has requested asylum with a comrade who is currently being held in the Bruges detention centre. He fled a jail at the end of 2011. He had spent 6 months in that jail and had been tortured . Traces of the torture are visible all over his body and have been noted by an association which also had a medical certificate written up : ” the scars are impressive and testify to the trauma and the violence that must have caused great pain”.
Neither the CGRA nor the CCE nor the European court believe him.
The Office of Shame will attempt to deport him for the third time to Morocco on the 30/11. Mr M is quite scared of how he will be received by the Moroccan authorities and is asking for our help to prevent this deportation.
Come to the Airport this Friday 30/11 at 2:40 p.m to speak to the passengers.
The airline in charge of this flight is Royal Air Maroc – Flight 883 to Casablanca at 4:40pm. It is also operated by SN Brussels, Flight 4055 to Casablanca at 4:40pm
This info is important in order to locate the passengers.
Please send faxes, emails and call to protest against this deportation
They were a few solidary people in one of the blocks in Merksplas. They had been living together for several weeks and were peacefully fighting against discrimination every day.
“Each and every one deserve their dignity” they said.
Three of them were taken to an isolation cell for 48 hours because they had disapproved acts of discrimination against some detainees two weeks ago.
They continued to claim for the respect of the other.
On Friday 23/11, an Armenian man wanted to recover his suitcase with new clothes worth 1,200€ that he had left somewhere upon his arrival at the centre. He was going to be deported but he wanted to get his suitcase back. His suitcase had disappeared. His codetainees had decided to prevent the guards from bringing their friend into an isolation cell in view of his deportation, demanding that his suitcase would be given back to him. It was not the first time that personal belongings had disappeared! A complaint had been lodged in due form.
Following these protests, the Armenian was deported without his suitcase but with a compensation fee of 200€. Several others do not answer the phone anymore. It seems that some have been transferred and others deported.
Demain, mercredi 21/11, S, d’origine marocaine et résidant en Belgique depuis 40 ans, sera expulsé vers Rome par le vol SN 3181 de 14h20.
Arrivé en Belgique à l’age de 3 ans, il a toute sa vie ici, et aucune raison d’aller la recommencer au Maroc. Il va donc résister, et demande de l’aide pour ce faire. Ce n’est pas sa première tentative d’expulsion, et il est très déterminé à ne pas se laisser faire.
Rendez-vous à l’aéroport pour parler aux passagers du vol vers Rome à 12h20, le mercredi 21 novembre, au check bagage de SN airline.
Email from the friend of a detainee in the closed centre 127bis in Steenokkerzeel 18/11/2012
We met through the internet in August 2009. Every day we had contacts by email and telephone. He came to see me on January 19th 2010 and we have been living together since June 2010.
He received an Order to leave the territory on 24 March 2011.
We went to see the lawyer who said he would sort that out – a new hope for us.
We got an email from the lawyer where he said he had written to the magistrate and done what was necessary to sort out the situation – we had to wait again…
Then they came to take him on June 12th 2012 at 11.45 p.m with the police. They banged on the door violently and they shouted. Without showing their papers nor explaining why they were there, they came in and took him away.
They put him in the closed centre 127bis in Steenokkerzeel. That is where the problems started.
He was registered in this centre on June 13th 2012 and I went there everyday to visit him. There I saw that his health was degrading rapidly.
The doctor and the psychologist think that the people who are detained there are really dangerous but they are not. The people detained there are just like you and me.
They give them pills to sleep. One day I saw the pills he had to take. My doctor told me that he should refuse to take them.
One week after his arrival in the centre, one morning when he had woken up ten minutes before people were allowed to smoke he asked for some fire to light his cigarette. They refused.
They bandied words, then they asked my friends to come closer and when he reached the door they started to beat him without reason. He tried to defend himself, but thirteen jailers jumped on him and mistreated him.
The doctor came to visit him because he could not stand up anymore and he said that they had to bring him immediately to the hospital.
The director and guards answered that it was impossible to bring him to the hospital because there people would learn what had happened in the centre.
They put him in an isolation cell during 24 hours under suveillance seen his health state.
They day after I went to the centre and I talked to the assistant and the psychologist. They told me that it was forbidden to smoke before 7 a.m and they added that he was not dead yet if I wanted to know…
I asked them why they treated people so badly but they did not answer.
Then I went to visit my friend and when I saw him I collapsed and cried: he had been beaten so hard that he was covered with bruises from top to bottom, he could neither stand nor sit, and this only because of a cigarette!
I saw how they treated other persons during my visits: it is simply unbelievable and inhuman, this must stop!
The world does not belong to anyone! People should be allowed to live where they want to and where they find happiness.
Let them start imprisoning real criminals first, but not undocumented and innocent people.
My story is not over yet, and if I had to say it all about 127 bis and Bruges I could write a book. I am full of compassion for these people who are trapped.
Since when have you been living in Belgium?
Since 1999, 13 years. I followed Dutch classes, studied auto mechanic and got my diploma.
I am living in Belgium, I am married and I have two children: one daughter who is 1 and one son who is 3. I introduced a regularisation request but the answer was negative. The police came one morning, at 5:30 a.m and they took all the family to the police station. There we spoke with Brussels and they told us that there was an order to leave the territory for us since October 23rd.
I want to live in Belgium, I am fully integrated here, my older son goes to school (he will soon be 4) and my daughter goes to the kindergarten.
At the police station they took our fingerprints and they took pictures of us. Then they brought us back to the return house in Zulte. It’s a house where we will have to stay until they deport us to Armenia.
Several times they asked me to sign (voluntary return) and I clearly said that I could not sign because I don’t have anything in Armenia and I can not go back there. They don’t want to understand and they threaten me, saying that if I don’t sign they will take us to the airport the first time and the second time they will take us to the police station, arrest us and bring us to the airport. I told them not to frigthen me because I wouldn’t sign anyway.
You don’t know anyone in Armenia? Your country is Belgium, right?
Yes, I am integrated here. I speak Dutch as you can hear. I have lived longer in Belgium than in Armenia.
How is it like in the house they call ‘return house’?
Well, it is a house. We get meals cheques of 60 EUR per week to go to the shop. I must stay here until they bring us back to Armenia. I don’t want to, and I want to avoid that they come supposedly to help my family.
You have been here for 13 years. How can you explain that your regularisation request was rejected?
My parents had problems with the police. For them we are all in the same and only file. They should try to analyse my personal case. What have I done wrong since 1999? I never did anything wrong, I never was controlled by the police, I never had any problem with them.
And where are your parents?
They are in the closed centre of Zaventem.
Were they arrested with you?
Yes, the same morning. They want to sign to return to Armenia but I don’t.
The problem is that the file they have is including you and your parents?
Yes, they made a common file for the whole family, and they say that it is a criminal file. I told them to review my file. My file is very good. The only problem is that I had to change my name. We came here with my parents who were in big troubles and we gave a fake name. My parents did that. Later I rectified it at the commune, through my lawyer, with my passport. They say we lied. But well, it was at the time we were with our parents, they had decided that, we were much too young to do anything against that. Now I can no longer work since I don’t have a residence permit anymore.
Some news from the closed centres and deportations in Belgium.
Arrestations and imprisonments are very very fast and most of the times arbitrary. Even though prisoners are submitted to blackmail and threats on a daily basis and many do not dare reacting to repressive situations in the centres, we’ve heard that revolts, escapes or escape attempts are frequent in these prisons.
According to the calls we receive, many people who are imprisoned have been living in our country for more than years sometimes. Their reguralisation request was rejected for purely administrative reasons or because something was unclear in their files.
We also heard that some of them have a friend, a wife, a husband or children in Belgium and that most of the time this family situation does not prevent the Foreigners Office from deporting one of them.
AT THE AIRPORT
The screening of tourists/asylum seekers is tough : the tourist who will not be able to prove his status of tourist will be detained in the Caricole centre and sent back to his country of origin manu militari. The asylum seeker is arrested and imprisoned. His asylum request is dealt with very rapidly and it is rejected as soon as there is one doubt over a detail he can not provide evidence of (e.g his nationality).
COLLECTIVE FLIGHTS
A collective flight took place on October 24th, officially with Albanian people who had recently reached Belgium. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/charter-flight-to-albania-on-october-24-organised-by-frontex/
We learnt that among them was a man who had been living in Belgium for 15 years and was separated from his wife and 5 years old son..Another Albanian was visiting Brussels as a tourist. He has his own company in Albania and was not planning at all to stay in Belgium. He has been arrested on The Grand Place in Brussels, was taken to a closed centre and was deported in the same convoy. He had 2000 euro with him for his stay, which have disappeared!
CHILDREN IMPRISONMENT
We’ve heard that four Albanian brothers and sisters have been detained in the Caricole centre for four days, separated from their mother!
DEPORTATIONS
We notice that more and more often coercion is being used as of the first deportation attempt!
Hereafter information we gathered, often from acquaintances of the prisoners; prisoners themselves do not dare calling anymore for fear of being phone-tapped or of retaliation.
CLOSED CENTRE OF VOTTEM
A young Armenian has been deported. A support committee from La Louvière went to the airport to speak to the passengers. The young man could not show resistance; he was accompanied by over 15 police officers. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/20-year-old-and-deported-fr/
CLOSED CENTRE OF MERKSPLAS An Armenian man, 67 years old, detained in Merksplas and deported to Armenia. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/67-years-old-and-deported-under-escort/
Here are some of his words and thoughts during his detention period in Merksplas:
He is the oldest of the centre. Very few detainees are more than 50.
Concerning the resistance inside: “There is little resistance, people are discouraged and they don’t know whom to turn to, they are also afraid of the consequences in case of protest”.
About the guards, he just bitterly compared them to a kind of Gestapo. He says there are many deportations, almost every day…
Deportation of Armenian father and son. The father is in jail, the son is waiting to be called up for his military service of two years. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/return-is-totally-safe-really/
However, lawyers who were contacted by us say that the father’s file was ‘defendable’.
A codetainee speaks to us about a child in Merksplas. He is a young Brazilian of only 18 years old although he looks like if he was 14. He has been in Merksplas for 15 days. His parents are living in Brussels. He was violently attacked by another detainee. His codetainees had to insist towards the staff to move the attaker into another bloc. They really bear a grudge against him (one can not attack a child) and they hope they will not see him again otherwise…
CLOSED CENTRE OF BRUGES:
Two Libyan newcomers introduced an asylum request and closed in centrum in Brugge. The asilum request was rejected by the CGRS because they had doubts about their origin. They show marks of torture all over their bodies, that have not been taken into consideration. As a last resort, they tried to escape from the centre. After 48 hours in a cell, one of them was transferred.
Calls from friends of women detained in Bruges :
A huge dosis of stress, loads of deportations, a lot of sick people and no appropriate care.
A 63 years old woman had to be hospitalised following heart problems and she was arrested in the hospital and brought to the closed centre. Her family went to the centre to get her medical file back, they were kicked out from the centre. Three days later, the old woman was deported to her country of origin.
A Kurdish woman who had been married when she was 16 and got 4 kids. She was repudiated by her husband and family-in-law and her children were taken away from her. They are now living with the fathers-in-law in Turkey (Kurdistan). She has been fighting for years to get her kids back and for them to be able to go to school.
Her ex-husband was living in Belgium for 12 years when she came, trying to find an agreement with him about the children care. After getting death threats from the family-in-law, she requested asylum here in Belgium. She was accommodated in an open centre during one year. Since her asylum request got rejected, she was brought to the closed centre in Bruges two months ago. This woman is desperate, she already tried several times to commit suicide. She is asking for help. If deported, she might be killed by her family-in-law.
A Kurdish/Armenian woman living in Belgium for 12 years and detained for one month was deported on October 26th.
RETURN HOUSE:
An Armenian family with two children was arrested at 5 a.m in their house and brought to a return house in view of a deportation! They have been living in Belgum for 13 years and their children (1 and 4 years old) were born here! The “coach” menace them to go to a closed center if they do not accept there ‘volontary return”
Mr BG arrived in Belgium when he was 14. He went to school and then worked. He is 24 now. He has been detained in the closed centre of Merskplas for 2 months. He was supposed to go to the legal department on November 14th following his regularisation procedure; which could be a positive step according to the lawyer. For the latter, BG should resist and hold firm until November 14th!
The Foreigners Office has planned his second deportation attempt under escort this Friday November 9th in spite of the appeal by his lawyer. He is asking for our assistance to prevent this deportation. BG wants to resist this deportation but we know that strength is being bluntly used to succeed in deportations. The only way is to inform the passengers about this forced deportation on their flight so that they ask the captain to simply cancel it.
Flight to Nairobi and Kigali and then to the Central African Republic at 10:45 a.m. 09 November
The company in charge of the flight is SN Brussels Airlines, but other companies are also concerned; which is important in order to find the passengers of this flight and be able to inform them about the situation of this young man.
SN463*
AC6345
LH5684
UA9989
US5996
Let’s meet at the airport to talk to the passengers of the flight to Kigali and Nairobi about the situation of this young man at 08:45 a.m at the check-in of SN Brussels and the other companies concerned.
It may also be helpful to heavily fax and email SN AIRLINES !
Or fax / call SN Brussels airlines via their web site http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
or Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 –Tel 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
We learnt that among them was a man who had been living in Belgium for 15 years and was separated from his wife and 5 years old son. Another Albanian was visiting Brussels as a tourist. He has his own company in Albania and was not planning at all to stay in Belgium. He has been arrested on The Grand Place in Brussels, was taken to a closed centre and was deported in the same convoy. He had 2000 euro with him for his stay, which have disappeared!
Fifty-one Albanian people were sent back to Albania on October 24th after their asylum request had been rejected. The head of the Albanian police warns that similar operations will continue and that ‘all the Albanians who violate the rules of circulation without visa to enter the Schengen area will be deported and forbidden entry in the EU during five years.’
On Monday November 5th, five other Albanians were brought for deportation from the closed centre 127bis to the airport , most likely with the same company!
Vendredi 16 novembre 2012 à 18 heures
Pondre une énième réforme pour enfermer et expulser toujours plus d’étrangers (allongement du contrôle d’identité à 16 heures) semble être aussi normal que de se demander ce qu’on va manger ce soir. Enfermer les gens 45 jours pour une histoire de papiers est devenu acceptable. Mettre en prison ou sous cachetons ceux qui refusent de se laisser enfermer, exploiter et stigmatiser est d?une extrême banalité. Mais malgré toutes les forces mises en oeuvre pour nous faire avaler la pilule, des personnes, à l?intérieur comme à l?extérieur des centres de rétention, se révoltent et se solidarisent régulièrement.
Le racisme et la stigmatisation des étrangers sont un des moyens des pouvoirs pour désigner un ennemi commun. Le but est de monter les pauvres les uns contre les autres. Diviser pour mieux régner. Il faut que le marché du travail soit une histoire de compétition afin de nourrir encore et toujours l’économie.
Au sein de l’espace Shengen les frontières sont censées être abolies mais en réalité elles sont surtout renforcées à l’intérieur de l’Europe. La « menace » migratoire permet de justifier un contrôle permanent sur toutes et tous : dans les transports, sur les lieux de travail, dans les administrations, dans la rue… Un simple contrôle peut pour certains, amener à l?enfermement et l?expulsion. Rendus possible grâce à la collaboration active des banques (La Poste, la BNP, le Crédit lyonnais…), des agences d’intérim (Randsat et Adecco qui menacent de balancer les sans-papiers s?ils se mettent en grève), des transporteurs (SNCF, Air France, Royal Air Maroc…), des constructeurs (Bouygues, Eiffage, Vinci…) ainsi que toutes les associations (France terre d’asile, Croix rouge, Forum réfugiés…) qui cogèrent la machine à expulser.
Les centres de rétention comme les autres lieux d’enfermement sont un des moyens répressifs pour l?État d?asseoir son pouvoir et d’étendre le contrôle sur la société. Ils sont banalisés et admis comme faisant partie d?un système qui fonctionne du mieux qu’il peut. De toute évidence, la machine rodée de la politique migratoire fait face à des individus qui ne veulent pas subir leur exploitation et leur enfermement. Des révoltes ont lieu dans les prisons pour étrangers en Europe et ailleurs. Il y a un an, à Marseille, le centre de rétention du Canet a brûlé. Depuis sa réouverture les actes de résistance n?ont cessé. Cet été des retenus ont refusé d’embarquer et se sont révoltés contre les tabassages quotidiens des flics. Certains ont essayé de mettre le feu au centre. Des personnes se sont solidarisées avec eux.
Ces dernières années l’État a cherché à casser les luttes à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur en utilisant de nombreux outils de son appareil répressif y compris l’antiterrorisme. Ce sont pourtant ces révoltes et ces solidarités qui s’attaquent à la résignation. S’organiser pour lutter contre les centres de rétention et les frontières, c’est aussi s’opposer aux outils de contrôle et de répression qui vont avec.
Nous refusons de nous laisser contrôler et enfermer dans des prisons et des frontières. Attaquons les lieux d?enfermement et le système qui les produit.
– Manifestons en nous faisant voir et entendre des retenus le vendredi 16 novembre à 18 heures précises.
– Rendez-vous dans le hall de la gare RER de Joinville-Le-Pont (RER A direction Boissy-Saint-Léger).
Mr VS and his son, 20 years old, have been deported to their country of origin. The father was handed over to the Armenian authorities and put to jail, waiting for a trial he had fled. His son is waiting for a call to do his military service which will last two years and to which he had escaped when coming to Belgium.
However, everybody knew!
Mr VS and his son ran away from persecutions in their country and they came to Belgium where they have family members.
A search warrant for Mr VS has been issued by the Armenian authorities and transmitted to the Foreigners Office. The son has psychological problems and is suicidal.
They introduced an asylum request, then a regularisation request, but in vain.
They got detained in the closed centre of Merskplas in August 2012.
The father refused a first deportation attempt because he didn’t want to leave his son alone, seen his state.
Following a deportation threat on his son, Mr VS and his family hesitated for a long time: either the father asked to be deported together with his son, or he encouraged his son to resist the deportation and they both stayed rotting in the closed centre until another deportation.
Feeling desperate and with no other solution in sight, they opted for the deportation with the planned consequences.
This is only one story among all the other stories of people who try to live in dignity.
It seems that living in dignity is not allowed to people coming from abroad.
He resist, hands and feets bound, his deportation attempt. His wife and daughter were (alone!) at the airport to talk to passengers. The passengers refused to sit down. Finally, the captain decided not to expel him on his flight! Mr. N was released from the center on 9/11.
Mr N is Algerian. He has been living in Belgium since 2004.He has a 3 years old daughter and he is living with her and his wife. He was arrested in September and imprisoned in Vottem.
The first deportation attempt already was a violent one. It is only after the intervention of a few passengers on the plane that the captain asked for N to be disembarked.
They will again try to deport him tomorrow Friday November 2nd at 2 p.m to Algiers. Mr N wants to stay next to his wife and their daughter. His wife is distraught.
Let’s meet at the airport at noon to talk to the passengers or fax /email/tel to :
Air Algérie (Bruxelles) vol 2061 vers Alger 14h
Boulevard Adolphe Max 103
1000 Bruxelles
02 218 61 63
022198233
brussels@airalgerie.dz http://www.airalgerie.dz
NB :The lawyer has made an extreme urgence appeal to the court that could cancel the flight at the very last minute! The audience is taking place today! Follow the news on http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/
You may also write to
M. F. Roosemont, pour faire pressio.
directeur général
Presse
T 02 793 80 31 (NL – EN) – 02 793 80 30 (FR)
F 02 274 66 40
Mr AP is 67 years old. He has lived in Belgium for 12 Years, close to his children. He obtained a 5-year residence card in 2006. This card was recently withdrawn. He was arrested in September and taken to the Merksplas detention centre. He underwent a first deportation attempt, which he resisted. The Immigration Office will try to deport him again, under escort, on 2 November 2012. Mr AP has decided to resist this latest deportation attempt and has asked us for help! He is to be taken first to Moscow and from there he will be taken on to Armenia, his country of origin.
Flight 2561 Aeroflot at 12:45 on Friday 2 November
Meet at the airport at 10:45 to explain his situation to passengers and ask them to react.
Fax and e-mail to protest :
openline@aeroflot.ru for Russia
For Brussels,
RUE DES COLONIES, 58, 1000 BRUXELLES Tel 322 / 5136066
Fax 322 / 5122961
brutosu@aeroflot.ru
He arrived in Belgium as a minor as his family in Afghanistan had all died. The only family he has left have lived in Belgium for several years.
He comes from a region that has been deemed ‘safe’. However, the journey from Kabul to this region is extremely dangerous. In light of these facts his order to leave the territory was reversed and his case was supposed to be reviewed. But after this review the Immigration Office decided he should nevertheless be deported, citing the fact that he could stay in Kabul where he would be ‘safe’ as a justification for their decision.
Flight TK1942 to Istanbul leaves tomorrow 30 October at 8am!
For those who can make it to the airport please be there for 6am.
We are well aware that this last-minute mobilisation is practically impossible, but he will resist, and his lawyer thinks it is essential to make sure there is a record of these crimes.
You can also email or fax:
TURKISH AIRLINES: cargo@turkishairlines.be Tel. 32 2 720 6400 Fax: 0032 2 753 2677
In the closed centre of Vottem, the detention conditions were not very good, and seen the way people are treated in the centres, if Belgium really was a State where the Rule of Law applies, this would not happen, because this is not normal.
We were treated like criminals, we didn’t even have the right to express ourselves. They were doing whatever they wanted with us, if they wanted to bring us to an isolation cell, they were doing so, and frankly the conditions in isolation cells are not human.
Even in my country, in the remotest village of Africa, these conditions do not exist.
Concerning my deportation, it was a real nightmare, you are treated like an animal, and even animals are better taken care of! You are just like someone who doesn’t deserve the right to live. You are handcuffed and hooded. Your hands but also your feet are tied. Hands with handcuffs and feet with chains, and they drag you with their belt around the waist until the plane.
They had even put something in my mouth to prevent me from shouting and saying a word. When you reach the plane, there are two or three people leaning on you, holding you tight around the neck to the floor so that no one could see me and that I would not talk.
Once in my country of destination, they delivered me like if I was a criminal, someone who had killed people in Europe. It is really sad how they welcome foreigners and expats here.
It is really inhuman and I wonder if Belgium really is a country where human rights are respected. Honestly I don’t think so. It was a real nightmare. I am a citizen firts, I am a person, I also have rights there haven’t I? I have rights that must be respected.
