Repression and collective hunger strike in the Merksplas detention center

On December 30, 2025, searches took place in a block of the Merksplas detention center and 15 inmates were put in solitary confinement. These repressive measures were introduced by the management under the order of the Immigration Office after they became aware of plans for collective actions planned by detainees against their incarceration for the beginning of 2026. Following the crackdown, around twenty detainees went on hunger strike on the evening of December 30th.

In a center decorated with Christmas trees, inmates tell us daily of injustices and repression, deplorable food and a lack of medical care for people in need.

“They put Christmas trees here, they make fun of us, it’s a strategy, in the end they tape people like cardboard.”

“There have been people here for 12 months, 14 months. At some point you start to forget yourself, to forget your humanity. You’re starting to think you deserve to be here. Just because you don’t have any papers they put you in a place where you have to endure violence, torture. It is not a detention center but a torture center… After 10pm no light, no noise. I did a training course here, I worked. If they had given me a positive, I would be a citizen like everyone else, that piece of paper that makes all the difference. It’s a center with victims here, full of innocent people.”

The inmates of Merksplas also alert us to the regular presence of minors in the center, who are kept in isolation and really hidden from other inmates. They tell us that their access to a telephone is monitored.

The strikers demand that their cases be treated with dignity by the Immigration Office and the staff of the center.

“Married people, people with children, people living in Belgium for years, sick people, older people, minors do not have to be put in detention centers, real prisons. »

“We are not beasts coming from nowhere. »

“They hate us. »

“What we are given to eat, a pig would not eat. »

“We are forbidden to speak French: ‘we are in Flanders here‘, they tell us.“

“There are too many psychiatric patients here. They take them on the street and then they put them here. It’s a shame. Their place is not here.“

They ask to be treated with DIGNITY and RESPECT.

Solidarity with detainees and their struggles

FIRE AT DETENTION CENTERS