They came to forcibly give me an injection’

4 July 2024

A man has been in a detention centre for several months and wishes to denounce the systemic violence there by means of an audio recording.

Listen to the testimony HERE (FR)

Transcription in Engl

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.