At the airport they undress you. Naked, you must stay naked, can you imagine? It is really sad.
And have you recovered from all this?
No, not really, morally I am still down. When you arrive here in Africa, the way they left me at the airport, they considered me as a criminal, as a real bandit. There too, they treat you as they promised. First you have to go through jail and torture. For you to get free you must pay a lot of money.
Did you stay a long time in jail?
I stayed for four days. To get free, I had to pay 700 or even 800 euros. It is friends who collected money to take me out of there.
What I wanted to say still is that it would be good if Belgium changed its system. And also, I wonder what the Leage of the Human Rights is doing on the Belgian level, does it exist there or not? Because we tried several times to contact them but they said there was nothing they could do at that time. What’s their use if they can not do anything in such situations in a country of human rights?
Tous remercient les activistes pour leur action et ce dans toutes les langues ! Beaucoup nous demandaient ce qu’ils pouvaient faire pour nous aider lors de l’action.
Il y a une bonne centaine de personnes enfermées au centre fermé de Bruges parce que sans papiers ou en demande d’asile. Ils sont répartis en groupe d’une vingtaine qui dorment dans la même pièce. Chaque groupe est escorté par des gardiens lors de ses déplacements dans le centre. Les groupes n’ont aucun contact entre eux.
Certains groupes ont décidé de refuser leur sortie dans la cour et ont refusé de manger pendant l’action de solidarité avec les activistes. D’autres groupes ont préféré sortir pour essayer d’avoir des contacts directs avec eux…
Dans la matinée, le groupe des femmes (20 à 30 femmes) a été empêché de sortir dans la cour par la direction.
Ce que l’on a le plus entendu :
La solidarité qui existe entre les prisonniers et avec les activistes ; la peur de sanctions ; la violence ; la présence de femmes enceintes ; la présence de personnes gravement malades et sans soins ; les expulsions violentes et non annoncées, ni à l’avocat, ni au prévenu ; les conditions de détention plus qu’inhumaines…
Tous dénoncent leur enfermement. Beaucoup dénoncent les traitements qu’ils subissent dans le centre :
– Aucun suivi médical, impossible de voir un médecin ou une infirmière. Un groupe nous dit que tout le monde est très malade chez eux, qu’ils ne voient pas de médecin et qu’ils se demandent pourquoi ils sont tous malades.
– Les femmes sont révoltées. Certaines dénoncent la situation de plusieurs femmes enceintes présentes dans le centre, sans suivi médical, sans nourriture appropriée à leur état, jamais de fruit, rarement des légumes. Plusieurs femmes pleurent toute la journée et sont désespérées. Certaines ont été séparées de leur mari, parfois enfermé ailleurs.
– Beaucoup de Kurdes et d’Arméniens sont enfermés. Ils sont parfois en Belgique depuis des années, parlent parfaitement le Néerlandais et risquent très gros dans leur pays d’origine en cas d’expulsion.
– Certains dénoncent l’enfermement de personnes depuis plusieurs mois sans raisons apparentes, sauf un laissez-passer que leurs ambassades refusent de délivrer (et qui continueront clairement de refuser) et qui permettrait leurs expulsions.
– Beaucoup ont très peur et nous demandent de ne pas « dire » qu’ils ont téléphoné, de ne pas retéléphoner, car ceci pourrait être suivi de sanctions graves, parfois d’une expulsion rapide, violente et sans avertissement, parfois même sans laissez-passer ou un laissez-passer magouillé par l’office des étrangers pour un pays qui n’est parfois même pas leur pays d’origine.
-Certains nous révèlent qu’ils n’entrevoient comme solution que le suicide ou l’évasion.
Certains ont évoqué des faits « très graves » qui ont eu lieu la semaine passé à l’intérieur du centre, mais n’ osent pas en parler. Une voisine a pu nous raconter qu’un détenu était perché sur un mur, qu’elle a voulu lui amener une échelle pour lui éviter une chute et que la police l’en a empêchée, disant qu’il devait sauter. Le détenu a fini par sauter, s’est blessé et a été amené à l’hôpital. Vraisemblablement d’autres incidents ou réactions ont eu lieu dans le centre à ce moment là, mais impossible pour le moment de savoir: Dernière minute: Une émeute a éclaté probablement le 14 octobre: bris de matériel et incendie. Au moins 5 détenus ont été transférés vers le centre à Merksplas et viennent d’être libérés du cachot. D’autres infos suivent :
Mainstream media: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20121016_00337169
A noter aussi que nous avons reçu des appels qui nous semblaient très suspects, demandant qui nous étions, quelles sont les personnes qui nous ont téléphoné, quand est-ce que d’autres actions auront lieu et où, jusqu’à une demande d’aide à des évasions !
I want to tell you something about the detention center of Merksplas.
This happened yesterday and today. A detainee told me and I wanted you to be informed as well.
Yesterday during dinner, something happened to a boy, named David, of Georgian origin. During dinner everything is served on one plate. He doesn’t like fries with something else, so he simply asked for a separate plate to eat the fries separate.
The employees at the center made a lot of hassle about this. So they refused him a separate plate, even a plastic one. Because the employees acted this way, you are already very stressed which makes you irritable. So they took him to solitary, just for a plastic plate.
The day after – so today – he was repatriated. You really have no rights, they treat you like a piece of dirt.
This boy was married to a Belgian, but they were filing for divorce because it didn’t work out between them. The case was scheduled in november in order to find an arrangement concerning their child. The wanted the kid to be with one parent one week and with the other the next or some other arrangement. The guy didn’t even get the opportunity to say goodbye to his son, he had to leave his child behind, just like that.
The worst of all was when the residents of the center were asking where David had gone, they told them he would be back while he had already been repatriated. Then they came to empty his closet. And then they said everything happened very fast and they had no time to bring him back.
There is a second case with a Tchetchnian boy. He is also married and has children here. His wife and children had payed him a visit. And afterwards they didn’t return him to his roommates. So he too he was repatriated just like that without saying goodbye to his wife, children and roommates.
Monsieur G K est Arménien, il a 20 ans, arrivé en Belgique il y a quatre ans comme MENA (mineur non accompagné) il vivait à La Louvière où il avait tissé de bons liens d’amitié avec des belges. Il a déjà subi une première tentative de rapatriement et il vient de quitter Vottem pour Zaventem avec sa valise. Nous tablons sur le vol SN 8835 de 9 h 55 vers Moscou et appelons les amis à être là à 7 h 55 au check in de ce vol pour parler avec les passagers. Il est possible aussi qu’il soit embarqué via un des deux autres vols prévus demain, le premier à 13 h 15 SU 2561 vers Moscou et le second : SN 3181 vers Rome à 13 h 50 en ce cas être à 11 h 15 et 11 h 50 aux check in… Merci pour lui et ses amis de La Louvière.
Contact pour présence Zaventem et + d’infos : Céline Caudron : 0474/91.64.59.
Nobody dares to talk. “As soon as one talks, one gets into trouble and is punished”.
No one dares to make phone calls: they are told that phones are tapped!
Those who ring us from the outside generally speak on behalf of their friends inside the centres, they find their situation intolerable.
One man in the closed centre is very sick. He keeps spitting blood, he has renal and gastric problems. His codetainees are afraid that he has tuberculosis and that he infects everybody; which is more than likely. The doctors say that it’s ‘just’ a wound in his mouth.
Another man 48 year old is in the closed centre. He arrived in Belgium in 1970 with his parents who came here for work. He was 4 years old. He was arrested and placed in the closed centre to be deported just after his exit from prison on October 9th 2012 after a sentence of 20 months.
He has a criminal record which dates back to his adolescence following several problems. After the entry into force of the Gol law in 1990 ( http://www.mrax.be/Campagnes/Doublepeine/actualit%E9.htm), the State had already tried to deport him. He had resisted these violent deportations by swallowing razor blades when embarking.
This man doesn’t know Morocco, his family is living here and he only knows Belgium where he has been living for 44 years. He will be sent back to Morocco in the context of the double penalty of imprisonment (incarceration followed by deportation), a notion that is questioned and questionable. http://www.mrax.be/Campagnes/Doublepeine/Argumentaire.htm
He wrote a book on our justice where he says “Justice is a huge spider’s web from where big flies escape while small flies get trapped”.
A father and his son from Armenie, have been imprisoned in Merksplas for 4 months. An asylum request has been rejected and a regularisation request is ongoing. There was an attempt to deport the father who refused to leave without his son of 20 years old because he didn’t want to leave him alone. The father will be imprisoned in his country. The warrant has been sent to the Office but the latter doesn’t want to take it into account. The son seems to have serious psychological problems and is talking about suicide.
Another man, 67 year old, also from Armenie, living in belgium for more than 14 years is in the closed centre. They try to deport him one time
What follows is not the description of a futuristic movie, nor is it the description of a well hidden place in a remote region of a totalitarian country or a far-fetched story; what follows is the description of a place located in Belgium, a country that proclaims itself to be welcoming and respectful of human rights. The description is as neutral as possible.
Once upon a time, ten years ago or so, a government decided to build a place away from prying eyes where human beings arriving at the airport without the correct documents could immediately be imprisoned. These correct documents enable human beings to stay for set lengths of time in this land of plenty called Belgium, itself located inside Fortress Europe that allowed itself to choose who had the right to reside in it and who had not. Hence this government, prompted by the nationalist right party, since then forbidden – the Vlaams Block- decided to build a ‘centre’ to stick all these foreigners who had been ‘selected’ upon their arrival. This centre belongs to a private company called ‘Biac’, and it is rented by the State (the State rents the space to a company to imprison people on a territory that is not entirely Belgium since it is a no man’s land…).
Magnificent today! Building works finally over, and the centre baptised ‘Caricole’ because of its circular shape (so as to disorient its inhabitants?) has come out of the blue to become reality.
Located next to its fellow brother the 127bis made for people waiting to be deported (repatriation centre), the Caricole can be accessed from the airport through a direct door. It cuts a fine figure there in the colourless fields, all round with its wooden panels that already look rotten. However, to be able to see those panels, one must slightly screw up one’s eyes because the building is surrounded by frightening solid black wire nettings, around 4 metres high, all thorny. Besides, certainly for security reasons, it is surrounded by moats that have not yet been filled with water… And an armada of cameras is watching and watching…
Located only a few metres away from the Brussels National airport runways, it has 90 places in theory.
But don’t worry, inside the centre one can not hear anything of the air comings and goings, everything has been very well soundproofed. In this brand new house, everything is immaculate white.
For the moment, around fifty ‘residents’ are detained there.
The staff consists of a hundred people employed by the Foreign Office, and of about twenty people employed by private companies for food and cleaning.
Everything has been planned and organised: interview rooms for meetings with lawyers, visitors’ room where the ‘residents’ may welcome visitors, not alone one to one but in a big room with 5 tables and 6 chairs. There is even a corner where children can play, everything planned! Walls, ceilings and doors are all painted in white. Visits are allowed from 2 to 4 p.m. The staff, almost all there, is composed of social assistants and guides, nurses and doctors at the disposal of the residents. Contrarily to what happens in the other centres, here there is no uniform, the people dealing with the detainees are all dressed in civilian clothes. They are not guards but guides. They can speak several languages.
A watching station with multiple screens enables to watch the surroundings and entries of the centre in real time.
Rooms have been foreseen for the ‘intake’, i.e the welcome of the residents. There they get information sheets in several languages. There they have the medical examination which consists in a standard check-up and if necessary special examinations. It is also the place where they get the ‘fit to flight’ certificates which means that they are OK to be deported. They have a locker where they can leave their goods, they get a mobile phone with which they may use their personal card. If they wish to ring their lawyer or the Foreigners Office they may do so for free. They each have a badge to access their bedroom. Circulation is free, they may even go to the courtyard between 7.30 a.m and 10.30 p.m.
The courtyard is not big, about 2x60m², and the other spaces where they can play football or basketball are only accessible if accompanied with a guide – because of the external wire nettings.
Everything is painted white, except the corridors which indicate the color of the ‘aisle’ – blue, orange, brown, … everything looks the same since we are in a circular environment.
Now, what would a centre be without any isolation cell? About 3×4 m, with a bed and a toilet as only pieces of furniture. The ‘windows’ remind of arrow slits because there are only two and they are approx. 10 cm wide and 1,50 m high, and the only view from there is the fields’ emptiness.
There are other rooms: a library, a room for table tennis and fitness, Internet access for issues related to asylum, creativity room… Opening hours are indicated just like any other information on the doors, in Dutch only. Would this no man’s land territory be Flemish?
There are two big relaxation rooms with free access. One has a television and a billiard table, and there is also a smokers room. The two big rooms are under surveillance since one space between both is occupied by guides, in the other space looking like a counter one may ask for tea or this kind of things for example.
Bedrooms also are painted in white, they have two, four or sometimes six beds. They had been foreseen for families but, respecting the law, they are not used for that or only occasionally for one night before a deportation. Bedrooms are free of access during the day, they have a TV that is on between 7 and 10 a.m and between 7 and 11 p.m. They have a bathroom and a toilet.
Meals are taken together at the canteen, self-service, the food is correct, the acoustics is disastrous, like everywhere else in the centre anyway.
That is a description of the place. It does not mention the feelings of the people who are imprisoned there. As organised and sterilised as it may be, the Caricole still remains a place that is concealed from view, with detainees waiting weeks and weeks for their case to be dealt with … with only planes and fields behind barbed wire and firmly-closed windows for a view.
Appel d’un ex détenu du centre fermé de Vottem : Monsieur D a été mis au cachot à l’instant pour une deuxième tentative d’expulsion ce 06/10/2012 à 13h10
13:10
SN217*
Conakry
Prévu
13:10
01.1
13:10
AC6346
Conakry
Prévu
13:10
01.1
13:10
LH5668
Conakry
Prévu
13:10
01.1
13:10
UA9998
Conakry
Prévu
13:10
01.1
13:10
US5968
Conakry
Il réside depuis plusieurs années en Belgique et veut y rester. Il demande de l’aide pour résister à son expulsion.
La compagnie qui organise le vol est SN airlines a qui vous pouvez envoyer vos réclamations par fax ou tel au Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 -Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
Et si vous aller à l’aéroprt RV à 11:10 au checkin SN Airlines ( mais aussi voir compagnie AC, LH, AS, US qui ont achetés des places sur l’avion!) vol vers Conakry pour parler aux passagers et aux hôtesses !
Some seventy friends, colleagues, and Afghans friends were at the airport at 6 am Monday. Unheard of!
Despite this strong mobilization the Foreign Office did not hesitate to deportate W. Hoping that the mobilization will think twice before taking an deportation to a country at war!.
A campaign against Amsterdam KLM was launched. (Nl in here). To remind the foreigne Office reserves several places every day on the first KLM flight to Amsterdam for a deportation with his escort.
The struggle continues!
A lot of young Afghans continue to be regularly deported for the last six months.
The Foreigners Office seem to have made a priority out of it!
DW is one of these persons deported without any mercy by the Foreigners Office.
He was not even 16 when he arrived to Belgium. His parents were killed when he was a child and he only has one sister left who is living in Afghanistan.
His asylum request was rejected and followed by an Order to leave the territory. A regularisation request is still in progress but it will not suspend the Order to leave the territory.
DW fulfills several regularisation criteria: he speaks Dutch fluently, he has been living here for 5 years, and he has had an undetermined contract for 3 years.
The Leuven police arrested him in July 2012 to bring him to the centre in Merksplas. He already experienced a first deportation attempt, which he refused.
W has been building his life here, all his friends are here, and he doesn’t know Afghanistan. He will not be able to join his sister because she is living in a war zone where all youngsters are immediately recruited by the Talibans.
W is desperate, he doesn’t know how to escape from this trap.
He will be taken to the closed centre 127bis on Sunday 30 September in the afternoon and he will be deported under escort on Monday 1 October on the KLM flight n° KL1722 to Amsterdam at 08:15 a.m. In Amsterdam he will be taken to another KLM flight n°451 to Abu Dhabi/Barhain at 01:40 p.m.
We oppose these arrests and deportations that are more and more violent and that increase every year.
We oppose this politics of “Get out!” “Good fences make good neighbours”. We refuse this planned world, where a majority have to endure war and famine so that a minority may live in peace.
We know the situation in Afghanistan. Millions of refugees fled the country to go to Iraq or Pakistan. The majority of European countries have stopped deporting people to this country at war, according to observations by the UNHCR. http://www.ledevoir.com/international/actualites-internationales/339184/cuisant-echec-du-hcr-en-afghanistan
Four times in a row, Great Britain cancelled collective flights to Afghanistan for security reasons for the guides.http://stopdeportations.wordpress.com/
But Belgian authorities are putting up resistance!
Meeting at the Brussels or Amsterdam airport to explain to the passengers what our Belgian politics reserve to deported people, and also tell them that they have the right to refuse deportations on their flight.
In Brussels, this Monday 1 October, 06:15 a.m Flight KL 1722 to Amsterdam
In Amsterdam, this Monday 1 October, 11:30 a.m Flight KLM 451 to Abu Dhabi/Bahrain
Let’s make of W an example of our resisting these deportations!
_________Madame, Monsieur,
Vos vol numéro de Bruxelles vers Amsterdam de 8h15 KL 1722 et de Amsterdam versAbou Dhabi /Barhaim 13h40 KLM 451 13h 40 ce 1 octobre 2012 embarquera Monsieur W vers l’Afghanistan.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas depuis trois mois, il est arrivé à l’âge de 15 ans et vit en Belgique depuis 5 ans . Craignant pour sa vie en Afghanistan, il refuse d’être déporté. Il ne connaît personne à Kaboul et ne peut rejoindre sa sœur au risque de se faire tuer ou enrôler par les Talibans.
Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé vers un pays qui n’est plus le sien, où il ne veut pas aller. Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de W. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour lui, pour notre dignité à tous !
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de :
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre info@premier.fed.be / Fax022173328, 025126953)Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur :milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129,025048500,025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à L’intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be
/ Fax 027939669
Le vol numéro KL1722 de 8:15 à destination d’Amsterdam ce 1 octobre 2012 embarquera Monsieur W, enfermé au Centre de Merksplas depuis trois mois. il est arrivé à l’âge de 15 ans et vit en Belgique depuis 5 ans . Craignant pour sa vie en Afghanistan, il refuse d’être déporté. Il ne connaît personnes à Kaboul et ne peut rejoindre sa sœur au risque de se faire tuer ou enrôler par les Talibans.
Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé vers un pays qui n’est plus le sien.
Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de W. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour lui, pour notre dignité à tous !. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour lui, pour notre dignité à tous !
[Name Surname]
(Can somebody translate it???You send it to gettingthevoiceout@vluchteling.be)
“La machine à expulser fonctionne bien chez vous” nous dit un détenu!… » “Tout ce qu’on peut faire est combattre pour garder surface” “Après quelques jours on choisit la résignation” “Pour certains on dirait que l’office et leurs avocats les oublient”
Beaucoup de résignation actuellement au centre fermé avec lequel nous avons des contacts: L’enfermement parfois plusieurs mois,la violence des expulsions , la fermeté des discours politiques , la stratégie de l’Office, les chantages au retour volontaire, les menaces, font que beaucoup ne résistent plus et acceptent leur expulsion. Dans le centre fermé tout est fait pour que chacun accepte cette évidence de “y a plus rien à faire”, le personnel utilisant des stratégies « humanitaires »!. Les avocats se disent muselés par des lois de non retour possible et se sentent impuissants.
Arrestations:
Celui qui n’est pas désiré dans notre royaume reçoit un ordre de quitter le territoire, spécifiant qu’il a trente jours pour quitter le pays. En pratique d’après divers témoignages la police communale débarque un matin à leur domicile et ils n’apprennent qu’au commissariat ou au centre fermé que leur demande est négative et que leur Ordre de quitter a expiré.
D’autres encore se rendant à la commune pour déclarer un mariage, se font arrêter instantanément avec comme prétexte “ une enquête sur ce mariage”
Ces arrestations se font avec la collaboration du Sefor (https://dofi.ibz.be/sites/dvzoe/FR/Actualites/Pages/SEFOR.aspx ) , de l’Office des Etrangers et des autoriés communales, et elles nous rappellent les fichages et arrestations des Juifs avant et durant la deuxiéme guerre mondiale, là aussi avec la collaboration des services communaux.
Beaucoup d’ Africains se font arrêter alors qu’ils sont en transit à l’aéroport de Bruxelles et que souvent ils ont une carte de résidence dans un des pays reconnu “Schengen” : Royaume Uni, Espagne, Pays-Bas….Ils sont maintenus dans les centres fermés pendant plusieurs semaines!
Un prisonnier enfermé actuellement a une carte de résidence en Espagne valable de 2001 à 2014: “toute ma vie est en Espagne” Le mot à faire passer : ne pas passer par l’aéroport de Bruxelles !!!!
Les arrestations et expulsions de jeunes Afghans continuent, avec des grosses questions sur les laissez-passer délivrés dans certains cas par l’Office des étrangers lui même !.
Expulsions forcées:
Lors de la première tentative d’expulsion, le détenu peut refuser, et aucune pression n’est utilisée. On a dû constater à au moins quatre reprises que dès la première tentative d’expulsion, une expulsion forcée avec escorte est mise en place.
Les expulsions forcées sont pratiquées systématiquement dès la deuxième expulsion et deviennent très fréquentes: rien que ce vendredi 21 septembre, 3 détenus parmi les quelques contacts que nous avons, vont subir ces escortes.
Nous avons reçu un témoignage affirmant que le 13 septembre un détenu serait mort lors d’une tentative d’expulsion. Cette info reste incontrôlable, mais c’est la deuxième fois que nous recevons ce genre d’infos de tentative d’expulsion dramatique, et nous pensons que ces rumeurs ne sont pas un hasard.
Un Népalais doit être expulsé ce 25 septembre: Son médecin a fait un certificat d’incapacité de voyager vu son état de santé très préoccupant: La direction du centre nie avoir reçu ce certificat.
Beaucoup crient au non respect des Droits de l’Homme en Belgique et dénoncent l’absence de réaction des ONG!
L’aile 4 semble plutôt rassembler les prisonniers qui on droit à la double peine: ils ont été condamnés pour des faits répréhensibles et après avoir purgé leur peine sont envoyés dans une nouvelle prison en vue de leur expulsion. Certains résident chez nous depuis parfois 15 ans et sont arrivés lorsqu’ils étaient mineurs!
Plusieurs nous disent qu’ils sont expulsés vers des pays qui ne sont pas les leurs et se demandent d’où viennent les laissez- passer.
