15 February 2012: Phone interview with a person detained in 127bis centre who made a request for voluntary return and who is waiting for his flight
Listen to the testimony (FR) :
[audio:http://gettingthevoiceout.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Lavion-est-pour-demain.mp3|titles=L’avion est pour demain]Fichier à télécharger (clic droit – enregistrer sous)
Hello.
Hello. I’m actually detained here in the 127bis Centre near the airport; a centre that has nothing to do with humankind because I’ve seen things here that really shocked me. What they give us for food is really a disaster. Food is insufficient, both in quantity and quality. Many people have lost weight here, it’s misery.
Here, every time you try to speak, do something, change the situation for the good of everyone, they put you under pressure and tell you “your plane leaves tomorrow”. There are no criminals here, no one did something bad to the Belgian state, however we are living a real inhuman situation. I want to contact an association to get voluntary return, I don’t want to go back under these conditions. If they want to bring me back by force I’ll be dead before we leave for Morocco.
You asked for voluntary return?
Yes I did, I already signed.
Do you have a lawyer?
Yes I do. My family already paid him 1,500 euros but he took advantage of our situation. He didn’t come to the first session; he sent another guy who didn’t even know about my dossier. Then I got nervous and he came to the second session, but actually he did not change a thing, the result is still negative, it’s really hopeless.
You were saying that there were pressures and threats when you showed solidarity towards someone who is in a difficult situation, do they really put pressure on you?
Yes they do. Either they say that they will transfer you to a worse centre, or that you will have your plane in not even 2 or 3 days.
And all this in spite of the ongoing asylum requests?
Of course. Asylum seekers do come here. One Somalian guy already has his ticket for 17th February, it is a plane to Italy, but over there they will forget about the asylum request, it doesn’t help actually. There are also Iraqi people here who introduced for the first time an asylum request in Belgium and who got a negative answer. They are trying to deport them to Iraq even though they know that the country is still unstable, that their life could be at risk, etc. I also know one Moroccan guy here. If he goes into a plane he will have a heart attack. He got caught in a shop, he had introduced a regularisation request but he was brought here. He can really make a heart attack. There is no one here who did something wrong or anything but it doesn’t change a thing. The people here really need psychological assistance before all, because they really suffer.
I also want to speak about another guy who came from Morocco and got arrested on the Belgian territory, in the Schengen area, although he had a visa of 15 days with which he was supposed to be allowed to travel where he wanted to. They asked him for his passport. He had everything right. So, I ignore the reason why, but they directly brought him here to the detention centre. The first time I saw him, it was at the court, he was so surprised. I told him that we were going to prison, because it is true, it really feels like a prison here.
