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.
STOP DEPORTATIONS
NOBORDERS