Les gardiens auraient pris 600 euros à un prisonnier ( qu’il avait reçus de sa famille) avant sa mise au cachot.
Un prisonnier nous explique que 4 personnes ont été mises en isolement et questionnées suite à la découverte d’une clé ouvrant les portes du centre à Merksplas. Un agent aurait vendu une clé et l’aurait déposée à un endroit (espace commun) où devait la retrouver le payeur, mais les agents sont tombés dessus avant qu’il ne la récupère. Les 5 personnes sont suspectées d’avoir tenté d’acheter la clé. Quatre ont été transférées vers les centres fermés de Bruges et le 127bis. Un autre qui avait payé son titre de transport de retour avec l’aide de sa famille a été amené à Zaventem pour son vol, puis on l’a empêché de prendre ce vol et on l’a ramené au centre: il était suspecté d’avoir participé à ce trafic de clé.
127bis
L.O. Enceinte de jumeaux a été libérée du centre fermé 127bis après quatre tentatives d’expulsion et de vraies tortures pour tenter de l’expulser. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/31-juillet-quatrieme-tentative-dexpulsion-de-mme-l-o-enceinte-de-bientot-6-mois/
Petit message anonyme sur Indymedia : “Lundi, 19h30: une amie vient d’appeler une dame qui se trouve enfermée au 127 bis qui lui dit que vers 18 heures une quinzaine de gardiens sont venus chercher L.O. pour l’emmener en isolement, elle s’est débattue et a crié et les autres femmes aussi ont violemment protesté. Selon cette femme, on entend encore crier L.O. de sa cellule d’isolement.” http://bxl.indymedia.org/articles/5033
L.O. est libre mais elle vit dans la peur et n’ose pas sortir seule. Cela s’appelle un syndrome post-traumatique. C’est très grave et très difficile à vivre pour elle et pour son entourage. Elle est transie de peur, elle croit qu’on va venir l’arrêter à tout moment. Elle est actuellement dans un centre ouvert près de la frontière luxembourgeoise et va accoucher dans quelques semaines. Un mois après l’accouchement elle et ses enfants seront à nouveau “expulsables.
Evasion au centre fermé 127 près de l’aéroport, ( remplacé actuellement par le super sécurisé « Le Caricole ») :
On en sait un peu plus sur cet événement en avril 2012:
5 détenus ont subtilisé un trousseau de clés d’une gardienne: ils ont ouvert toutes les portes qu’ils pouvaient.
Ils ont ensuite tenté de s’échapper en sautant par dessus les grillages : deux ont réussi, trois autres ont été blessés. Ils ont été mis au cachot sans soins.
Suite à ces évènements, les détenus ont subi une fouille corporelle « approfondie ».
Et mobilisation pour que cela s’arrête ,avec les guinéens ce vendredi 28/09
Notre collectif, le collectif des guinéens contre la répression organise une manifestation le vendredi 28 septembre 12 devant le palais de justice de Bruxelles de 10h30 à 13h. Cette manifestation vise à dénoncer l’impunité des auteurs des différents massacres commis en Guinée depuis 2006, l’indifférence du gouvernement guinéen qui protège les bourreaux, le rapatriement forcé des guinéens avec la complicité du gouvernement d’Alpha Condé, la dénonciation des centres fermés, la lutte contre toutes les formes de discriminations.
Par ce fait nous vous invitons individuellement et en tant qu’organisation de nous soutenir. toutes les bonnes idées, le lobbying, etc, sont les bienvenus. Celui qui a des relations avec la presse( écrite, audiovisuelle,..) est prié de nous en informer. nous avons également besoin d’un deuxième mégaphone.
En guise de rappel, le massacre au stade de Conakry, le 28 septembre 2009 avait fait plus de 157 morts, plus de 120 femmes violées devant des milliers de personnes, des centaines de disparus et des milliers de blessés. Depuis cette date, ceux qui ont commis ce crime occupe toutes les hautes fonctions de la Guinée alors les pauvres victimes( blessés et femmes violées qui ne sont pas morts) continuent de souffrir sans pouvoir se soigner. C’est face à cette impasse, que notre collectif a saisi la justice belge au mois d’avril 12 pour qu’en fin lumières soient faites. Nous attendons toujours la décision du procureur quant à la recevabilité ou non de notre dossier. voila pourquoi nous avons choisi le palais de justice pour marquer le triste 3ème anniversaire du massacre.
Nous savons compter sur vous pour la réussite de la manifestation.
September 20 2012 : Phone Interview of a militant of the group SP Belgium, detained in the Merksplas centre in Flanders. He got arrested because he was not wearing his seat belt. ( http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/empechons-l-expulsion-dun-militant-du-collectif-des-sans-papiers/ ) He refused his first deportation and went on a hunger strike, with the support of many militants. The Foreigners Office accelerated his second deportation attempt under escort that will take place this Friday September 21st. Fouad chose to go back to Morocco to continue fighting for human rights in his country. He may reintroduce a regularisation request from Morocco, but it could take several years. The lawyers will continue fighting and they will go to Strasbourg to claim for this regularisation, on the basis of the legal presence of his brother and mother on the Belgian territory (familiy reunification).
The people are full of hatred here, and it is the Belgian population that pays for that, people here are against the Belgian people.
The people here ignore that there are militants who are fighting for them, there is not enough awareness-raising here.
In the detention centre they don’t like you to talk about awareness-raising, about human rights etc. and if they see you doing that, you can be sure that they will find you a flight as quickly as possible.
If you bother them here at the centre, they will find a solution.
And since you were part of the SP Belgium, that you made a hunger strike, and that there was a demonstration at the Foreigners’ Office, they want to get rid of you the soonest possible.
Yes, exactly. I had a plane foreseen on September 30th and since I asked to make a hunger strike and that I wrote a letter to the Foreigners’ Office and Maggie De Block, they said they would find me a flight as soon as possible, and that’s how I got the plane of September 21st instead of September 30th.
So, the plane is for tomorrow then ? With escort ?
Yes with escort, and I asked to return voluntarily because I stopped fighting and resisting, but they wouldn’t listen to me although I’ve been telling the truth since the very beginning.
Right now I am busy writing a letter with my signature, to say that I want to return voluntarily. I will send it to the Director General of the Foreigners Office and to Mrs De Block, and also to the management of the centre here, to prove that I want to return voluntarily.
You resigned yourself to go home and stop resisting ?
It is not that I don’t want to resist anymore, but my case is special, and if I miss the plane of tomorrow, the next one will be on the 30th, and if not, they will find me another flight, they will not give up, I know I am disturbing them.
Besides, I don’t want to resist in a country that wants to deport me as soon as possible, I don’t want to resist in a system that lets you down, that treats you like a criminal, I don’t want to resist in a world like this.
I suppose you will have to go to the isolation cell very soon ?
Yes… I asked to stay here with my friends and to go to the other block tomorrow, because the plane is at 03:30 p.m, they could bring me there at noon, but they said: ‘no, you’ll be taken to the isolation cell today’.
I don’t like the isolation cell, it’s like if I had done something bad, I don’t like the noise of the keys and of the door, it bothers me.
Well, I hope we’ll still hear from you from Morocco ?
Of course you will, we stay in touch, the fight will go on. I consider myself as a militant, I will stay like that. Even in the village I wil remain a militant and fight for other rights, here it was for papers, there it will be for other things. I will always be at the service of human rights, I will not stop here.
Absolutely no doubt about that Fouad, talk to you soon then !
Mr M F, who has been detained in the Merskpas centre for 5 months, will experience a second deportation attempt this Friday September 21st, on Brussels Airlines Flight 357 at 10.40 a.m
Mr M F arrived in Belgium in 2010. He introduced an asylum request that was rejected by the CGRA, and a regularisation request that was refused by the Foreigners Office. He got arrested in his house five months ago. A cassation appeal was foreseen for this month.
Mr M F is asking for our help to resist this deportation.
Meeting at the Zaventem airport this Friday September 21st at 8.40 a.m to warn the passengers on their right to refuse a forced deporation on their flight.
Samedi 1er septembre, à 21h, le feu est mis à des matelas dans la salle commune du premier étage du centre de rétention. Le circuit électrique de la salle commune brûle entièrement, faisant exploser la télévision collective. En entendant crier « au feu », les retenus des autres blocs empilent des matelas à l’intérieur des salles communes, mais la police intervient assez vite.
Les retenus du premier étage sont évacués et entassés dans une salle commune du rez-de-chaussée. Les pompiers arrivent et maîtrisent l’incendie qui ne se propage pas aux autres étages, mais le bloc qui a pris feu est inutilisable. Une enquête est immédiatement ouverte et après avoir visionné les caméras, les flics embarquent un retenu, probablement en GAV. Un autre retenu est mis à l’isolement. Les retenus de l’étage qui a pris feu sont dispersés dans les cellules des autres blocs, ils se retrouvent à cinq ou six dans des cellules prévues pour deux. Cet incendie s’inscrit dans un contexte de tension au sein du centre.
Depuis cet été, les incidents s’enchaînent : refus d’embarquement, destructions de matériel, résistances individuelles et collectives. Le centre est surpeuplé, la police insulte et tabasse quotidiennement, les retenus qui résistent aux expulsions sont ligotés et bâillonnés au scotch, la bouffe est périmée, les retenus sont gavés d’anxiolytiques, etc.
Depuis cet été, la lutte à l’intérieur trouve un écho à l’extérieur : prises de contacts avec les retenus, relais de l’information, parloirs sauvages, rassemblements… D’incidents en incendie, les retenus manifestent une nouvelle fois leur refus de l’enfermement. Malgré ça le centre n’est toujours pas fermé et continue de se remplir. Continuons à l’extérieur à relayer la lutte à l’intérieur et à exprimer notre solidarité par tous les moyens possibles….
Rassemblement devant le centre de rétention du Canet à Marseille le 8 Septembre à 18H !
Monsieur E qui devait subir la troisième tentative d’expulsion hier 18/08 a bel et bien été expulsé vers Cotonou. Appel ici
Suite à un contact au Bénin nous avons appris le nouveau mode d’emploi de nos autorités pour réussir une expulsion !
Monsieur E a été placé sur une chaise dans une petite pièce dans l’avion, endroit ou la nourriture pour les passagers est stockée. On lui avait mis un cagoule et un objet dur non identifié dans la bouche pour qu’il ne puisse pas crier. Il était accompagné de 7 policiers.
Ce n’est qu’après le départ de l’avion qu’il a été amené sur un siège passager. Il n’a eu aucun contact avec les passagers avant le départ de l’avion, ce qui était sans doute la stratégie de notre office de la honte. Cinq militants étaient présents pour parler aux passagers.
Monsieur E est actuellement en « garde à vue » à Cotonou.
Monsieur B H , de Guinée, résidant en Belgique depuis 7 ans, sera expulsé sous escorte ce samedi vers Conakry .
Monsieur a connu les centres fermé de Merksplas, le 127 bis et Vottem. Il a été mis en isolement à Merksplas pendant plus de 10 jours suite à l’émeute en mai 2012.
ou alors Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 -Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
DEUXIEME tentative d’expulsion de D vers Istamboul
Ce sont ces co détenus qui nous ont prévenus. Ce Monsieur est en Belgique depuis 2 ou 3 ans. On ne connait pas son histoire, mais que cela ne tienne , empêchons toutes les expulsions!
11:15 TK1938* Istamboul
RV aéroprt 9h15 ce Samedi 11/08
Ou plus facile: faxer,tél,mail à une compagnie préférée de l’Office TK
Pendant que les touristes se prélassent au bord de l’eau , visitent le
vieux port en chantier et sirotent leur pastis en attendant 2013, la
machine à expulser poursuit son cours …
Dans le centre de rétention, la tension monte. Le centre est plein,
environ 120 retenus. En sous effectifs, les keufs demandent des renforts à
la préfecture. D’ailleurs, ils n’autorisent qu’un parloir à la fois.
Depuis 15 jours une grande partie des retenus font le ramadan. Ce qui
implique une modification des horaires (repas à 21h, fermeture des
cellules de 23h à 3h), et une tension palpable à l’intérieur du centre.
Les retenus sont gavés de médicaments, et si malgré tout ils se rebellent,
ils ont droit à une injection.
Ces derniers jours il y a eu des tabassages en règles.
Petite chronologie non exhaustive des événements des derniers jours :
Dans la semaine du 23 au 28 juillet, un retenu se taillade le bras. Il est
amené menotté à l’infirmerie. Le docteur lui fait une piqûre. De retour à
sa chambre, il s’endort pendant 18h.
Dimanche 29 juillet
Expulsion de 13 personnes vers la Tunisie. Départ du centre à 6 du mat. 4
retours volontaires sont embarqués sans difficulté. Parmi les 9 autres,
l’un part en courant dans la cale du bateau où il y a toutes les voitures
de touristes. Il casse une vitre de voiture. Les 8 autres en profitent
pour s’éparpiller dans différentes directions. Les flics n’étant pas assez
nombreux, ils décident de ramener les retenus au centre.
Lundi 30 juillet
Refus d’embarquement d’un marocain par avion.
Un téléphone avec caméra et appareil photo intégrée est dans le centre de
rétention. C’est un téléphone interdit, afin d’éviter la diffusion à
l’extérieur d’images dérangeantes… Un retenu, connu dans le centre pour
être une balance, protégé par les flics, leur en parle. Les flics
récupèrent le téléphone, vers 3 h du mat. Les retenus ne se laissent pas
faire. Dans le bordel, un retenu se casse le pied. Comme la police ne veut
pas amener le blessé chez le médecin, les retenus décident d’appeler les
pompiers. Une fois devant le portail, les flics ne laissent pas rentrer
les pompiers. Les retenus insistent à plusieurs reprises pour que les
flics acceptent d’amener le blessé à l’hôpital. Au bout d’un certain d’un
temps, trois flics enfilent des gants, et amènent prétendument le retenu
chez le médecin. En fait ils l’emmènent dans une salle sans caméra et le
frappent.
Mardi 31 juillet
Le soir, du shit est envoyé de l’extérieur dans la cour de promenade. Un
retenu le prend. Les flics l’identifient à l’aide des caméras. Ils
l’emmènent dans une pièce sans caméra.
Ils utilisent une matraque électrique pour le mettre ko. Une fois au sol,
ils le frappent.
Ce sont toujours les 3 même flics qui agissent, pendant que 2 sont à
l’intérieur et tabassent, le troisième reste devant le porte fermée pour
couvrir ses collègues.
Quand les fics s’en vont, le retenu est au sol inconscient. Ce sont les
autres retenus qui l’évacuent et le réaniment à grande eau.
Régulièrement les flics doivent compter nominativement les retenus. Dans
le centre il y a des interphones qui permettent à la police de faire
l’appel sans avoir à se déplacer. Les interphones peuvent aussi servir aux
retenus pour appeler les flics. Cette nuit, au moins dans un bâtiment,
tous les interphones sont mis hors service par les retenus, ce qui oblige
les flics à se déplacer.
Mercredi 1er aôut
Les interphones sont réparés. Les retenus les font sonner toute la nuit
pour harceler les flics.
Un parloir sauvage a lieu.
A 23h les flics enferment les retenus dans les cellules. Ils enfilent
leurs gants et leurs disent : « rentre dans ta cage ».
Les révoltes éclatent souvent dans les centres de rétention, en France et
partout ailleurs. Depuis quelques jours, c’est à la prison pour
sans-papier du Canet que les détenus manifestent collectivement leur
ras-le-bol. Ce n’est pas une nouveauté, il y a un an déjà des détenus
avaient tenté de mettre le feu à ce centre de rétention.
Cette fois-ci, ne laissons pas les retenus seuls face à leurs matons !
Arrêtons la passivité et le silence !
Seul notre solidarité active peut abattre les murs !
What do you want to say to the people from Belgium about the centre?
The first thing I want to say is that when someone comes here, wanting to run for his life, protect his life and survive, they will not believe that.
There is no healthy food, there is nothing, sorry for saying that but there is no life here!
When you want to talk to someone, explain him and tell him your problems nobody will tell you “come on, tell me and talk to me”.
Everyone, even the people who work here, they are not friendly, they just show they are racist and they hate people.
I asked them for protection and everything and they said we don’t believe you and now I am going to die.
Which country will you be deported to?
I came from Somalia through Qatar and then to Belgium and they will send me to Qatar and then to Somalia, and still the same thing…
Will you resist tomorrow?
I will try, let them beat me, it’s better if I die.
I will try to do that, to refuse, … I hope they just… I’m so upset… I don’t know what I can say because… why are they treating us like this? I came with everything valid; my passport is valid, my visa is valid, my hotel too, I paid for three nights, and they just locked me up in the airport for six days and then they transferred me here. I lost my money, everything, I don’t know… now I am losing my life, I am not talking about money, I am losing my life.
Imprisonments, deportations, flights with escorts. The rejection of populations who flee tragic situations in their countries and who would like to share the ‘democratic’ system of our developed countries is in full swing.
The leaders of our Fortress Europe will do everything they can to prevent the ‘invasion’ of immigrants on the European territory and to get rid of those who dared to try their luck.
This mode of repression is even being acted out to other countries (and not necessarily the country of origin), notably through agreements for the taking back of these people with these countries without caring about the welcome by these countries, nor about the future of the deported. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is the motto for these agreements.
To make this amok public and foster reactions, we gather testimonies and answer the calls for assistance during deportation attempts. Some try to help juridically, others visit, other denounce, and other act…
We will continue to fight this amok. We call for mobilisation to make the opinion aware of the consequences of these migration policies, to continue supporting the struggle of all these detained persons. We call for the creation of new means to stop these policies of repression, taking back and extermination, fighting against all the links of this lethal chain.
The following ‘news in brief’ have been gathered thanks to the unbreakable solidarity of the people detained or deported.
DEPORTATIONS
Agreements between the Foreigners Office and airline(s):
We have learnt that the Foreigners Office have signed a contract with KLM: they will have 6 seats booked every day on the first Brussels-Schiphol flight!
Forced deportations under escort:
For several months we have noticed that from the second deportation attempt, the person who is going to be deported is accompanied by an escort. From three to seven policemen escort people several times a day to a far away country. For some, an ‘enlarged’ escort is organised. Knowing that this escort makes the return flight each time, one may question the budget that is allocated to this forced returns.
Violent deportation attempts:
We were able to gather testimonies of deportation attempts under escort that were extremely violent.
A Congolese man deported to Kinshasa got there with fractured ankles. The Congolese community mobilised to prevent this deportation and was present at the airport during one of these deportation attempts. Testimony
An Iranian man went through a very harsh first deportation attempt. He was brought back to the centre of Merksplas in a serious state. His co-detainees were ready to testify about his state but everything was done to prevent them doing so: the man was very rapidly isolated and deported again two days later. Testimony
This is only the visible part of the iceberg. How many others suffer the same fate? All these deportations happen secretly, under the nose of associations, policy makers, and NGOs who do not seem to have the least idea of “how to intervene”. Their silence is sometimes very equivocal to us.
Deportations to the country of transit:
For several months, the Foreigners Office have taken the habit of making their life easier: rather than taking the necessary steps to deport the immigration candidates to their country of origin (passport, let pass), they put them on a flight of the same airline that brought them here, to the country of transit of their immigration journey (referring to the Chicago Convention of 1944). Hence, the deported people find themselves in unknown countries where their welcome is more than shady. Fore e.g: a Congolese deported to Morocco, a Cameroonian to Benin or Algeria, the most extreme case being of a young Malian deported to China! Deportation alert
Deportations to countries at war:
Several Afghan people have been deported to Afghanistan, others are still in detetention centres, waiting for their deportation. These deportations are currently being discussed in the media and the political world. These deportations to unstable countries do not only concern Afghanistan. Other deportations of political opponents are sometimes orgnaised to other unstable countries (Somalia, Congo, Guinea, Iran, etc.). Once again, the Foreigners Office only rarely take the situation of the person and the country of deportation into account.
Secured flights:
According to testimonies gathered, at least one grouped and secured flight is being organised per month by the Foreigners Office in collaboration with our army: Congo and Guinea seem to be the privileged countries for Beglium.
On June 26, a secured flight was organised with 4 Guineans, 3 Senegalese and 26 police officers on board. They had stops in Niger, in Conakry and Dakar. All of the 26 police men made the return flight! There was no physical violence but the oral violence was tough, according to one of the Guineans.
Forced voluntary returns:
After several months of detention in the centre and after deportation threats or attempts, some give up and accept their return; exhausted by this constant harrassment by the Office. This is what we call a forced voluntary return.
A young Beninese was arrested at the airport and after requesting asylum he got detained in the Centre Caricole and then in Vottem. After several days of hunger strike to claim for an exhaustive treatment of his asylum request and after several deportation attempts he ended up accepting his return. In spite of this voluntary return, he was accompanied by an escort to Benin. Call for mobilisation for his first deportation attempt: Deportation alert.
DETENTION CENTRES
The new centre «caricole»: we are witnessing new ‘accelerated’ procedures for asylum requests:
We have had regular contacts with people detained in Caricole. Most of them have been arrested at the airport during their asylum request. As from their presence in this new ‘modern’ centre, around 20 people started a hunger strike to claim for a fair treatment of their asylum request. They had noticed that their files were only superficially analysed and that the treatment of their asylum request was random, a real lottery. A huge solidarity movement had grown in this centre. Since then, the majority of them have been deported and others have been transferred to other centres.
Good to know for those who are still confident: the Constitutional Court partially cancelled the accelerated asylum request procedure 12/07/2012 – La libre
REPRESSION AND INTIMIDATION
New general search at 127bis : like each month, the prisoners were searched thoroughly. Then they had to go to the courtyard of the centre for several hours when their bedrooms were searched.
Regular threats of them being put in isolation cells, on secured flights, or of forced deportation: a short film is shown to the candidates, explaining how a forced return happens (the one who can get hold of this film is more than welcome!).
Isolation cell: some people are put in isolation cells every day because they disobeyed, they were recalcitrant or because they showed their will to commit suicide! They can stay in isolation cells for several days, sometimes more than ten days!
Suicide attempts: several suicide attempts were reported to us. Codetainees are deeply moved by these acts of despair.In general, the person who tried to commit suicide is brought to the hospital, then put in an isolation cell in the centre upon his/her return.
Detention of pregnant women:
It is very frequent that pregnant women are detained in the centres. At present, a Cameroonian woman arrested at the airport was detained in Caricole and now is in the 127bis centre. After refusing a forced marriage she was banished by her family and fled through Benin. She already was the subject of several deportation attempts or threats of deportation to Benin, her country of transit. She is extremely anxious and her pregnancy is therefore very difficult.
AND MORE
MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE, FLOUTED LOVE AFFAIR
Four months of detention centre, deportation with escort, and split up reconstituted family :
They are 45 and 52 years old, they were living the love of their lives. They introduced a marriage request that got refused. N got arrested in the context of this marriage request at the commune for suspicion of marriage of convenience. He spent four months in the detention centre of Merksplas. His lover was going to visit him very regularly, and they had the right to spend two hours per month in an isolation cell for more intimate contacts!!! Testimony
After several appeals and a lot of suffering for his future wife and his children, N ‘accepted’ his forced return under escort. This is not that dramatic; the couple will find another solution to make their dream come true, but was it that useful and necessary to persist and get stuck on a love affair? And how many love affairs are flouted this way?
HARD LINER DETERMINATION :
An Iranian family was the subject of a determination beyond understanding: the man was deported after several extremely violent deportation attempts.Testimony
The Office continue their hard liner determination on his wife and son. A petition is gathering signatures to protest against this harassment. It is still ongoing : Sign it and spread it: http://11668.lapetition.be/
DID YOU SAY NO RACISM?
A coloured French man had lost his papers: he wanted to declare the loss of them in a police station in Brussels, he was detained in the centre of Merksplas during 15 days and then deported to his country of origin: France!
Text messages Testimonies from the detention centres
“Here you can find a melting pot of everything: you can find mad people, sick people, delinquents and very kind people like me. I am a nice person, but my kindness has limits!”
“Liberty is a precious thing that was taken away from me.”
“Everybody is sad here, no liberty, only two hors in a courtyard to see the sky for a while; people are starting to crack up…we are being treated like criminals, like dirty things, we have no dignity, not even the right to have dignity… and the Belgian politicians are aware of what is going on in Congo like everywhere else, like here!!! We just have the right to leave the country, thanks a million!”
“They are taking me now to the airport”
“I was put in a prison here in Vottem so I will pass the night and go to the airport this morning , but at midnight I tried to kill myself but the security came for my rescue. They cut the rope and took me in another room with camera and they never even gave me any tablet and I have pain all over my neck.”
T was mistrated in the airport of Brussel. He is now “in the hands of the polisy in Guinee”
T va, jour pour jour après 6 mois de détention, subir une tentative d’expulsion ce mardi 24/07. Ce sont ses co- détenus qui nous ont prévenus de sa mise au cachot à 19 heures ce lundi. Ce sont aussi les co-détenus qui m’ont parlé de problème de santé grave de T!
Ce Monsieur enfermé à Merksplas, puis Vottem depuis 6 mois avait la délicatesse de rarement parler de sa situation et d’appeler pour ces co détenus.
On va tenter de l’expulsion pour une deuxième fois ce mardi avec escorte
Vol vers Conakry à 14:30 SN217*
RV au check à 12h30 pour parler aux passagers du vol et aux personnels de SN Airlines
Et écrivez ,faxé, mailé à toujours la même compagnie SN Airlines
Interview with a woman whose companion is detained in Merksplas detention centre.
He was detained after they introduced their request at the commune. They are being accused of a marriage of convenience. After 4 months in closed center Merksplas he was deported to his country
[audio:http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ils-ont-refusé-ma-demande-de-marriage.mp3|titles=Ils ont refusé ma demande de marriage]
We had introduced a procedure, but what happened is that, according to them, several requests to leave the country were not respected. There was one on 27th June and another one in December, he had to be gone for 19th December. They are talking about, well… the 27th June one is correct, but the December one hasn’t been notified and the others are not correct. Hence, I had introduced my marriage request but they refused it, they told me that the police officer from my area would come to my house to check whether my partner was there, but no one ever came.
My lawer told me to reintroduce my marriage declaration but it got refused again. I was told to wait, and the Quaregnon police told me that X would have to testify. We did what was necessary but they were not available on that day, they postponed it. They rang me at 1.30pm to tell me that it could be done at 5pm. We went there with X so that he could testify but then they handcuffed him and took him away from me to bring him to Merkplas.
After all this, after December, actually he was arrested on 27th February 2012, and after he got there they finally agreed to accept my marriage declaration, so they really waited until X was taken away from me to accept my declaration…
Besides, they say there is a huge age difference between me and X whereas there are only eight years difference, and that according to the tradition in Morocco, the fact that a Moroccan native gets married to a woman who is much older represents a sacrifice for the man, but the prophet Mahomet got marrried when he was 25 years old and his wife was 40! I don’t see where the sacrifice is. It is not even written in the Koran that one does not have the right to marry someone older. Besides, they also say that according to my resources I just have enough to live with my son who is 15 and who stays with me. But X always contributed, he was always there to help me, he always managed to bring me some money and find small jobs (and he was not stealing anyone’s job, Belgian or whatever, it was his own sweat!).
As regards my declaration, it was refused four times in court, as well as my case for release, because my lawyer asked for X to be released since the declaration had been given, but it was always written that it was “receivable but not justifiable”, on the basis of what, I never understood.
Therefore, after the four refusals by the court, which were always in closed hearings, I appealed to the Supreme Court. I paid 200 euros for that, but again, it got rejected. So now, on 8th June I’ll go to the court in Mons to oppose the mayor and the crowns prosecutor’s decision in the hope that they change their mind because it’s really of great concern to me, I’m a Belgian citizen and I deem I have the right to marry whomever I want to. For two and a half months I have been going through something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, I don’t live anymore, I don’t have an appetite for life anymore…
I often go and visit X, they are always there behind him, I feel like I am visiting someone who committed a crime, I feel like I am going to a prison, I can not see any difference between a prison and a detention centre. I give him some money, I roll cigarettes with the machine, I buy big boxes and I roll something like 200 cigarettes, I pay for his phone top-up, I take his dirty clothes back home and bring him clean clothes, I go twice a week to Merksplas, even with my children and grandchildren.
He wanted asylum, according to my lawyer it was impossible to bring him again to court because everything was decided by the Supreme Court, therefore we introduced a request for asylum. I cross my fingers, I pray to God that everything works out fine because the only thing I want is my man, and that we marry.
I know very well that there are many abuses of the system, but still… they should study the different cases on a case by case basis. Besides, I insist on the fact that for my marriage declaration, I got heard twice, once at the commune and once at the police station whereas X was never heard, they never asked him anything about me. He is being accused of a marriage of convenience. They think that because he did not leave the country that his last chance was to marry me. That’s not true! I don’t understand why they don’t let us get married. They could at least listen to us, come to our home and talk to my children and grand children, carry out a more thorough investigation, and at least let us marry, I don’t care! They should punish the people who really lie, not us! I am really deeply moved by all this.
And things do not happen the way they show on the internet, the procedure for marriage, how it takes place etc, it is totally wrong… My marriage declaration was totally flouted, from start to finish…
I phone us from Istamboul. Ther was many polise near him. After the communication was broken
Monsieur I est Camerounais. Il réside en Belgique depuis 2007. il est enfermé à Vottem et va subir une nouvelle tentative d’expulsion ce 18/07 pour la deuxième fois vers Istanboul puis Alger.Il demande notre aide pour empêcher cette expulsion
Vol Turkish Airline à 07:50 TK1942*
RV Chck in 18/07 5h50!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ou plus facile: faxer,tél,mail à une compagnie préférée de l’Office TK
Ce mercredi 18 juillet, à 16h, mr A.F. va être expulsé vers la Somalie, son pays d’origine, en passant par le Qatar.
Qatar Airways est la compagnie qui prendra cette fois en charge la vie de cet homme. Il est emprisonné depuis le 27 avril au centre fermé de Merksplas. Il s’était fait arrêter à son arrivé à l’aéroport de Bruxelles.
Il y a demandé l’asile, mais celle-ci lui a été refusée sous prétexte qu’on ne croirait pas qu’il est Somalien. Pourtant, tous ses papiers l’attestent. Cela arrive souvent avec les somaliens, sous prétexte que le gouvernement étant corrompu, il est facile de se procurer de faux papiers. L’office des étrangers préfère renvoyer des personnes qui risquent leurs vies dans un pays en guerre permanente, plutôt que de croire les personnes ayant les bons documents.
Il risque sa vie en rentrant dans ce pays, car il sera poursuivi et probablement tué pour des questions religieuses.
Si vous le pouvez, allez à 14h au comptoir d’enregistrement du vol QR942 vers Doha, pour parler aux passagers de l’avion, afin d’empêcher cette expulsion.
Pour soutenir A.F., envoyez un message de protestation ou appelez pour transmettre un message aux pilotes :
Ce samedi 14 juillet, Monsieur E N doit subir sa deuxième tentative d’expulsion vers Cotonou, Bénin, via le vol SN 231 de Brussels Airlines à 14h05. Monsieur N. est actuellement détenu au centre fermé de Vottem. Il vient de recevoir une réponse négative pour sa procédure d’asile, mais envisage un recours dès ce lundi.
Il est candidat réfugié politique originaire du Congo Brazza et craint pour sa vie s’il devait y être rapatrié, ce qui serait le cas dès l’arrivée au Bénin.
Il refusera son expulsion; mais il n’est pas exclu qu’on tente de l’amener à l’avion. Pour ces raisons, nous vous demandons de protester auprès de Brusselsairlines :
Pour envoyer une message il faut aller sur leur site http://www.brusselsairlines.com/com/contact/
ou alors Fax = 027233599 / 02/7238496 / 027534931 -Tél 078 188889 / 027232345 / 027232362
Nous demandons à ceux qui sont disponibles d’être pour parler aux passagers du vol pour ceux qui sont disponibles au check-in à Zaventem dès 12h05. Ceci afin de leur demander de réagir auprès de Commandant de bord s’ils constatent qu’une personne est expulsée contre son gré.
H is in Afghanistan, secretly accommodated by a friend. Despite the unfailing endurance he has shown during the four years
he spent in Belgium and the four months in detention centres, he gave up and is not well at all.
After the deportation of the Afghan boy P on July 9 and ten other young Afghans that have
been deported in the months may and April, Maggy De Block keeps going on.
Hafiz, 24 years old, has been locked up for 4 months in the closed
center at Merksplas. He has been living in Belgium for 4 years already.
His request for asylum was denied. He was arrested on march 12 when he
started a hunger strike together with 60 companions to protest against
the situation of undocumented people in Belgium. He was arrested
immediately and locked up in a closed center. You can listen to the
interview with him here:
He already has refused a first deportation. The police escort has warned
him at the time: “Next time you will be escorted and we shall use violence.”
This phrase sounds like an explicit threat to Hafiz. He is afraid he
will have to undergo serious molestation, just like his Iranian friend,
mr. Muhamed, who was beaten up heavily during his deportation to Iran
(tied to a chair and beaten by 7 police officers).
He also fears for his life in Afghanistan. The aliens police, especially
well informed about the situation over there, says that Kabul is a safe
area.
Nevertheless Hafiz’ brother was murdered by the Taliban a few months
ago. Above that he risks that the Taliban will accuse him of being a spy
for the West. And he is also afraid of being arrested by the Afghan
authorities because he left the country illegally.
The ministry of Foreign Affairs plans to deport him to Kabul via Amsterdam.
Hafiz refuses to be deported to Afghanistan. His life will be in danger
there. Only death awaits him there.
We gather Saturday July 14 at 9.20 h. at the airport of Zaventem to
prevent this deportation from happening, by talking to passengers and
KLM personnel as they check in.
Thanks on behalf of those who are imprisoned without cause in these prisons!
If you cannot go:
1. Call, mail or write to KLM and ask that your protest will be passed
on to the pilot.
We do not have contact with P S. He was isolated saterdaynight to prepare him for his expulsion
Like many he was declared not wanted by our Gouvernement
The Aliens Branch of the Home Office has shown their incompetence to estimete the risks in the countries of origin.
It is the same story for the collective flights to Congo and Guinee, but also to Afhanistan: some of the deported were detained / disappeared at their arrival in their home country.
We know the situation in Afhganistan. Millions of refugees escaped the country to Iran or Pakistan.The majority of the European countries have suspended their expulsions to countries in war, in this way folowing the Conclusions of the UNHCR.
In four cases the Brittisch Gouvernment cancelled a collective flith to Afghanistan because of the savety for the two attendants !!!
P will be escorted on his flight KLM 1720 (from Brussels to Amsterdam) at 06.25 hours the 9th of July 2012, and then from Amsterdam to Bahrein to Kaboel.
An Appointment at 04.15 hours mondaymorning to talk to the passengers they can protest against the involentairy expulsion of P by explaining this to the commander.
If you do not have the opportunity to go there: Call write to KLM
tel (0031) 070-222466, (0031) 070-225335
fax (0031) 070-222480
29/06 2012 – 13:40 3 ème tentative ! A peine 18 ans , Malien et rapatrié vers la Chine !
MOBILISATION GENERALE : C. ne peut et ne veut pas partir !!! HU 492 et SN 4115 vers Beijing China 13;40 Présence à l’aéroport 11h40 h . Il faut venir pour empêcher cette expulsion !!!!!!
Nous avons été informés que K. C., né le 14 fevrier 1994 est Malien et est prisonnier au centre fermé le Caricole. Il est arrivé le 29 avril à l’aéroport et y a été amené dés son arrivée.
Dans la cadre de la Convention de Chicago sans doute (la compagnie responsable du vol allez doit le rapatrier vers sa destination de départ) il va être rapatrié vers la Chine ce 29/06/2012 pour la Troisième fois !
C. ne veut et ne peut pas partir
Vols conjoints possibles : Hainan Airlines et Brussels Airlines
départ bruxelles 13 .40 vers Pekin
Nous vous laissons le soin d’envoyer des faxs et des mails de protestations aux personnes responsable de ces actes
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Mr. Mola Eddy, member of MIRGEC (Independent Movement for the Recognition of Congolese Genocide), was subjected to several violent deportation attempts before he was eventually deported on 20 June 2012. At each attempt he was mistreated by his Belgian escorts. As a result, several complaints were made and the MIRGEC released an official statement (here). Throughout his deportation on 20 June he was accompanied by Belgian police officers, all the way to Kinshasa.
At a stopover in Nairobi he fell following an altercation with his escort. When he arrived in Kinshasa he was taken to hospital to be treated for broken bones in both his feet.
As of 04 july he remains hospitalised in Kinshasa, but he can’t continue with the interview as he feels he can no longer speak freely. Here is the first part of the interview and a photo taken at the hospital that he sent us.
At the airport, first of all we were in the medical wing to eat with the priest. There were lots of security people there; they had really brought in the heavies. On the aeroplane there was a woman who gagged me; she trapped me from my spine to my neck. She lowered my head against the seat. I couldn’t breathe…
Eventually they let me breathe again… we arrived in Bujumbura…
I said no, I don’t want to go back but they didn’t want to hear it. Once we arrived in Kenya I was subjected to more fighting and wrestling, but I didn’t want to.
As soon as I tried to get away from them they blocked me in from all sides, I slipped on the tarmac and I broke both feet at the ankles. I am supposed to go before the Tribunal on the 21st but they came earlier to take me away.
They came to take you away the day before you were to appear before the tribunal?
Yeah yeah they said they don’t care about that and they don’t know anything about it. I said no…I heard about it, they took away my telephone, they have isolated me.
Was it Brussels Airport where they beat you up?
It was at Brussels airport.
On the runway at Brussels airport, that’s where they broke your legs?
No at Nairobi. It was Belgian police officers. There were four of them, one a woman. The woman treated me like a criminal.
So you flew from Brussels to Nairobi and then from Nairobi to Kinshasa?
No, from Brussels to Bujumbura, from Bujumbura to Nairobi, from Nairobi to Brazzaville, and from Brazzaville to Kinshasa.
And throughout the journey from Nairobi to Kinshasa your legs were broken?
The father is deported in Teheran, the mother is in the hospital in Mechelen, and their son, 3 years and a half, is in a state of shock. The authorities continue to try to deport the mother ande the sun.
M. Muhamed Ali, his wife Shirin and their son Parsa fled Iran more than a year ago following persecutions. They had discovered that Shirin was on a list of wanted people in Iran with other people, in relation to militant activities.They fled Iran with other people and it was very hard. Some of their friends got to England where they got the asylum.
The family introduced an asylum request in Belgium which was very quickly refused in spite of blatant evidence of persecution in Iran. The family was placed in a return centre in Tubize in view of their deportation. Aware that their lives would be in danger in case of return to Iran, they fled from this house and continued living in hiding.
Mohamed got arrested on the 5th of June and brought to the closed centre of Merksplas.
The Foreign Office tried to deport him for the second time on June 20th. He resisted (see the interview here) as he didn’t want to leave his wife and son alone, all the more since he knew what was expecting him in Iran.
They brought him there, hands and feet tied.” First they put him in an isolation cell, then on a van, and lastly on the plane. He shouted that he didn’t want to leave. They put toilet paper and tissues in his mouth so that he wouldn’t scream. They banged his head on the van seat. ”
The captain of the plane refused to keep him on board, seen his state. “The pilot refused that he stayed in the plane, he could obviously see that he was very bad, and that he could die on the plane”.
He was brought back to Merksplas in a very worrying state. All the testimonies attest the bad state in which he was after his deportation attempt: swollen face, red and swollen – if not broken- arms, difficulties to walk: a compilation of testimonies of his state are underway.
Several of his co-detainees, his lawyer, several associations and friends had foreseen to lodge complaints, but the necessary assessments and testimonies were vain since Muhamed Ali was placed in an isolation cell the day after for a new deportation attempt on June 23rd.
It seems that everything was done to avoid these assessments and complaints. Some were put under pressure by the federal police (through phone calls), two doctors had asked for a visit at the centre, one of them got a phone call by the federal police, strongly advising him against that. The airport police made a report of the deportation attempts, it says that “they only “brought” Mohamed on to the plane to hand him to three Turkish police officers! “.
Third deportation attempt on June 23rd: return flight Brussels Teheran
New deportation attempt under escort and with violence to Istanbul then Iran on June 23rd. His hands and feet were tied and he was hooded. The Iranian authorities refused his entry on the territory since he did not have any let pass or passport, so he was brought back to Istanbul to Zaventem airport during the night.
Fourth deportation attempt on June 24th : imprisoned in Teheran
After the return flight Brussels-Teheran of June 23rd, they kept him at the airport waiting for another flight. He left again on June 24th to Teheran via Istanbul. Hewas allowed to contact his family on June 25th and warned them he was in prison.. Since then, he left the prison under strict control
Shirin the mother was arrested and then brought to the hospital
Following the barbaric acts inflicted on his husband, Shirin went to Zaventem police station on Sunday 24th of June following the advice of a juge in order to lodge a complaint against these exactions. She wrote a letter of complaint in Farsi (she never got the assistance of any interpreter) and then she got arrested and kept in an isolation cell. It seems that they wanted to put her under pressure to get hold of his son and deport both of them too. After four hours in the cell, Shirin finally got released and the police asked her to sign an order to leave the territory (in Flemish, still without an interpreter), which she refused. In this desperate situation, upon return Shirin tried to commit suicide and is currently in the hospital.
Parsa , the son of three years and a half was taken care of by friends and he is in a deep state of shock.
The lawyer made an appeal to the Foreigners Lawsuit council against the refusal of Muhamed Ali and his wife Shirin’s asylum request and he lodged a complaint, with the elements she has in her posession.
It seems that they keep going at them. The Foreign Office rang the hospital to inquire about Shirin’s state and about the date she could leave the hospital.It seems that all the acquaintances of this family are being put under pressure by the Federal police. They feel that the Office absolutely want to get hold of the mother and his son in order to deport them.
It is obvious that the fate of this family if deported to Iran is more than uncertain
We ask the authorities to put an end to this and to contact the Iranian authorities and to repatriate Muhamed Ali so that he can be with his wife and son in security in our country http://11668.lapetition.be/
—-
The Belgian Immigration Office has put, as part of a trial, a permanently-based officer in all large towns in order to carry out its SEFOR (‘Sensibilisation, Follow-up, Return’) programme more effectively.
Officially, it concerns favouring voluntary returns for people who have received an order to leave the territory following an asylum request rejection, a negative decision about a family regrouping, the end of a student visa, or the final negative decision in an asylum claim process.
In reality, the political will behind this policy is clear: the Di Rupo government wants to up the ante on returns, i.e. deportations.
For a list of certain ‘safe’ countries the right to asylum will be restricted. The new Immigration Minister Maggie De Block has obtained extra budgetary allowances to open the new ‘centre 127tris’ or ‘Caricole’ which will replace centre 127, with the aim of increasing the number of deportations.
A deportation policy that’s not so fair after all
Among those who have been deported are many who thought they had achieved regularisation in 2009, when they were urged by various authorities to come out of from living in the shadows and make a claim for regularisation.
Lots of associations and citizens encouraged them. However this regularisation operation was just a decoy put in place by the previous government.
Today many people are receiving negative responses, a contrast to 2010 when many people received positive responses giving many others hope. People who have lived here for years are being refused regularisation because official identity documents issued by certain embassies are not deemed valid or because their work contract shows a monthly salary a few Euros below the set amount needed: a minimum guaranteed salary of EUR 1387.49 a month.
Denouncing the Immigration Office’s interference in local council affairs
When all these requests were made, the claimants had to provide their address. Today in each Commune there are identification tools that can quickly pinpoint those whose regularisation attempts have failed. This was planned in the Wathelet Circular (10 June 2011) which was adopted by the previous government. But it seems that the local administrations were not collaborative or effective enough for the Immigration Office, so they felt they had to send officials into local administration offices in four large towns: the federal level government is setting the agenda in the Communes!
A representative from the Immigration Office has been stationed in Liège, Charleroi, Antwerp, and Ghent for several months to ensure that the requirements of this circular are carried out properly.
People who receive a negative decision, and consequently, an order to leave the territory, are first of all called to their Commune to be notified of the decision and to receive information on voluntary returns, and the consequences of not complying with the order: detention and the possibility of being banned from returning to Belgium for 5 years.
15 days later they are called to the Commune again to complete an identification process (photos for the forms so they can obtain a ‘laissez-passer’ in case they are deported) and to ask for their agreement to begin the voluntary return process.
Then, at the end of their order to leave the territory (30 days after the original notification), the police will check at their place of residence to verify that they have in fact left, and if they haven’t they will then be arrested.
As it is impossible to arrest and detain everyone, we have learnt that these Immigration Office officials draw up lists of arrests and organise police operations in order to be as effective as possible. Today, the RTBF report that from now on the official based in Liège will have their office in the Central Police Station. On these arrest lists are people for who they have grounds to refuse regularisation and others who have simply received their second order to leave the territory.
Don’t accept today what we denounced yesterday!
Taking censuses before stopping and deporting people, does that not sound familiar?
Let’s think of the past to understand the present. Lots of refugees in Belgium have fled horrendous situations: dictatorships, political, racist, sexist or homophobic persecutions, and let’s not forget refugees fleeing regions devastated by the effects of climate change. Others have fled war and misery to find a better life. Just like 60 million Europeans essentially did in the 19th century when they migrated to the American continent!
Let’s remember that from 1933 persecuted German Jews claimed asylum in Belgium, France and Holland and they were subsequently turned away or accepted depending on the circumstances of the day. But what is certain is that by the end of 1940 censuses carried out by the occupier were precursors to deportations.
Arrests through breach of trust and deception
We’ve even seen that some people are arrested when their regularisation request is still underway and they are not able to appeal.
Increasingly people are arrested through breaches of trust. When the police don’t find someone at their place of residence, a notice or communication to the neighbours is left stating that the person in question must report to the police station ‘concerning their request’. If the person goes to the police station they are arrested and taken to a detention centre so they can be deported.
These procedures are completely noncompliant with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights which forbids arrests through deception or lies. They are also incompatible with the case of Conka v. Belgium, passed by the European Court of Human Rights in 2002, concerning the collective deportation of a group of Tzigane travellers from Belgium to Slovakia in 1999 after they were called to police stations in Ghent for an undisclosed ‘matter’ concerning them.
In light of these facts, we denounce the federal circular and ask the local authorities to resist the interference of the Immigration Office. We stand for an Immigration and Asylum policy that respects Human Rights. We denounce the Immigration Office reducing the autonomy of local administrations.
The Communes are points of first contact and integration centres for migrants and they should remain so, in complete independence. They must not become tools of repression.
Aux dernières nouvelles, malgré l’hypersophistication des systèmes de sécurité, des portails magnétiques, de toutes les caméras de surveillance et du zèle (supposé) des gardien-ne-s du CRA, neuf personnes se sont évadés dans la grande tradition: ils auraient creusés (ou utilisés) un tunnel et auraient pris simplement le bus devant le CRA. À l’heure qu’il est, ils n’ont toujours pas été retrouvé. (source : observatoire de la rétention 77)
Mrs A. C. C. has been detained in a closed center for six months (127 + 127bis), and she will be subject to her seventh deportation attempt this Thursday 28th of June. She left Cameroon because of real threats due a behaviour that does not correspond to African norms. She already went through six deportation attempts that she refused each time.
Come and support Atam Chantal at the airport to free her from the police escort and their violence, bullying and other humiliations and enable her to stay here to live the life she wants. Let’s meet this Thursday 28th of June at 08:40 a.m at the check-in of flight SN 371 to Yaoundé (Cameroon) to talk to the passengers and support A. C.. Thank you on her behalf and on behalf of all the others.
THIS IS HOW YOU MAY ACT: 1/ Give phone calls, send emails, faxes and letters of protest to SN Airlines and ask that your messages be forward to the captain of the plane. We know for sure that such actions may prevent a flight!
Madame, Monsieur, Votre vol SN 371 de 10h40 ce jeudi 28 juin à destination de Yaoundé (Cameroun) embarquera, contre sa volonté, A. C. C., détenue en centre fermé depuis six mois sans qu’aucune issue n’ait été trouvée à sa situation. A de nombreuses reprises, elle a refusé l’expulsion. On veut l’expulser alors qu’elle subirait des menaces réelles pour un comportement qui ne correspond pas aux normes africaines. Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé, vers un pays où elle ne veut pas aller et où elle vivra dans des conditions misérables. Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ d’A. C. Si le rapatriement a lieu, la sécurité physique de C n’est pas garantie et elle risque d’être physiquement éliminée.
You have the power to oppose this deportation
Name and surname 2/ Send the following message to the Foreign Office and the different cabinets concerned :
A l’attention de : Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953) Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur: milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580) Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax
Monsieur le Premier Ministre, Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances, Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Monsieur le Premier Ministre, Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances, Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, Le vol SN 371 de 10h40 ce jeudi 28 juin à destination de Yaoundé (Cameroun) embarquera, contre sa volonté, A C C, détenue en centre fermé depuis six mois sans qu’aucune issue n’ait été trouvée à sa situation. A de nombreuses reprises, elle a refusé l’expulsion. En cas d’expulsion elle subirait des menaces réelles pour un comportement qui ne correspond pas aux normes africaines. Vous avez le pouvoir de marquer votre opposition à cette déportation .
Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour C pour notre dignité à tous ! Merci pour elle.
[Prenom NOM]
12/06/12 This is the testimony of an Iranian man who suffered extreme violence during his latest deportation. Two days later he was put in an isolation cell again to be deported to Turkey and then to Iran.
Yesterday he was at the airport for his second deportation. There were 7 policemen present. One of them had put him in the cell and asked him if he wanted to go back to Iran. He answered that he didn’t want to go. The policemen asked him why he didn’t want to go back there and he answered his life was in danger there.
He didn’t want to leave his family, his wife and his son are here in Belgium. He has been living for 1 year and 3 months in Belgium. His wife and his son live here but at the moment they are with some friends.Now they ask him to leave his wife and son to go back to Iran. The 7 policemen beat him up terribly.
First they put him in a cell, then in a bus and then on a plane. He was shouting: I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to leave for Iran”
They put toilet paper and tissues in his mouth so he couldn’t cry anymore. They hit his head against the seat in the bus. They put their hands around his throat to be sure he couldn’t cry. They also kicked him. He was hurt all over his body for two days.
Something else is that when he shouted on the plane that he didn’t want to go back to Iran, the passengers asked the stewardess why the man was shouting. The stewardess answered that he was crazy, or ill. The pilot refused to keep him on board. He saw how bad the man had been hurt and that he could die on the plane.The policemen asked the pilot several times to keep the man on board. They said three times: “You have to take this man on the plane” The pilot refused three times. In the end the pilot refused to keep the man on board. The passengers didn’t understand why he didn’t want to go to Iran. They thought he was crazy.
When they descended the plane they drove back by car and put him in a cell for 2 and a half hours, before they brought him back to Merksplas.
Yesterday was the refugees’ day … and his request for asylum was refused.
All the policemen were violent. They even threw him against the door of the plane, like an animal.His hands and feet were tied together. He was severely wounded.The doctor said yesterday that everything was normal, that it was not serious. The director of Merksplas told him to go directly to his cell, so the others wouldn’t see him this way. Here the doctor doesn’t do anything, he just gives paracetamol and ibopruphen.He has not yet lodged a complaint whith social wellfare.
He is asking if someone can visit him at the Merksplas centre.
Demain, monsieur Muhamed Ali, Iranien, va subir une nouvelle tentative d’expulsion vers Istanbul, puis vers l’Iran….
Il y a deux jours, il a subit une autre tentative, au cours de laquelle les policiers l’ont violemment frappé.
Il a témoigné de ces violences au téléphone et le lendemain, des gardiens sont venu le prendre pour le mettre en isolement. Ils lui ont promis un vol à 11h15 le 23 juin par le vol TK1938 de Turkish Airlines.
Il a une femme et une fils en Belgique avec lesquels il est venu depuis l’Iran. Il ne veut absolument pas retourner là-bas car il courre un réel danger.
Mais l’administration ne veut rien savoir et préfère l’écarter au plus vite avant qu’il ne puisse témoigner des violences qu’il a subie !!!
Ce qui se passe est encore plus grave que d’habitude, les violences lors des expulsions se multiplient. Il y a trois jours, un autre homme s’est fait casser les deux jambes lors de son expulsion (son témoignage sera mis sur le site) ! Pouvons nous accepter la manière dont on traite les êtres humains dans ces centres ? Pouvons nous accepter que ceci continue sans rien dire ?
NON, cela n’est pas possible !
– Allez à l’aéroport à 09h15 pour parler aux passagers de l’avion. Lors de sa dernière expulsion, l’hôtesse disait aux passagers que Mohamed était fou, qu’il ne fallait pas s’inquiéter. Le seul moyen pour que les gens ne croient pas ces mensonges, c’est de leur parler de la situation avant qu’ils ne montent dans l’avion !
– Si vous ne pouvez pas, écrivez ce soir :
1/ Téléphonez, envoyez vos courriels, fax et lettres de protestation à Turkish Airlines et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord.
_______________________
Madame, Monsieur,
Votre vol numéro TK1938 de 11:15 à destination d’Istanbul ce 23 juin 2012 embarquera Mohammed Ali, un ressortissant Iranien.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas en Belgique, séparé de sa femme et de son fils, on veut l’expulser par votre avion. Il a déjà subit plusieurs tentatives d’expulsion. Lors de la dernière, les policiers de l’escorte ont été extrêmement violent avec lui, jusqu’à frapper sa tête contre la tablette du siège et à lui mettre des mouchoirs dans la bouche pour l’empêcher de s’exprimer. Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé , surtout dans l’état dans lequel il est depuis ces violences.
Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Mr Ali. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour lui, pour notre dignité à tous !
______________________________
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de :
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances,
Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Le vol numéro TK1938 de 11:15 à destination d’Istanbul ce 23 juin 2012 embarquera Mohammed Ali, un ressortissant Iranien.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas en Belgique, séparé de sa femme et de son fils, on veut l’expulser par votre avion. Il a déjà subit plusieurs tentatives d’expulsion. Lors de la dernière, les policiers de l’escorte ont été extrêmement violent avec lui, jusqu’à frapper sa tête contre la tablette du siège et à lui mettre des mouchoirs dans la bouche pour l’empêcher de s’exprimer. Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé , surtout dans l’état dans lequel il est depuis ces violences. Il doit pouvoir porter plainte contre les traitements indignes qu’il a subit de la part de policiers Belges
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, VOUS avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Mr Ali. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour lui, en mémoire de Sémira Adamu, pour notre dignité à tous !
21 juin, HU 492 et SN 4115 vers Beijing China 13;40 Présence à l’aéroport 11h40 h pour ceux qui peuvent!
Nous avons été informés que K C, né le 14 fevrier 1994 est Malien et est prisonnier au centre fermé le Caricole. Il est arrivé le 29 avril à l’aéroport et y a été amené dés son arrivée.
Dans la cadre de la Convention de Chicago sans doute (la compagnie responsable du vol allez doit le rapatrier vers sa destination de départ) il va être rapatrié vers la Chine ce 21/06/2012 pour la deuxième fois !
Ce jeune homme de à peine 18 ans, Malien, est arrivé à Bruxelles avec de faux papiers. C’est sans doute une des raisons pour la quelle il est rapatrié vers son pays de « départ », la Chine.
Vols conjoints possibles : Hainan Airlines et Brussels Airlines
Nous vous laissons le soin d’envoyer des faxs et des mails de protestations aux personnes responsable de ces actes
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur Jean NGANGU MVUAMA est enfermé depuis 3 mois et demi à Merksplas, il va subir sa deuxième tentative d’expulsion demain à 10h40 depuis l’aéroport de Zaventem. Il refuse de retourner au Congo, où il n’a rien ni personne, sa vie étant ici.
Jean connaît des problèmes de santé qui ne peuvent pas être soignés au Congo, mais sa demande de régularisation pour raisons médicales lui a été refusé… Par ailleurs il devait se marier et avait commencé les procédures. Il refuse d’être séparé de sa copine et d’être envoyé dans un pays qui n’est plus le sien.
Suite à une première tentative d’expulsion qu’il a refusé le 24 mai, on lui a assigné le vol initialement prévu pour J. (un autre congolais détenu à Merksplas): il semble que l’Office du racisme d’Etat ait si peu de scrupules qu’il remplace les assignés à la déportation comme du vulgaire bétail !
Venez soutenir Jean à l’aéroport, afin de ne pas le laisser entre les mains de l’escorte policière et de son cortège de violences, brimades et autres humiliations, et de lui permettre de rester ici afin de vivre sa vie comme il le désire (et non comme l’Etat belge lui souhaite faire subir).
Rendez-vous demain le 19 juin à 08:40 au check-in du vol SN 357 vers Kinshasa pour parler aux passagers de l’avion et soutenir Jean. Merci pour lui et pour tous les autres.
Si vous ne pouvez pas y aller.
VOUS POUVEZ AGIR :
1/ Téléphonez, envoyez vos courriels, fax et lettres de protestation à SN Airlines et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord.
Madame, Monsieur, Votre vol numéro SN 357 de 10:40 à destination de Kinshasa ce 19 juin 2012 embarquera Jean Ngangu Mvuama un ressortissant congolais. Enfermé au Centre fermé Merksplas depuis 3 mois et demi, on veut l’expulser alors qu’il connaît des problèmes de santé incurables dans son pays d’origine! Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé , vers un pays qui n’est pas le sien, où il ne veut pas aller et où il vivra dans des conditions misérables. Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Jean.
Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Jean, pour notre dignité à tous !
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de : Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre : info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953) Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur: milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580) Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre, Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances, Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Votre vol numéro SN 357 de 10:40 à destination de Kinshasa ce 19 juin 2012 embarquera Jean Ngangu Mvuama un ressortissant congolais. Enfermé au Centre fermé Merksplas depuis 3 mois et demi, on veut l’expulser alors qu’il connaît des problèmes de santé incurables dans son pays d’origine! Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé , vers un pays qui n’est pas le sien, où il ne veut pas aller et où il vivra dans des conditions misérables. Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Jean.
Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Jean, pour notre dignité à tous ! Merci pour lui.
L’Office des Etrangers (OE) a mis, à titre d’expérience pilote, un de ses agents en permanence dans chacune des grandes villes afin de mener au mieux l’opération SEFOR (« sensibilize follow up and return ») de l’OE. Officiellement il s’agit de favoriser au maximum le retour volontaire des personnes qui ont reçu un Ordre de Quitter le Territoire (OQT) suite à une demande de régularisation négative, un regroupement familial négatif, une fin de séjour étudiant, ou à la clôture définitive et négative d’une procédure d’asile.
En fait, la volonté politique est claire. L’accord gouvernemental du gouvernement Di Rupo prévoit d’intensifier la politique dite de retour, c’est-à-dire en réalité d’expulsion. Ainsi, une liste de pays « sûrs » restreint encore le droit d’asile. La nouvelle Secrétaire d’Etat à l’asile et l’immigration, Maggie De Block a obtenu un budget supplémentaire pour faire fonctionner le nouveau centre 127 « tris » ou « Caricole » qui remplace le 127, avec la volonté d’augmenter le nombre d’éloignements.
Pas de « rigueur douce » donc pour la politique d’expulsion.
Parmi ces expulsés, il y a ceux qui avaient cru à la régularisation de 2009, et qui étaient sortis de la clandestinité, poussés par les différentes autorités, pour déposer un dossier. Beaucoup d’associations, de citoyens, confiants, les ont encouragés… Cette opération de régularisation a été partiellement un leurre mis en œuvre par le gouvernement précédent ! Aujourd’hui un grand nombre de personnes reçoivent une réponse négative, alors qu’en 2010 les réponses positives avaient donné espoir… Des personnes vivant ici depuis de longues années se voient refuser la régularisation parce que le document d’identification délivré par leur ambassade n’est pas jugé conforme, ou parce que le contrat de travail indique un salaire mensuel inférieur de quelques euros à la norme fixée dans le cadre de la régularisation par le travail, soit le salaire minimum interprofessionnel garanti (1387,49 € par mois).
Refusons l’ingérence de l’Office des Etrangers dans les communes.
Lors de l’introduction de ces milliers de dossiers, les requérants ont dû fournir leur adresse.
Or, aujourd’hui dans chaque commune sont mis en place les outils efficaces d’identification pour pouvoir expulser rapidement les déboutés de la régularisation. Cela était déjà prévu dans la Circulaire Wathelet du 10 juin 2011 adoptée dans le cadre du gouvernement précédent en affaires courantes. Mais peut-être que les communes n’étaient pas assez collaborantes ou performantes, d’où l’envoi de fonctionnaires de l’O. E dans les administrations communales de 4 grandes villes : le fédéral dicte sa loi aux communes !
A Liège, Charleroi, Anvers, et Gand un fonctionnaire de l’Office est déjà présent depuis plusieurs mois pour assurer une exécution optimale de la circulaire.
Les personnes qui reçoivent une décision négative, et en conséquence un Ordre de Quitter le Territoire, sont convoquées à la Commune une première fois pour la notification avec information sur les possibilités de recours, les possibilités de retour volontaire, les conséquences du non-respect de l’ordre de quitter le territoire : risques de détention et d’expulsion et jusqu’à 5 ans d’interdiction de revenir en Belgique, leur dit-on.
15 jours plus tard, elles sont convoquées pour compléter l’identification, (avec photos pour des formulaires qui permettront l’obtention d’un laissez-passer en cas d’expulsion) et la vérification de la mise en route d’un départ volontaire.
Puis à la fin de l’OQT (30 jours après la notification), la police doit contrôler au domicile que le départ a bien eu lieu et sinon, procéder à l’arrestation.
Comme il est impossible d’arrêter et d’enfermer tout le monde, nous avons appris que les fonctionnaires de l’OE présents dans les villes dressaient leurs « listes » d’arrestations et organisaient les opérations policières. Aujourd’hui, nous apprenons d’ailleurs, grâce à la RTBF, que la fonctionnaire de l’OE à Liège a dorénavant son bureau installé à l’Hôtel de police (commissariat central)! Dans ces listes, on trouve les personnes qui ont un motif de refus de régularisation d’ordre public, mais aussi les personnes qui ont simplement reçu un 2e OQT et qui sont toujours en recours.
N’acceptons pas aujourd’hui ce que nous avons dénoncé pour hier !
Recenser, pour arrêter et expulser, cela ne vous rappelle rien ? En anglais, expulsion se traduit par « deportation ».
Appuyons nous sur le passé pour éclairer l’actualité. Beaucoup des personnes réfugiées chez nous ont fui des situations inacceptables : dictatures, persécutions qui peuvent être politiques, racistes, sexistes ou homophobes, sans oublier les réfugiés climatiques… Ou tout simplement elles ont voulu fuir la guerre ou la misère, pour vivre mieux. Comme 60 millions d’Européens l’ont fait au 19e siècle, migrant essentiellement vers le continent américain !
Rappelons qu’à partir de 1933, les Juifs allemands, victimes de persécutions, ont demandé l’asile en Belgique, en France, aux Pays-Bas…, ils ont été refoulés ou acceptés selon les moments… Mais ce qui est sûr c’est que dès fin 1940, les recensements exigés par l’occupant ont été le préalable à la déportation.
Arrestations par ruse et abus de confiance.
Nous avons constaté que des personnes étaient quand même arrêtées alors que le recours pour leur régularisation, conseillé par l’administration communale, était toujours en cours. Ils n’ont pas tous compris que ce recours n’est pas suspensif…
De plus en plus souvent des personnes sont arrêtées avec abus de confiance. Lorsque la police ne les trouve pas à leur domicile, un avis est laissé, ou une communication à des voisins, demandant à l’intéressé de se rendre au commissariat « concernant son dossier ». S’il s’y rend, il est arrêté et amené dans un centre fermé en vue d’une expulsion.
Ces procédés sont parfaitement contraires à l’article 5 de la Convention européenne des Droits de l’Homme qui interdit l’arrestation par ruse ou mensonges, et à l’arrêt Conka, prononcé par la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme en 2002, suite à l’expulsion collective de Belgique de Tziganes vers la Slovaquie en 1999 après convocation dans les commissariats de Gand « pour une affaire qui vous concerne » .
Face à ces constats, nous dénonçons la circulaire fédérale, et demandons aux autorités communales de résister aux injonctions de l’Office des Etrangers.
Nous revendiquons une politique d’asile et d’immigration respectueuse des Droits Humains. Et nous n’acceptons pas qu’une administration fédérale, l’Office des Etrangers, porte atteinte à l’autonomie communale. Les communes sont le lieu d’accueil et d’intégration des migrants ; elles doivent le rester, en toute indépendance ; elles ne peuvent pas devenir les outils de la répression.
I have four children who have the Belgian nationality. I have been living in Belgium for fifteen years. The four children carry my name. Two of them are placed in care but they often come to visit us, and the other two are from my companion and they live with us. They depend on her , like me while I wait for the regularisation of my stay.
They came and arrested me. I talked with my lawer who said that I could refuse the first plane.
They were three when they came, first to transfer me to Vottem. I was on hunger strike and they told me I needed to go to the hospital because I had problems with my kidneys. They brought me back to Merksplas and I slept there. In the morning, the three came and took me. I was on the plane. I wanted to speak to the pilot.
I’ll send you pictures of me to show you what my face looked like when I arrived in Tunisia. They ruined my face. They would not let me speak. I’ve got asthma, I almost died.
I said “listen Sir, let me, I won’t speak”, and he answered “crève, sale chien!” (Go to hell!). We had a stop in Italie and then inTunisia. Now I’m here, I don’t even know why, what am I to do? I’ll go mad without my children who stayed there. My companion came with my two daughters, but for my older children, how am I going to do?
The lawyer doesn’t answer the phone when I call him.
The people in Vottem told me that we were going to the hospital and once there they put me in a cell and they told me that I would be on a plane the next morning at 3 a.m.
I said that I would refuse anyway. I have children etc. Before they took me to Tunisia my lawyer had told me that it would be impossible for them to put me on the plane because I have 4 kids, the embassy would not let te happen. He also said that even if they succeeded we would go to court etc.
I should have gone to court yesterday or the day before for an immediate release but I didn’t. I didn’t get it. I am going nuts here in Tunisia. I have a boy of 8 years old and another one of 6 years old, I am really strongly attached to my kids. From one day to the other I find myself here, like a dog they brought me here with flip-flops only…
He had leather gloves, you know, like workers, he was holding my mouth, he ruined my face with them, I look like if I had my face burnt now. They put a kind of net over me, they tied it in the front and in the back like they tie animals weighing 500 kg.The tree of them sat on me, I’ve got asthma, I almost died!
There were people on the plane. They didn’t let me shout. The people went on the plane, they put me at the back. There were empty seats at the back. They sat down next to me, one to the right, one to the left and one in front. When I started talking they jumped on me, they didn’t let me move. My body hurts, I’ve got bruises everywhere.
I told them I couldn’t breathe, I asked them to let me speak, I was doing nothing wrong, I was tied anyway, and I had the right to refuse this flight, it was the first one!
I got imprisoned several times, but never inside a plane. Each time we made appeals and submitted a regularisation file. At last they said : So, Sir you have no ties to the Belgian territory.”But what to do?” Having four kids in Belgium was not enough, do I have to buy a dog to have ties on the Belgian territory?
Concerning another document one day, they sent it back to me and said Sorry Sir there was a mistake in your file, soon you’ll get your document. But then they came to pick me up at home and asked me to go with them to the police station for half an hour… since then I’ve been in Tunisia.
25/05/2012 A testimony of an Afghan man who was arrested after starting a hunger strike with 30 other persons to protest against the treatement of persons without papers in Belgium
I have been in the closed centre of Merksplas for two months and five days, but it’s been four years that I have been in Belgium. Now, the procedures are over and they are going to deport me to Afghanistan.
How can that be ? They can not deport me back there! There are too many problems in Afghanistan. In the capital Kabul there are many problems, every day bombs are exploding, people are shooting, there is the mafia, the Talibans…
They told me they would send me back there, this is not normal. My country is not like other countries, I am coming from too far away! I travelled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and finally Belgium.
Overthere in Afghanistan nobody is happy, who likes to live in war every single day? People have no money, they have nothing in my country. I came here with other Afhgans, we did not want war, Talibans and fights every day.
They tell me “no matter if you want to fly back or not, you are going to fly…”
There are many problems in the capital; 100 people died and 200 got wounded in less than two months. I tell them that I want to live, and they tell me that I will leave for war, that it is not their problem, that I will go there. What do i do? Nobody is listening to me.
I was at the embassy of Aghanistan the other day, and they told me that I would not get a let pass for Afghans because there are too many problems there. They told me I would get a passport so that I may leave.
I don’t want to leave! They say there is no problem in Kabul, but what am I going to do overthere?
There are Americans, Talibans, all these soldiers, every day Talibans attack you, every day it is five or ten persons who die.
More than 200 or 300 Afghans died, Talibans want us to leave the country. Nobody is listening.
In Brussels, we were 40 people illegal like me. We went on hunger strike. The first day that the police came they released 30 people, and me and other friends we were brought to the closed centre, on May 12th. It is too hard in the closed centre.
I spent four years in Belgium, I went to school, I had no problems at all. I respect everybody, I never created any trouble. I have to walk from 5 to 10 km because I never take the bus, for fear of controls. I don’t have any money but I never stole anything from anyone, I never killed anyone, I never had any problems, why do I have to leave?
I have been here for several years. If my country was fine, if it was in peace, I would not stay here, I would be the first willing to go back.
Regulations are really strict in Merskplas. At 9 p.m we have to go to our rooms, the doors stay locked, we don’t have mobile phones, televison, we don’t have anything. A lot of people are stressed and anxious here. Thirty or fourty people went on hunger strike but it is very hard because of the regulations. Some people don’t want to eat, they would like to die, they don’t want to stay here. Others, if they find a knife, try to commit suicide. Me too, if I found something… I don’t want to live like this, but we cannot find anything, everything is locked all the time, and there are many controls. I am here without any news, but I think they are going to deport me.
Other Afghans in our group, also coming from Kabul, will have to leave. We were told that there are no problems in the capital.
That’s bad news. I have had to go regularly to hospital for the last two years and I take pills all the time. When they deport me to Afghanistan I will not find any way to get hospitalised, I won’t have anything. They say that there are plenty of things for me over there, but I know there is nothing in my country. My father died two months ago, and my brother was killed in Kabul nine or ten months ago.
You know, they only surf the internet to check and then they say there it is safe, there it is not safe, etc.
If I was given the guarantee that I could go back without risking my life, I would sign and go back! If I was given a guarantee or that a person left and lived with me for one week only I would say OK I’m staying here. But nobody is listening to us.
I have to go back and then they will think I came to make a report for the Americans and they will kill me, Talibans will not wait a single second to kill me when they see I am coming from a European country, they will only think I’ve come as a spy. Many people died that way. This is my situation, I explained it over and over again, I don’t know yet if it will change something or not.
I did not come from a country one comes from for 200 or 300 eur by plane and with a visa. No, I had to pay 12,000 euros to enter Belgium, why? because I wanted to live in peace.
It was not easy. It took me two months from Afghanistan to Belgium, by foot, by boat, with a truck, I saw many things. I nearly died. I stayed for 24 hours in a truck, there was no oxygen in there. It is not normal that I had to pay 12,000 euros, it is not normal to pay that for my life.
Interview of a man detained in the closed centre of Merksplas. He got arrested when in transit from Morocco to England. He is living in England where he has had the refugee status for 10 years.
I had travelled to Africa, I was on my way back, I was in transit in Zaventem.
Policemen asked to see my passport and when they saw it they said “no, this is not you, this is not a picture of you”. I took out all my documents, my bank cards, my English driving licence, all my documents, they all have the same name, the same birth date, my picture is also in my driving licence.
They brought me to a center over there and they gave me a lawyer. The lawyer came to see me, I explained my situation but he started making a fuss.
I have been in England for ten years, since September 9 2000, I have been recognised as a refugee since 2002. All my family is there: my children, my wife, my sisters, my young brother; we got the status of family reunification.
They confiscated them and don’t want to give them back to me. First they said it was not me, but it happened to other people who had visas, passports, all in order for the transit, they were with me there for one month and a half. Now they want me to go back to Africa, but I don’t have any family in Africa! They wanted me to go to Morocco, in Casablanca! I swear! I even had the ticket! They forced me on the plane. I refused. I explained the situation to the pilot, he said that he could not have me on his plane. They made me disembark. My bank cards… I don’t know if they lost them, there is money on them, and they also have my work permit.
I am not Moroccan! To send someone to Morocco, first you must identify him, they didn’t even bring me to the Moroccan embassy to identify me! They gave me the ticket to Casablanca because I had bought my ticket with Royal Air Maroc! They didn’t even identify me. One can not be taken to Morocco like this! I have a travel document from United Kingdom, I am living in England, not in Casablanca. It is the fourth time I have refused.
How can someone who is living in England with the refugee status be deported? Even diplomatic laws… someone who has settled in a certain country, when in transit in another country, you may send him back to the country where he has settled. Then they got the whole thing… they changed the story, it was the stamp which was not right. This is what Belgians do! You can not do that! What they do at the immigration office, one can not do that!
They told me that I would go to England from Africa. So I asked them for my passport! They said they would not give it to me because of a certain stamp I needed. All this is bullshit!
Other people were arrested with me, all their papers were all right, they stayed with me for two months more or less.
In my case, it is better to ask the Belgian authorities here.
They talk about human rights, but it is not the case!
At the airport, they left me naked, they beated me, and I was naked! I am telling the truth! Here many people are sick and suffer! One does not beat someone to have him on a plane! One who is handcuffed, can he still be beaten? They threatened me heavily you know!
When I left for the plane I asked the pilot for my bag with my documents, he even thought they had hidden it, because it contains all my evidence.
My lawyer wrote me to say he would make an appeal, but I don’t trust him, I wanted to change. Before I got my ticket for Casablanca I rang him and I explained the situation, he told me that he would make an appel after. How can you make an appeal after? For someone who is almost getting deported to Morocco??!!
I’ve got a headache, I sleep badly here, I suffer, many people suffer here, I’ve got insomnia. We are in prison here. We may go out for 45 minutes, then they close the doors, and I don’t talk about the food… we are in prison here.
There many racists here too, who hate Black people, not everybody of course, but most of the people. All we see here is pathetic.
Someone who makes a hunger strike is put to an isolation cell here, although he has the right to go on hunger strike! There are seven people in cells for the moment.
I don’t know if the media are aware of this. Even in England there are organisations that come to the prison to visit the people.
They threatened me, they insulted me, they pushed me etc and before handcuffing me they left me naked… Please ask them why they did that to me!
At the airport they beat another guy, he didn’t even go to the hospital, and he has been here for one month already. What policemen do in Zaventem is not good.
I lodged a complaint against the policemen who lost my bank cards, they must reimburse me. The social assistant told me that on Wednesday they will contact the policemen who arrested me in Zaventem.
It is also why we are asking you for some help.
You see… the passport, the refugee status, since 1951, in 2002 the gave me the papers and now why have I been arrested?
We have heard about Kanote Cyri, Malian, born on February 14th 1994, living in the closed centre Le Caricole.
He arrived to the airport on April 29th and was brought to the centre directly. Probably in the framework of the new Convention of Chicago (the company responsible for his flight must deport him to his destination of departure). He will therefore be deported to China this 14th of June 2012!
This young Malian man who is only 18 years old arrived in Brussels with false papers. It may be one of the reasons why he will be deported to his country of departure, China.
FLIGHT
14 juin,
HU492 vers Beijing China 1Pm
Be at he airport if you can on 11 am
Please send faxes and emails of protest to the people responsible for this deportation.
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
It becomes tricky to make a list of the phone calls we get every day from the closed centres. Here are a few elements and questions from the interviews made in the closed centres on the Belgian way to deal with migrations…
ABOUT RESISTANCE IN CLOSED CENTRES
For more than a month it seems that the management of the Belgian closed centres has become extremely difficult.
In the closed centre of Merksplas, a strong riot took place on May 10th, that was rapidly suppressed by the police. A dozen of recalcitrant detainees were put in isolation cells for 11 days! http://detention.theowlseyes.info/category/Merksplas
A man from Guinea is in a cell because he doesn’t want to drink, eat and wash. His state is very worrying.
A man from the Ivory Coast who had spilled coffee all over him and got burnt was finally brought to the hospital after several days of isolation.
In the Caricole centre twelve asylum seekers started a hunger strike on May 28th to protest against the unpredictable and aleatory answers they get regarding their dossiers. The management ‘promised’ a solution to their problems. Ten of them are still on hunger strike!
In Caricole too, a woman from Cameroon requested the asylum. She is three months pregnant, expecting twins. The social assistant proposed her to abort before here deportation!!!!! Isn’t that scandalous?
ABOUT DEPORTATIONS
On the other hand, deportations are doing well, and the repression of escorts is often fruitful.
The detainees also report that arrests and deportations happen through cunning stratagems and are sometimes more than illegal. People are arrested after being summoned to the police station to settle their regularisation file, deportations take place with no respect for the legal deadline of 48 hours when the Office should warn the person, deportation take place by force as of the first attempt (a Tunisian man, father of 4 Belgian children was deported by force and by surprise).
Other facts: some of the the let pass that enable the deportation seem not to be issued by the concerned consulates and would be ‘trafficked’ by the Foreign Office. Several countries for which this has been reported are Congo, Afghanisgtan and Guinea.
A Senegalese man was going to be deported. At the last minute his deportation was cancelled following an appeal. They then took another Senegalse and deported him. That one did not have the chance to go to court.
In spite of administrative or humanitarian situations that are really shady, the Foreign Office keeps trying to bring the deportation candidate to the airport. It is pressure and appeals that may prevent deportation at the very last minute.
ABOUT THE TRIVIALISATION of our migration policies
One decision-making body got the supreme power to accomplish this task of getting rid by all means of all those undesirable. All the detainees speak of hatred and violence. Would this hatred and violence not be reprehensible, coming from a representative of the State?
The detainees, the ‘recalcitrant’ try with their very restricted means to express their revolt, to resist to this imprisonment in an extremely repressive prison environment, where people are locked in and isolated as soon as they show a sign of disapproval. Solidarity movements are frequent in the centres.
‘Citizens’ show indignation at this with their means.
Associations ask for alternatives to imprisonment and/or the humanisation of the centres. But violence and tortures are rarely denounced and seem to become trivial facts.
How long are we going to let it happen? How did we get to that? When are we going to denounce this fascistic drift of our “democratic” system?
Monsieur Diallo, 54 ans a fini par “accepté” son expulsion hier sur Conakry. Il en avait marre de se battre. Le fait qu’il ait signé sur le document qu’on lui a présenté fera monter les statistiques belges de “retour volontaire” (différentes de celles organisées par l’IOM). On peut s’interroger sur le sens de “volontaire” !!
Première tentative d’expulsion pour Abdulaye Diallo le 12 juin par le vol SN217 de 14:30 à destination de Conakry. Monsieur Diallo a 54 ans et réside depuis bien longtemps en Belgique!
Il est enfermé au centre fermé de Bruges depuis 1 mois et demi. Il a été arrêté à Molenbeek. Les gardiens du centre lui ont dit qu’il serait expulsé de gré ou de force, malgré le fait que ce soit sa première expulsion et qu’il doit normalement pouvoir la refuser.
Abdulaye ne veut et ne peut pas retourner dans son pays et demande de l’aide pour résister à cette expulsion.
RDV à l’aéroport de Zaventem ce mardi 12 juin à 12:30 pour empêcher cette expulsion en parlant aux passagers et aux personnels de cette compagnie.
Merci pour lui et pour tous les autres, enfermés injustement dans ces prisons !
Si vous ne pouvez pas y aller,
1/ Téléphonez, envoyez vos courriels, fax et lettres de protestation à SN Airlines et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord.
_______________________
Madame, Monsieur,
Votre vol numéro SN 217 de 14:30 à destination de Konakry ce 12 juin 2012 embarquera monsieur Diallo, 54ans.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas depuis presque deux mois, il vit en Belgique depuis bien longtemps.
Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Monsieur Diallo.Ne laissez pas de nouvelles violences se passer sans intervenir ! Pour notre dignité à tous.
Merci pour lui.
______________________________
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de :
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances,
Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Le vol numéro SN 217 de 14:3à à destination de Conakry ce 12 juin 2012 embarquera monsieur Dialo, 54 ans.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas depuis presque presque deux mois, il vit en Belgique depuis bien longtemps.
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Monsieur Diallo.
Ne laissez pas de nouvelles violences se passer sans intervenir ! Pour notre dignité à tous.
[ALERTE EXPULSION] – LOUIS Kevin Lamah, Guinéen, 22ans – 15/02/1990 Bruxelles
Deuxième tentative d’expulsion pour Kevin le 07 juin par le vol SN217 de 14:30 à destination de Conakry.
Kevin est enfermé au centre fermé de Merksplas depuis le 16 mars. Il a fait un long trajet de migration pendant 4 mois en partant du Sénégal et passant par Istanbul, l’Ukraine, la Russie, la Slovénie, l’Algérie et la Belgique, où il est arrivé par bateau le 15 mars.
Il a fait une demande d’asile et à été enfermé au centre de Merksplas dés sa demande. Cette demande a été refusée et l’Office de la honte va à nouveau essayer de l’expulser ce 07 juin.
Kevin ne veut et ne peut pas retourner dans son pays et demande de l’aide pour résister à cette expulsion.
RDV à l’aéroport de Zaventem ce jeudi 7 mai à 12:30 pour empêcher cette expulsion en parlant aux passagers et aux personnels de cette compagnie.
Following several perturbations (two “uncooperative” refugees transferred from Vottem to 127bis, isolation of a man from the Ivory Coast and another one from Guinea who doesn’t eat nor drink since his arrival last week), two ambulances came, one of the intensive care unit.
In the meantime, the prisoners were regrouped and had to go through general search (shoes, socks and confiscation of their telephone batteries). After this body searches, they had to stay in the yard while their bedrooms were being searched. Once back into their rooms, they found chaos, everything had been put upside down!
These events create a huge tension, people are shouthing and crying, “some are getting mad”!
The tension remains unbearable this day, 6th of June.
07/06 :Notre ami a été ramené au centre avec diverses sutures aux poignet et au cou. Il est toujours en isolement. Actuellement il refuse de manger et serait transféré dans un aure centre dans les prochains jours
This Monday morning, we got informed about a suicide attempt: a Pakistani tried to cut his throat in the toilets of the centre. He was urgently brought to the hospital. Other detainees refused to eat today as a sign of protest. “We are deeply shocked” said one of them.
The man has been living in Belgium for almost 10 years and he tried several types of procedures and actions (among which two hunger strikes) for his situation to be regularised, but with no positive results in the long term.
He is now in the hospital and we are still expecting news on his situation.
Twelve persons among whom three women have been on hunger strike for seven days at Caricole in order to protest against their detention in this new closed centre for asylum seekers. They denounce the treatment of their asylum requests and the completely unpredictable decisions linked to them.
UPDATE 6/06: His deportation flight this morning was finally cancelled. He was first brought to the airport and then transferred to the closed centre of Vottem.
It must be noted that the let-pass of Mr Mola was not legal at all and that he had a medical certificate asserting that his state could not allow such a journey.
The Foreign Office tried to deport him anyway, but following different kinds of pressure they abandoned their project.
Thanks to all who sent faxes or emails and to those who were present at the airport!
Third deportation attempt for Mr Albert-Edy Mola on June 6th with flight SN357 to Kinshasa.
Political opponent, Mr Mola is in charge of the mobilisation of MIRGEC (Independent Movement for the Recognition of the Congolese genocide). He has been detained in a closed center for almost 4 months.
During his second deportation attempt on April 22nd, he got beated and humiliated by six police officers. Since then Mr Mola has had strong pains in his back and he needs a medical follow-up. However he was not taken to any hospital and the doctor of the centre only gave him paracetamol as a cure!
The doctor of Mr Mola came to visit him and told the management of the centre that Mr Mola needed to go to the hospital for a psychological and physical follow-up but nothing has been done.
Although they took note of the torture that Mr Mola had been through at Zaventem airport, the direction of Merksplas closed centre did not take any sanction against the six policemen.
As all the other Congolose opposing to the regime of Hippolyte Kanambe alias Joseph Kabila, Mr Mola would run heavy risks if deported to Congo.
He even says he would prefer to die than going on that plane.
Meeting at Zaventem airport on Wednesday June 6th 08:40 a.m to prevent his deportation and speak to the passengers and personnel of Brussels Airlines (flight check-in).
Thanks for him and for all the others who are unjustly imprisoned in these cenres!
If you are not able to go:
1/ Give a ring, send emails, faxes and letters of protestation to SN Airlines and ask for your message to be forwarded to the Captain of the flight.
Dear Madam, Dear Sir,
Your flight SN 357 to Kinshasa leaving this Wednesday 6 June at 10:40 a.m will have Mr MOLA INGELI Albert-Eddy on board in the framework of a deportation.
Imprisoned in Merksplas closed centre for almost 4 months, he has been living in Belgium for 14 years. During his last deportation attempt, he got heavily beated by the six police officers who were escorting him. Since then he got no other cure than paracetamol. As a political opponent to the regime of Kabila, he clearly indicated that he would rather die than being deported to Congo. You have the power to oppose to his departure.
Please don’t let new violent acts be perpetrated on board without interfering! Do it for the dignity of us all!
Thank you on his behalf
____________________________
2/ Send this message to the Foreign Office and the cabinets concerned:
To the attention of Mr Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Mrs Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur: milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129,025048500, 025048580)
Mrs Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice :info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Mr Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers :helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de
l’Egalité des chances,
Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à
l’Intégration sociale
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Le vol numéro SN 357 de 10:40 à destination de Kinshasa ce 06 juin 2012 embarquera monsieur MOLA INGELI, Albert–Eddy.
Enfermé au Centre de Merksplas depuis presque quatre mois, il vit en Belgique depuis 14 ans. Lors de la dernière tentative d’expulsion, il a
subi de graves violences de la part des 6 policiers qui l’escortaient.
Depuis, il n’a reçu comme soins que du paracétamol. Opposant politique au régime de Kabila, il a clairement dit qu’il préférerait mourir plutôt que d’être rapatrié au Congo.
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Monsieur Mola.
Ne laissez pas de nouvelles violences se passer sans intervenir ! Pour notre dignité à tous.
DEPORTATION NOTICE – ALOUIS KEVIN LAMAH 15/02/1990
Guinean, 22 years old – deportation to Conakry on 26/05/2012
Second deportation attempt for Kevin foreseen on May 26th on the collective flight AC6346 , LH5668, UA9998 , US5968 to Conakry, 02:30 p.m.
Kevin has been detained in the Merksplas closed centre since March 16th. He had a migration journey of 4 months, starting from Senegal and going through Istanbul, Ukraine, Russia, Slovenia, Algeria and Belgium. He arrived to Belgium by boat on March 15th.
He introduced an asylum request and got detained in the Merksplas centre the same day. The request was rejected and the Office of Shame will again try to deport him on May 26th.
Kevin doesn’t want to and cannot go back to his country and he is asking for help to resist this deportation.
Gathering at Zaventem airport this Saturday 26th of May 12:30 a.m to prevent this deportation and talk to the passengers and the flight personnel of the different companies.
ATTENTION: different companies are responsible for this flight, therefore the luggage check-in will most probably take place at different counters (AC6346 , LH5668, UA9998 , US5968).
The Check-in number is 1.01.
According to the prisoners of the closed centre 127bis, 90% of the detainees are DUBLIN 2 cases. They are being deported to the European country where they first introduced an asylum request. Many accept this return after several months of imprisonment and pressure in the closed centre. They say they will continue their migration journey to other countries or continents as soon as they have the opportunity to do so.
The few persons who got released generally get an Order to leave the territory; which doesn’t improve their situation. The “blackmail” for voluntary return is systematic, with fake promises of a possible return and eventually a certain amount of money (ndlr: isn’t this also a kind of human trafficking?).
More and more flights under escort : those who do not want or who can not return to their country are generally deported by force escorted by 5 to 10 police officers. Sometimes, passengers refuse to travel under these conditions and the candidate is brought back to the centre, not without avoiding insults and assault at the airport police station.
During a call for mobilisation in the airport in order to try and prevent a deportation, the federal police proceeds with its intimidation, with dogs and identity checks.
Interviews from the centres:
“Your deportation machine is working well”.
“We are cattle brought to slaughterhouse”.
“Such a waste”.
“Seven police officers make a return flight to Kinshasa, only to deport one man, what a waste! All this in times of austerity…”.
127Bis
One Iraki in a wheel chair, in Belgium for 7 years.
Deportation under escort of Thierry, a Congolese opponent, detained for several months in 127bis.
Attempt of deportation under escort of P., Congolese, on May 24th, after 6 months of closed centre.
A Moroccan woman, having lived in Belgium for ten years or so, got released with an Order to leave the territory. They tried to deport her as of the beginning of her detention. The judge released her twice, the Foreign Office appealed to the decision. She finally got freed with an order to leave the territory, without really knowing the reason of it, there would have been an error!
Three Tunisian men brought from Vottem to 127bis on May 23rd, put in isolation cells as soon as they got there!
Merksplas
Many calls from Merksplas. In some wings there are solidarity movements and attempts to call outside for help. They ask that media and NGOs come and see their detention conditions.
One breakout on May 23rd during a medical examination.
Rumor of death in the week-end of 19-20 May during the deportation of a Maghrebi in the airport. The Office denies the rumor and the detainees who had informed us don’t want to (can not) talk anymore!
Following the riot of May 14th, some detainees stayed in isolation cells for 11 days, without water nor food; a practice which can be assimilated to a degrading and inhuman treatment. They are out of the cells now.
Several Afghan people call for help. We know that two of them got deported, a third one would be deported on May 29th. The Embassy of Afghanistan doesn’t always give out passes, and if they don’t it is the Foreign Office that gives them out, to enable deportations.
Asian newcomers.
Two Congolese men were subject to several deportation attempts, some of them very harsh.
Text message received on May 20th 02:33 p.m:
Hello, I am of Congolese origin. I have been in Merkplas for four months. I am a member of the opposition. I refused twice to be deported to Congo by force. The last time was on April 22nd 2012. I was handcuffed like a criminal and brought to the plane in Zaventem to be handed over to M. Hippolyte Kanambe Alias (Joseph Kabila) and his death agents in Kinshasa. Fortunately, there were 43 passengers on board who shouted and the captain asked the police to have me disembark the plane. On my return in their cell in Zaventem, 6 Belgian policemen beated and tortured me. I lodged a complaint against them to the registry of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
A demonstration is being organised by the political Congolese opponents this 30th May at 01:00 p.m in front of Merksplas centre. (Call follows.)
Vottem
M. May, Tunisian, detained for five months in closed centres, 127bis and then Vottem, who made a hunger strike, in Belgium since 1999, diabetic and in a wheel chair, extremely exhausted by his long detention, ended up giving up: he accepted a voluntary return and 250€.
A Congolese opponent, lucky to have a residence permit in France, finds himself imprisoned in Vottem. Belgium tries to send him back to Kinshasa. The court is against that and calls for his return to France.
Bruges
Life is awful in the closed centre of Bruges. According to visitors, it is the harshest. Testimonies are rare seen the isolation of the prisoners.
One man, detained in Bruges for 3 months and living in Belgium for 15 years sums up the situation:
“The living conditions are tough inside the centre : we are 20 people who sleep together, without privacy, it is very hard to sleep. Besides, there is the stress never to know when they may come and take you for deportation.” He is extremely angry against the Belgian system and denounces the unpredictable application of the regularisation procedures, the inhuman treatment “we are being treated like animals, imprisoned, although my police record is clean, I never did anything wrong”…
AND ALSO
We heard that a collective flight will be organised on June 15th by Great-Britain to Kinshasa to deport Congolese people who had chosen to live in England: will the flight stop over in Brussels?
On the web site, the new rubric “Ongoing deportations” and dreadful news here.
Troisième tentative d’expulsion pour Fely T., Pasteur engagé aux côtés de Jean-Pierre BEMBA contre KABILA. En Belgique depuis 2009, où il a sa mère (Belge) malade, ses frères et soeurs, ainsi que sa femme et ses 2 enfants, il est enfermé au 127bis depuis le 18 janvier. On a déjà tenté de se débarrasser de Fely lors du vol sécurisé de mars dernier, mais son avocat avait alors pu s’y opposer à temps. Deux décisions négatives plus tard (9bis et asile), on lui a de nouveau programmé un vol en avril dernier, puis un nouveau demain, avec escorte cette fois.
Fely a demandé l’asile cet après-midi, l’OE réagira-t-il à temps pour annuler le vol comme la loi l’y oblige ?
Vol Brussels Airlines SN359 de 10:45 demain à destination de Kinshasa.
VOUS POUVEZ AGIR :
________________________
1/ Téléphonez, envoyez vos courriels, fax et lettres de protestation à SN Airlines et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord.
_______________________
Madame, Monsieur,
Votre vol numéro SN359 de 10:45 demain à destination de Kinshasa demain jeudi 24 mai embarquera Fely T. un ressortissant Congolais de 42 ans.
Enfermé au Centre 127bis depuis 5 mois on veut l’expulser alors qu’il a demandé l’asile cet après-midi. Dans le cas où l’Office des Etrangers n’aurait pas fait le nécessaire pour se mettre en conformité avec notre droit et annuler l’expulsion en attendant qu’il soit statué sur la demande d’asile, vous devez empêcher son retour forcé, et ne pas vous rendre complice de pratiques illégales qui mettent en jeu la vie de cet opposant au régime KABILA.
Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposer au départ de Fely. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Fely, pour le respect de la Loi, et pour notre dignité à tous !
______________________________
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de :
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances,
Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Le vol Brussels Airlines numéro SN359 de 10:45 demain à destination de Kinshasa demain jeudi 24 mai embarquera Fely T. un ressortissant Congolais de 42 ans.
Enfermé au Centre 127bis depuis 5 mois on veut l’expulser alors qu’il a demandé l’asile cet après-midi. Dans le cas où les services de l’Office des Etrangers n’aurait pas fait le nécessaire pour se mettre en conformité avec notre droit et annuler l’expulsion en attendant qu’il soit statué sur la demande d’asile, vous devez empêcher son retour forcé, et ne pas vous rendre complice de pratiques illégales qui mettent en jeu la vie de cet opposant au régime KABILA.
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, VOUS avez le pouvoir de faire prévaloir l’équité, en vous opposant au départ de Fely. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Fely, pour le respect de la Loi, et pour notre dignité à tous !
Merci pour lui
[Prenom NOM]
Citoyen inquiet et solidaire
__________________________________________________
3/ Rendez vous à l’aéroport de Zaventem à 8:45 ce 24 mai pour empêcher son expulsion vol numéro SN359 de 10:45 demain à destination de Kinshasa
Troisième tentative d’expulsion de Madame Béatrice SITA (No National : SP : 6946621), Angolaise enceinte de 6 mois et demi.
Béatrice a été arrêtée lors d’une convocation à l’Office des Etrangers, il y a plus d’un mois. Elle va être renvoyée vers l’Espagne, pays ou elle n’a fait que transiter et ou elle ne connait personne. Cette fois on tentera d’expulser cette dame enceinte « avec escorte » !.
Vol Brussels Airlines SN3721 de 08:50 demain à destination de Madrid.
VOUS POUVEZ AGIR :
________________________
1/ Téléphonez, envoyez vos courriels, fax et lettres de protestation à SN Airlines et demandez à ce que que votre message soit transmis au Commandant de bord.
_______________________
Madame, Monsieur,
Votre vol numéro SN 3721 de 08:50 à destination de Madrid ce 24 mai 2012 embarquera Béatrice Sita une ressortissante Angolaise de 34 ans.
Enfermée au Centre 127bis depuis plus d’un mois on veut l’expulser alors que elle n’a jamais que transité par l’Espagne et qu’elle est enceinte de bientôt 7 mois ! Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé , surtout dans un état de grossesse avancé, vers un pays ou elle ne connait personne.
Vous avez le pouvoir de vous opposert au départ de Béatrice. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Béatrice, pour notre dignité à tous !
______________________________
2/ Envoyez ce message à l’Office des étrangers et aux cabinets concernés :
A l’attention de :
Monsieur Elio Di Rupo, Premier ministre (info@premier.fed.be / Fax 022173328, 025126953)
Madame Joëlle Milquet, Vice-Première ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur : milquet@lecdh.be / milquet@milquet.belgium.be / Fax: 022380129, 025048500, 025048580)
Madame Maggie De Block, Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale, adjointe à la Ministre de la Justice : info@fedasil.be / info.maggiedeblock@ibz.fgov.be
Monsieur Freddy Roosemont, Directeur de l’Office des Etrangers : helpdesk.dvzoe@dofi.fgov.be / Fax 027939669
Monsieur le Premier Ministre
Madame la Vice-Première Ministre et Ministre de l’Intérieur et de l’Egalité des chances,
Madame le Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile, à l’Immigration et à l’Intégration sociale
Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers,
Le vol numéro SN 3721 de 08:50 à destination de Madrid ce 24 mai 2012 embarquera Béatrice Sita une ressortissante Angolaise de 34 ans.
Enfermée au Centre fermé 127bis depuis plus d’un mois on veut l’expulser alors qu’elle est enceinte de près de 7 mois. Vous devez empêcher son retour forcé vers un pays qu’elle ne connait pas, pour lui laisser le temps d’obtenir, avec l’aide d’associations, ces preuves sur place.
Mesdames et Messieurs les Ministres, Monsieur le Directeur de l’Office des étrangers, VOUS avez le pouvoir de faire prévaloir l’équité , en vous opposant au départ de Béatrice Sita. Ne laissez pas passer cette opportunité, pour Béatrice, et pour notre dignité à tous !
Merci pour elle
[Prenom NOM]
Citoyen inquiet et solidaire
__________________________________________________
3/ Rendez vous à l’aéroport de Zaventem à 6:50 ce 24 mai pour empêcher son expulsion vol numéro SN 3721 de 08:50 à destination de Madrid
It has become dreadfully common to hear about or follow deportation cases. You know, the deportation of people who, for different reasons and life circumstances, wish to settle, some for some time, others for a long time, or perhaps for ever, in other regions than the one they were born in. You know, these people for whom the governing institutions have organised and decided regulations, laws and other directives to allow deportations. They grant themselves the power to decide who has the “right” to stay where he wants to and who hasn’t. And he who hasn’t got that determined right can therefore be arrested, imprisoned and deported in complete legitimacy.
However, some people resist, some cannot accept the treatment they are given, they fear retaliation, revenge,imprisonment or death if returned to areas they fled, sometimes many years ago.
I would like to share the story of Patrice Ndjonssy who has already gone through 15, yes, FIFTEEN deportation attempts to Cameroon! Who the hell are these sick minds who persist like that ? In this case, they are in Britain, but they are to be found all around Fortress Europe!
And we should shut up?
NO!
———————–
The 15th attempt to deport Patrice Ndjonssy failed.
This is the appeal that had been made just before (April 2012).
STAND UP AGAINST HIS DEPORTATION
Patrice Ndjonssy is a 40 years old Cameroonian man currently detained at Colnbrook IRC. Patrice fled to the UK in 2008 to escape persecution in Cameroon. His safety is at severe risk, should he be deported.
UKBA plans to deport Patrice on Virgin Atlantic VA657 from London Heathrow @ 22:45 hrs Thursday 19th April 2012 to Accra, Ghana for onward transit to Cameroon.
This will be the 15th attempt to deport Patrice.
Patrice rang yesterday evening to say that eight officers had come for him and taken him to Short Term Holding and served him with his 15th set of RDs, before putting him into his cell they took his phone off him, leaving Patrice without any form of free communication.
This deportation attempt also failed and Patrice is again imprisoned. You can contact him by email: patricendjo@yahoo.fr.
127 bis:
a lot of stress in the centre, many discussions, one suicide attempt, conflicts among detainees and isolation of recalcitrant individuals.
Two persons have been in a hunger strike for one week: one national from Maghreb and one from the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The Moroccan has stopped his hunger strike. The Palestinian was taken away while on a walk and has since disappeared.
An Afghan who was deported last week is said to be in jail in Kabul (to be confirmed).
A second Afghan will be subject to his second deportation attempt on May 13th. An appeal is spreading to prevent this deportation http://detention.theowlseyes.info/http://detention.theowlseyes.info/
You can listen to his interview here : We can clearly detect the distress of the people who need to be welcomed and who, once deported, will be again confronted with the situations who made them flee their country. They may expect imprisonment and other threats. This is absolutely opposite to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (for those who need agreements or conventions signed by the States in order to assess what is right).
Six Afghans are currently detained in 127bis.
One man from the Ivory Coast faced his fourth forced deportation attempt to Israel on May 10th!
One Syrian man, Omar, was deported to Poland (due to the European “Dublin” rules). He is currently in an open centre in the country. There was a lot of international pressure around that issue.
Steenrock May 5th: positively perceived by many in the centre, lots of lively debates followed in the centre. http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/closed-centres-humanitarian-or-repressive/
Other case, other situation: Zalia who was detained for six months and who was finally released. She got married and is happy. She thanks everybody!
On May 11th, a man who had arrived from Tunisia a few days before slashed his wrists, he was brought to the hospital and then escaped from there.
On May 11th, violent altercations among detainees: isolation of three of them.
Bruges
A mother and his son, from Georgia, got detained after having lived five years in Belgium.
Vottem
Mr May, handicapped, from Tunisia, faced his second deportation attempt on May 13th.
Caricole : moving ended on May 8th. The occupants of 127bis now have new ‘locked up’ premises.
On May 11th, we heard that some 40 policemen had entered the centre, hit all the participants to the riot, and that five people have been put in isolation. Everything is now back to normal and security has been reinforced.
To be noted that the “rules of procedures” say: the “rules” allow a “disciplinary regime” and measures of coercion at the discretion of the centre’s management.
Testimony from a Afghan man imprisoned in a closed centre , which is at risk to be deported to Afghanistan.
Listen :
[audio:http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/I-just-want-to-live-ok.mp3|titles=I just want to live ok]
So, Hello?
Hello.
How are you?
Fine, and you?
Fine. You are in the center 127 now?
Yes.
What’s happening inside the cente?
Euh, nothing good. The rules’ of the center is too hard.
What kind of rules?
The rule of this is too hard from another scant (??). 9 o’clock they close the doors of all rooms. I come from Afghanistan.
How long have you spent in the closed center?
I was in another center, two months I’ve spent in another center. It was in an airport, in Brussels airport, then I fear I don’t go back to my country, then they brought me in that center.
They tried to send you back to Afghanistan?
Yeah but I don’t want because I have there problems, but they say that’s life. They just need documents, now they don’t see the problems of people. They say the one time more then send me, but I don’t want bc when they send me (to) Afghanistan I have one problem on the side of Talibans. And another problem is that when they send me in Afghanistan, they put every person in jail. Ahmit was deported from there, and now is in jail: they deported him and now he is maybe two years in the jail. Because of that I go to Belgium illegally.
You say you have news from Ahmit?
Yes, from Ahmit Ranh.
He is in jail now?
Yeah, he is in jail now in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan government put him in a jail. There is another jail, that’s why you go illegally to another country, why they send you back here, that’s the reason. I have threat from the side of Talibans also, but now I have threat from the side of the government also: that’s two problems for me.
And you asked asylum in Belgium?
Yeah, I asked asylum in Belgium. I asked my social asylum for the second time, she said no, tomorrow I will ask for my life, because I don’t want to go back to my country, they don’t have rules to send me back to my country. I broke the passport, I don’t give them a passport.
How do they do to put you back in a plane?
By force. My social say they send you to Turkey, and maybe to Kaboul. There is no life there in Afghanistan.
Okay, so they will send you to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Afghanistan. That’s how they do?
Yes.
Do you know when they want to send you back in Afghanistan, to throw you away?
No, I don’t know. Today I see my social, and she say I don’t know. When I know I will see to you. I don’t want to go back to my country. When someone has problems, they come here; when someone doesn’t have problem, they can’t come here. What’s the reason? The reason to come here is that we have problems in Afghanistan. Everyone knows there is a problem.
Yeah, clear everyone knows.
Yeah, but they say that’s life, that’s truth. When someone says truth, they don’t believe. When someone says lies, they believe.
So you say you told the truth, and they don’t trust you.
Yeah, because of that I say anything simple. They need documents, but I don’t have documents. Just I need the documents from the side of Talibans, a letter.
That’s crazy.
Yeah.
They say you have to have a document from Talibans or from government that says that you are a wanted person.
Yeah.
So, what you can do is calling your lawyer as soon as possible, and ask her to make things go very quickly, because it’s very important.
Yeah, that’s very important because the Belgian government deports the people. The government doesn’t think about the life of people, there’s no human rights. We need your people’s help. Without the help of media, we can’t do anything. The government of Belgium put me in jail, just I need life, now I need the freedom of Belgium. They put me in jail, I will give them a text of my life in jail, I don’t go back to my country because I have problems in Afghanistan.
I tell you, you can call your lawyer as soon as possible, and you can call us if you have any information, any news. And I can call you back and keep in touch with you into one or two days, okay? To speak about the situation.
From inside the 127bis closed centre, during the SteenRock on May 5 2012here
Some people greatly appreciated this act of solidarity, even though it was really though that afternoon…
The security service had been reinforced (twice or three times bigger than normally). The detainees had the impression that everything that was being said and done was controlled. It also seems that one part of them did not understand the meaning of the concert, to the great amazement of others.
Some of them who have been living in Belgium for a long time tried to explain what was happening; which gave way to lively discussions during the whole afternoon.
Comments heard during the discussions:
“They are not here for us, they are just celebrating”.
“They are applauding the closed centre”.
“The centre is managed by the United Nations, just like the other camps in our countries, it has nothing to do with Belgium.”
“We have board and lodging, much better than in the camps in our countries”.
Some had to explain why this concert was taking place, the principle of solidarity, the aim and the origin of closed centres.
They were all very tired and nervous after that afternoon of discussions.
One may appreciate that the event led to debates inside the centre, but one cannot but notice again that some detainees don’t know where they are and that they mix up humanitarian and repressive policies…
“March Special Offer
One-way ticket to Afghanistan”
Generously offered by the Belgian Immigration Office and Turkish Airlines
.
For some months now Afghans have been getting stopped and locked-up in detention centres so they can be deported to their country of origin. Hamed was deported on 2 May and since then we’ve not heard anything from him (he is probably in prison in Kabul).
Namathaula was subjected to a first deportation attempt, which he managed to resist. A second attempt, on 13 May, could be fatal.
“The Belgian government deports the people. The government doesn’t think about the life of people, there’s no human rights. We need your people’s help. Without the help of media, we can’t do anything. Just I need life !”
Other Afghans, sometimes very young, locked-up in detention centres will no doubt have to go through the same thing.
Overt the past few months the Immigration Office has proved itself to be incapable, whether knowingly or unknowingly, of assessing the risks involved with sending someone back to their country of origin. This is true for the collective flights to the Congo and Guinea, as well as for Afghanistan. Upon arrival in the country some people are locked-up while some simply disappear altogether.
We are aware of the situation in Afghanistan. Millions of refugees have fled the country and have claimed asylum in Iran or Pakistan. Most European countries have suspended deportations to this war-torn country, according to HCR reports (2).
The United Kingdom has cancelled collective flights to Afghanistan four times to protect the security of staff working on deportations.
But the Belgian authorities continue to press ahead!
Call to everyone – associations, politicians, witnesses, and journalists – to come to the airport and stop these deportations. MASS GATHERING this Sunday 13 May at 4.15pm to speak to passengers and staff on flight Turkish airlines TK1940 leaving at 6.15pm for Istambul!
– A Congolese woman, was released with an order to leave the territory after almost six months in prison.
Listen to her interview here
– In the night from 25th to 26th of April, violent altercations took place between detainees. The security was reinforced for the week-end.
– An Iraqi was deported on the 24th of April, his wife on the 25th.
– We got one text message : “Please can you help, I would like to transform myself into a pigeon and fly away”.
– A five month pregnant Angolan woman is in centre 127bis and would be deported to Spain. She refused the first attempt, a second attempt has been cancelled.
– Renovation in progress of a wing of the 127bis centre that had been damaged in 2011 and was not functional for more than a year.
– Official opening of the “Caricole” that would progressively be operational during May!
Merksplas and Bruges
Very few information. They are all very scared and trust no one. The proposal of voluntary return under threat is at its height.
One detainee redefines the detention centre: “Vottem, Concentration Centre of Ex-Colonised African Foreigners”.
Other news:
We have heard that Congolese people who reach the airport with a visa of less than six months will be systematically turned back. Two Congolese coming from Kinshasa spent a few days in 127bis and were sent back to their country. We also heard that Congo would refuse to deliver laissez-passer to people subject to forced deportations; which may explain why the military flight to Congo did not leave!
A Frontex flight was planned from the Netherlands to Iraq: the flight was cancelled because the Iraqi authorities refused to deliver laissez-passer. Ninety-seven Iraqis were released from closed centres!
She was in the closed centrum during six months. The judge ask her liberation 5 times. She must go to the hospital on 23 April and the office liberate her on 25 april with a order to leave the country
How long have you been locked-up in detention centre 127bis for?
I’ve been here since 8 November 2011.
Where were you stopped?
I was stopped at my house with my boyfriend who lives with me. On 8 November they came to get me at the house.
Have you been in Belgium for long?
Since 24 March 2008.
Do you have family in Belgium?
Yes I have a daughter in Belgium; she is married and has 3 children. They are all Belgian.
So if I understand correctly, you’ve been in the detention centre for nearly 6 months?
Yes, I’ve been at centre 127bis for nearly 6 months. Today it’s exactly 5 months and 15 days.
Why do you think you have been there for such a long time?
I was brought here as I received a deportation order to leave Belgian territory. That’s why I was stopped. In November my lawyer requested that I be freed and the judge ordered that I be let out. For 5 months I have been going before the court and each time the judge orders that I am let out but the prosecution always refutes the decision and appeals. I don’t know why, I have no previous record with the police. I don’t know why they always appeal the decision to free from 127bis. I don’t know why. Everyone is worried.
Afterwards I claimed asylum but that didn’t lead anywhere. They told me that I can’t stay here after the 28 April, and at my age I am ill, I bleed and everything.
They brought me to the hospital and the doctor said he is going to operate on me on 4 May. Much to my surprise the social assistant told me that normally they don’t extend stays and as I claimed asylum my last day is still the 28th. But 2 days ago, the 19th I think, they came and told me that they were going to extend the time period for me. I asked them why they were going to extend it when they had previously said I couldn’t stay at the centre past the 28th and I’d have to be either freed or deported. I asked them: ‘As I don’t have a flight confirmed why are you keeping me here?’ They replied ‘I don’t know’.
Since then I have just been waiting. My boyfriend and I have decided to get married; we collected all the papers and registered on the 19th. Our marriage date is the 9 May.
So there are lots of things that are going to happen: you need to undergo an operation and you are getting married.
The operation is on the 4th and I’m getting married on the 9th. But I’m still here in the detention centre.
Have you already undergone any deportation attempts?
Two.
The first time I didn’t go to the airport. The lawyer sent a letter saying they didn’t have to deport me. The second time I was at the airport but I refused by telling them I had links here: my daughter and my partner. Then they let me go.
Do you have major health problems at the moment?
Yes, they sent me to the hospital on 30 March. The doctors did a biopsy. The gynaecologist said: ‘This woman can’t take the aeroplane; it’s not normal having periods at her age. I need to do something.’ He sent a letter to the centre. They didn’t want to tell me but there is a nurse here who quit and one day she called me to tell that I can’t leave as they had to operate on me.
So you can’t be deported, did the doctor sign something to confirm that?
Yes, and they can’t deport me as I don’t have a flight. As I have no flight before the 29th they have to let me out.
And life in the detention centre? What’s it like?
I know centre 127bis very very well. I’ve seen lots of things that have traumatised me. I have seen Congolese, Guineans and Moroccans being deported. I have seen people leaving covered in blood. In the centre we do eat but the food is not sufficient enough.
Are there a lot of you in the women’s wing?
At the moment there are a lot of us: there are Africans, Rwandans, Liberians, Congolese and Nigerians.
Have you heard anything about a potential charter flight this month to the Congo?
They told us that it will be at the end of the month.
Are you scared that you will be put on this flight despite having certificates that prove you have health problems?
Yes I’m scared as here they do anything to deport people, like the girl who was freed at 3pm, but then stopped and taken to the airport at 5pm. I’m scared they’ll deport me like that despite my health problems and my marriage. They’ve told me about the collective flight and I’m scared.
But with your health certificates and marriage, legally they can’t deport you?
No
Do you have anything else to add?
I want to add that if there is a way to apply the law here, in my case for example, I don’t understand why they extend my time in the centre. So that means that they’ll keep me here until after the 28th and then they’ll send me to the hospital on the 4th before deporting me? That’s it? I want to emphasise that what they are doing is not good.
There are also pregnant women here such as the girl who refused to eat today. There is one women who is 6 months pregnant. She asked for her clothes that she left behind at the open centre. They won’t bring them to her, she says she won’t eat anymore. That’s not good at all.
Do you see lots of things that don’t seem normal to you?
Alleluia, gloire à Maggie et à ses prédécesseurs de tous bords : grâce à leurs efforts conjugués, leur pugnacité et leur obstination devant l’évidence, la nouvelle taule appelée si gentiment La Caricole devrait ouvrir ses portes en ce jour de grâce.
En forme de couronne, cette ineptie permettra aux matons de ne rien laisser filtrer de l’intérieur et de surveiller plus facilement les détenus en promenade dans la cour intérieure, aux flics de venir chercher les expulsés par un couloir sécurisé vers l’aéroport sans avoir à se colleter ces piallieurs d’emêcheurs-d’expulser-en-rond, aux détenus d’éviter les contacts contagieux avec l’extérieur, aux sous-traitants de l’OE de se gaver en frais de réparations de malfaçons et d’entretien, au gouvernement de s’autocongratuler la couenne pour ce beau projet qui a déjà un an de retard et de se gargariser auprès de ses voisins Zéropéens, au bon peuple de se sentir en sécurité avec tous ces étrangers sous clé dans un bâtiment moderne plein de gadgets, et, cerise sur le gâteau, d’emmerder un peu plus tous ces connards d’anarchistes utopistes sympathisants de la cause des sans-papiers qui auront désormais un peu plus de mal à obtenir des contacts à l’intérieur pour soulager la souffrance des damnés du Royaume. Todo bene donc, célébrons ce grand jour et rendons grâce à nos glorieux dirigeants si pleins d’humanité, en commençant la journée par une pensée féconde à leur endroit, et un coup de chapeau à leurs futures victimes si gâtées.
Alea jacta est, la tyrannie démocratique et politiquement correcte n’a pas de limite, pourvu que l’imbécilité soit revêtue des beaux atours de la modernité et du bien-pensant.
Balkans is a strange region regarding to the European Union. Region eligible for integration into the Union, but for now fragmented and fragmentation compounded by the EU on behalf of issues of migration and border surveillance.
Greece is threatened with expulsion from the Schengen area, when the emigration of its population will resume under the effect of an economic crisis worsened.
Bulgaria and Romania are part of the European Union but not of the Schengen area, and access to their nationals in the labor market is limited in most other EU countries.
The former Yugoslavia exploded between Slovenia, a member of the European Union and the Schengen area, find summoned to monitor its border with Croatia; Croatia that it will join the EU in 2014, the Bosnia itself divided following the Dayton Accords, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, which Serbia does not recognize the independence, Macedonia that Greece does not recognize the right to call itself Macedonia. Countries that are ordered by the European Union to establish a system for receiving asylum seekers, to participate in the European fight against illegal immigration, but also to oppose the emigration of their own nationals.
Albania finally, also traditional country of emigration.
The question of emigration from the region crystallized around the issue of Roma, and if France rattle in particular those of Romania and Bulgaria, other countries like Germany return overwhelmingly those of Serbia , Kosovo and Bosnia who have sometimes spent more than 10 years on its soil.
While the passage between Greece and Italy is considerably reduced and that the exiles across the Balkans to Central Europe, no country in the region has implemented a system allowing the integration of asylum people, gambling Dublin II and bilateral readmission agreements in the region is a migrant trap, starting with those that could access international protection and who are denied access to the country capable to welcome them.
Height of cynicism, countries such as Serbia are enjoined to hold and punish their nationals who could go to the European Union to seek asylum. The term “bogus asylum seekers” became inseparable in the discourse of politicians and the media.
They are all under pressure. Most of them do not dare having contacts with the outisde for fear of reprisals. They feel absolutely helpless. Some of them ended up accepting their deportation after the bullying by the staff of the Centre. The two collective flights for Congo and Guinea are being used as a threat. It has also been noticed that many lawyers give up and stop introducing appeals to free their clients. Some prisoners are asking for a wide movement from the outside in order to get them out of there.
VOTTEM Closed Centre
One wing of the Centre in four has been shut down due to a lack of personnel! Initially, in 1999, 160 places had been foreseen. Following trade union actions, this figure was reduced to 130. Due to the closing of one of the wings, 90 places remain. The associations in Liège are happy about the lack of interest for this kind of job in the region!
Ten days ago, an escape attempt with help from the outside failed during the night.
Mr Mohamed Chatli was secretly brought to the airport under a wide escort to be deported on April 12th. He is the man whose deportation had been prevented by a senator! Neither his lawyer nor himself had been warned of this deportation. He was taken away from the Vottem closed centre two hours before the flight, probably in order to avoid any mobilisation. We haven’t heard anything from Mr Chatli and his girlfriend since then.
127bis Closed Centre
An Iraki prisoner tries to commit suicide with a razor blade he got from the administration to avoid his deportation the day after. The guards apparently came on time to prevent him from doing so.
Another man said that his social assistant informed him today (the day before the first deportation attempt) on a very important legislative change: from now on there would not be any second ‘voluntary’ deportation attempt but a special secured flight would systematically be organised as of the second attempt, with a prohibition of residence on the Belgian territory for five years. Another intimidatory measure by the social staff of the Foreign Office, we are very close to moral harassment here…
One bus and two mini buses arrived at 5.10 am on April 17th in the Centre’s courtyard to bring a group of Moroccans (number and identities still unknown) to Zaventem. No other information.
Escape of an Iraki man during a consultation at the hospital on April 16th. Perhaps the man continued his way, seeking for a more hospitable place to stay.
One Congolese man deported this April 18th. After several intimidatory measures, he finally accepted his deportation to Congo.
A lady, imprisoned for almost six months, got the visit of her grand-children. She was shocked by the personnel’s behaviour; one of her grand-children was forbidden to go to the toilet during the visit.
In 127bis, it is the ‘every man for himself’ that actually rules.
Here is an overview of the information compiled regarding the development of a collective deportation.
THE WEEKS BEFORE
Arrests in public places of undocumented people of a targeted nationality, detention in closed centres, maintaining of the people already detained in closed centres and/or having been the subject of deportation attempts, imprisonment in 127bis of the people seeking asylum at the airport and fast analysis of their files.
THE DAYS BEFORE
Transfer from the Belgian closed centres to the 127bis Centre of all the people designated by the Office.
THE HOURS BEFORE
Isolation of the candidates to deportation, including an unknown number of reservists for the flight.
AND FROM 4 TO 5 HOURS BEFORE THE FLIGHT
Boarding of the candidates to deportation in trucks and buses, sometimes from the army. The prisoners are handcuffed and each one of them is accompanied by two or three police officers wearing a uniform or plain clothes.
The recalictrant and those who refused the previous deportation and who are therefore considered as dangerous deserve a special treatment: isolation, getting undressed, flexions in front of the police officers, tied and accompanied by a special escort.
This boarding generally takes more than two hours and is sometimes accompanied by violence.
Departure of the caravan to the military airport of Melsbroek in Chaussée de Haecht, boarding on to a military plane. The deported remain handcuffed during the flight, some of them trussed up, and each one of them is surrounded by two or three police officers and/or soldiers.
Upon landing they are handed over to the authorities with their asylum file.
The flight to Congo was very violent and the deported people were detained for 48 hours in a prison of Kinshasa.
During the flight to Guinea, the detained people (11 according to our sources) remained handcuffed all the time and they were left abandoned on the streets, not knowing where to go (many of them had been living in Belgium for several years and only have a few acquaintances in Guinea).
During 2012 Belgium organised 11 collectif deportations from Brussels
pagina 30 « In 2012, Belgium organized 11 secured flights to remove illegal immigrants to DR Congo, Guinea, Kosovo, UK and Albania. Other European countries participated in 2 of these 11 flights. In March 2012 Belgium organized a flight to Kinshasa in which the Netherlands also participated. 18 people were removed from Belgium and 1 person from the Netherlands. Another flight was organized to Kinshasa in December, this time with the participation of Ireland and Germany. This flight removed in total 17 persons. Belgium also participated in one secured flight organized by Germany in cooperation with Frontex, with destination Serbia »
Testimony from a man imprisoned in centre 127bis. He has been in Belgium for 7 years and has been active in the struggle for the rights of undocumented people.
I think immigration has become a political weapon. People who criminalise immigration or immigrants forget that Obama is the son of an immigrant, for example. The same goes for Sarkozy and Elio Di Rupo. They want to make us believe the opposite. They tell us we are in a country where the rule of law exists.
I have lived in Brussels for 7 years. I was there when the hunger strikes took place at Béguinage. They got their papers. At the Saint Boniface church in place Saint Catherine I was there and they got their papers. In churches in Saint-Gilles and Forest lots of people got regularised after hunger strikes, I was there too. I have requested regularisation and I meet all the criteria. Although my case was valid, it was rejected. It’s in full knowledge of all the facts that I say that.
How long have you been in the centre for?
I’ve been in the centre since 17 March. They came knocking at my door while I was out visiting a friend. Apparently they were looking for someone else. They asked my friend if he knew the person they were looking for and then they went on to check all our identities. They called the immigration service to check. They asked me if I was legally in Belgium and I told them I was waiting for a decision following my request for leave to remain. They said that wasn’t a valid reason for being in the country so they took me to the police where I was locked-up over night. The next day I was transferred to centre 127bis. I got a lawyer. He appealed and it was negative. A second appeal was also rejected. He advised me to stop these appeals because they were hopeless. I completely met the criteria for the 2009 regularisation. My studies allowed me to prove that I was on Belgian territory legitimately. I have friends who vouched for me: over 60 people, all Belgian. I had an employer and a work contract. My case was accepted; I even went to the commune to pick up my identity card. But every time I went to the commune they made me wait while they checked my file, they told me that my case had been accepted and that I’d soon receive an official notice.
I waited for a year but I didn’t receive any such notice. I even got my work permit. Then one day they wrote to me to tell me they were withholding it again. I no longer had an employer. I don’t know if he went bankrupt or what but the main thing is that I no longer had a work permit.
And how many deportation attempts have you been subjected to?
I’m expecting my third one at the moment. The first one was on a military flight, there was a technical problem and the flight was cancelled. The second was on Friday, I was on the reserve list, incase someone didn’t leave.
And were there lots of you on the reserve list?
There were 5 reserves. It’s always the same thing. They come to get you the day before, around 5pm, just before dinnertime. You no longer have access to anything. They tell you that you have a flight to take the next day and they put you in isolation.
And did the others leave that time?
Yes, the others left: in a van and then on a plane. They were probably tied-up as it was a military plane.
Were there a lot of them?
Yes, 10.
And they didn’t manage to resist?
There were much more soldiers than them. Once you are tied-up you can’t really do much, very quickly they start to treat you badly. I know someone who ended up in hospital because he was so badly treated. It’s hard, after 7 years in Brussels I was suddenly stopped and told I was being deported the next day. I am not prepared morally or psychologically to be taken to Africa. Do you know what that would mean?
I have been in Brussels for 7 years, moral varies from detainee to detainee.
Do you think there will be other group deportations?
Yes there will be a group flight in June. Starting from next week the flights will restart. If you refuse to leave on a tourist flight you have to leave on a military flight.
So whatever happens you will be deported?
Yes. That’s right. You need to spread the word. In a crisis deportations cost the state a lot of money: money that could be better spent on welfare. We deport people who don’t take anything from the system yet we set aside money to deport them, I don’t understand. It shouldn’t be like that. There are no human rights here.
Testimony from someone who has spent a month and a half at centre 127bis. They report that the guards threaten people with punishment if they go on hunger strike and that they received no information about what was happening during two deportation attempts. This person is in a deportation reserve group made-up of several people of the same nationality. Their lawyers are not warned before deportation attempts.
Right now things are really shit here. We are all here and we can’t go outside.
How long have you not been able to go outside for?
Not for a long time. The conditions here are really horrible.
Have you been at the centre for a long time?
Yes, for about a month and a half in the same place. People say that even in here it is a good idea to go on hunger strike so that things get better. However some people are ill so they have to eat to take their medicine.
So have you started a hunger strike or not?
We started but they told us that if we did it here they would call the police. But if you go to the isolation block, block 5, there you don’t eat or drink for 24 hours. Nothing.
So in the centre there is a block where they lock people up to punish them and they don’t give them anything to eat or drink?
Yes, even if you have an appointment with a lawyer or with someone from the immigration office or even if you have a flight. They will lock you up there. That has happened to me two or three times.
Have they already tried to deport you?
Yes, they’ve tried twice… and then they don’t tell you anything. They’ll tell you there is a special flight, and then they’ll come with hundreds of police officers. Without even telling you what is happening they force you to come with them, they hit you. I even have a friend who called me after being deported and told me they’d hit him so hard that he is really ill, he is in hospital.
Because he was deported on one of these special flights?
Yes, they nearly beat him to death.
Has that happened to you too?
Yes, twice! Twice!
And why didn’t you leave with the others?
They told me that I am in the reserve group because there are lots of people. There were nearly 17 people. If there are lots of people they put them all together. They are still planning to carry out deportations by nationality at 127 bis. When you reach a certain number of people they bring in the military flights and use violence to send you back to Africa.
OK, so they have told you that you’ll be on the next group flight?
More or less, yes.
And since then you have received no information about what will happen?
Not yet… They don’t tell people what is happening. They don’t keep us in the loop.
When I came here I claimed asylum and they took my belongings. They made me do a first interview. Afterwards they told to wait and that they would get back to me with a decision. Their response was that I had to go back as soon as they had the decision from the Immigration Office etc etc…so they only really tell you that you have to leave that’s it.
So you were transferred from Merksplas to 127bis?
Yes.
And at 127bis a lot of police officers came to get you?
Yes.
And why was your flight cancelled?
There was some sort of problem with the aeroplane which meant we couldn’t fly. They sent me back to the centre.
So you stayed for an extra night at 127bis?
That’s how they put it…but an aeroplane can’t have problems like that…maybe they wanted to collect more people to deport us en masse.
And did they tell your lawyers they wanted to deport you?
No. They don’t call for the lawyers. It is only when you really insist that they give you permission to call your lawyer.
And now are there are a lot of Guineans at the centre?
Yes there are lots of us here. There are three of us who are from Guinea because it is big here. There are several different blocks.
You don’t know who is in the other blocks?
The others are in the other blocks. You can’t see the people in those blocks. When we go outside they go back in and vice versa…that’s how it is.
Did they try to deport you or did they transfer you here for other reasons? For a deportation purpose.
Did you refuse to leave? The first time I did, but the second time I was told that I could not resist, that I had to cry and resign myself. So I resigned myself. The others left and I stayed.
Why did they keep you and deport the others? I was told that my name was not on their lists.
You were not on the list of people to be deported? I don’t know how it happened because I was still in Bruges. The social assistant told me that I would have to go to the 127bis centre and that I would know there. When I arrived here, they isolated us from the Sunday 4th till the Tuesday before deportation, and it was hard, very hard.
When one is being isolated, does it mean that deportation is for the next days?
Yes, that’s it. You know I’m not in a very good mood, I do not laugh, sometimes I don’t say hello, I’m just here… a bit stressed, I don’t know my fate, I don’t know what they are up to.
Under which circumstances have you been arrested? I had made a regularisation request for my work. The district agent had passed by, it was on a Sunday and I was at the Church. My aunt told me he had come but he had not left any convocation. After some time I went to pick it up. When I got there they arrested me. Actually, I did not have my passport, no visa, I only had my annex 26, the commune had riped out my orange card, so I had nothing anymore. I was directly told to wait for the answer of the Foreign Office. When the Office answered I was directly brought to Bruges. I have been in the 127bis centre since March 4th. Soon on April 4th I will have been one month here. Until now I don’t know anything about my personal file, because normally in Bruges when one is still imprisoned they give you a document to prove you’re still imprisoned. Now I am here, I don’t know my future, I don’t even have a document which shows that I have been at the 127bis for some time, I don’t have anything, nothing, aaargh…
Did you introduce an appeal when you were transfered to the 127bis centre and isolated? Actually, I had requested asyluum for the second time, I had done so on February 17th, I had been to the Foreign Office and on March 8th I got a negative answer. I rang my lawyer who told me he was going to introduce an appeal. He did so and in principle I will not be deported. However, they did not follow it up, they were waiting for my lawyer to introduce an emergency measure.
You were saying that you were not feeling well, do you have health problems? Does someone take care of your needs? Regarding my health, when I was in Bruges I had pain in my stomach, in fact I have a cyst. They told me that they could not operate me over there, that they could not support me. Two weeks after I had arrived here I was still suffering. A doctor saw me. He asked me if I had made a scan. I said yes. He checked my medical records but there was nothing showing that I had made a scan. I don’t understand why the doctors did not forward my papers here. He contacted the hospital of Vilvoorde I think, I went there to make a scan. Then the doctor told me that I could not stay like that, that I needed an operation as soon as possible, I was losing too much blood, it was not good. Yesterday, the nurse came and told me that it was positive and that I could go out on the Thursday.
Had you introduced a request for medical reason? No I had not. Normally I had to get married with my boyfriend. He is trying to get in touch with my lawyer. My boyfriend is outside… You know, I talk a lot but, what I say is that it is really regrettable how they treat people here. I don’t know is someone is aware of the body search they make when one is deported, but when they search someone it is really inhuman. I don’t know if one can search someone like that, especially someone who did not steal anything nor kill anyone, can they search someone like that? It was harsh.
I was searched… even in my own country they would never do that to me. I got undressed, they searched me, they introduced the device, and they searched me to such a point that all that was left for them to do was to put their hands in my vagina. Honestly, it was not nice to see…
20 February 2011 – testimony of a man who has been released from detention centre 127bis after 5 months of detention – He had testified a first time when he still was in detention centre – Listen to his first interview : He beat me in the neck and broke my teeth
How long were you in the centre for?
I was in the detention centre for five months.
So you were there for five months despite the legal limit for keeping someone in detention being two. Do you know why you were detained for so long?
When I arrived in Belgium on 29 August I didn’t know that I would be stopped at the airport. When I claimed asylum they brought me to the detention centre. They tried to deport me at the airport in September but I refused to get on the plane. After that they moved me to the Bruges centre, where I stayed for a few months. They tried to deport me again on the 20 November. They threatened me: the police hit me and broke two of my teeth.
So it was the people who tried to deport you who were violent? Yes it was them.
Did they punch or kick you?
When they first came to get me to make me leave I was so terrified and worried. I was so scared that I pooed myself. They told me that because I had done that they were going to treat me like an animal. So they started hitting me hard. I fell to the ground and they handcuffed my feet. When they tried to handcuff my hands and I resisted, one of them stamped on my neck. My face hit the ground and that’s when my two teeth broke.
How long did it take before you received dental treatment to repair the teeth?
It took two weeks.
And were you able to complain about how the Immigration Office has treated you?
Three days later on the 23 November I complained to the P Committee. A month later the P Committee told me that they couldn’t do anything as my situation was a judicial matter. The sent my case to the judge and told me that the Senior Crown prosecutor would make the judgment. Since then I haven’t heard anything about it, nothing at all, no one has called me…
While you were there were other people also subjected to violence during their deportations?
Yes. There was a Congolese man who was handled violently while being deported at the airport. They broke his neck. When he came back to the centre the P Committee passed his case on to the courts, then it was passed on to the tribunal. On the day of his hearing he was deported. That’s how he went back.
They deported him before he got to go to court?
Yes.
So he wouldn’t get to talk about his experiences?
Yes. And there was a young girl too who was also violently handled. She was sent back to Congo with a wound in her back.
What is life like in the detention centres?
It’s really another world in the centre. I don’t really know how to explain it…we are like dogs or sheep. They tell us to “do this, do that”. When we can use our phones and when we can go to bed. You never get out, you are locked up. At 7am when you have just woken up you have breakfast and then you go outside for an hour. After the outside hour you go back inside. No one goes to bed until 10pm. When you go up to bed they take away your phone. It’s very difficult.
While you were in the centre did you see lots of people get deported?
Yes, lots of people. There is little hope. For example out of 20 people, only 4 are likely to get out and the rest will be deported.
And do you know why you were kept in detention then?
Releasing me and giving me papers would acknowledge that how they treated me was wrong. Maybe that is why they have given me an order to leave Belgian territory. They have no right to hit me and to break my teeth. It is against my human rights to do that. I think that is why they released me from the centre.
So they let you out of the detention centre but you don’t have leave to remain here, you have an order to leave the country so if you don’t leave you won’t have your papers…
Yes that’s right.
And how are things going?
How can I live without papers? I am suffering and I have to get used to false teeth in my mouth. The new canines they put in hurt me a lot. I even find it difficult to chew and eat certain foods. Even eating an apple hurts my mouth. I am suffering. I have bouts of madness, sometimes when I am talking to people I can’t hear them anymore. I start dreaming and people ask me why I am dreaming so much and I don’t understand, I don’t understand anything. I tell them “I’m not dreaming I’m here!”
And you didn’t experience anything like that before being in detention? It was the detention centre that provoked that?
No nothing like that before.
When you arrived you were taken straight from the plane to the detention centre. What did you think when y
