Coming from Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East, loads of other folks come knocking each and every morning on the door of the refugee place of business in Brussels, to hunt asylum in Belgium.
Overwhelmed, the registration centre of Fedasil, which offers with asylum requests, can now not cope. Humanitarian organizations are sounding the alarm.
“You see, the people sleeping here are often people who tried to get in yesterday, and the day before, but couldn’t,” says Helene Asselman, Coordinator for Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen. “They have to come back tomorrow or the day after. In the meantime, they have no rights in Belgium, they have no status, they are not legal residents. Even people who have already applied have no access to shelters. Especially single men.”
“We are in a difficult psychological state,” says Muhammad Mahani a Palestinian asylum seeker. “We’ve been in Belgium for four months and they didn’t give us accommodation, or Sim cards. We live in this freezing cold. We immigrated to build our future.But what we saw in our country, we see here now.”
Worrying health situation
A few meters away from the asylum application centre, the association Médecins Sans Frontières has set up mobile clinics, the same that it uses in war zones.
“There is a health situation that’s quite worrying,” says David Vogel, Advocacy Officer for Médecins Sans Frontières. “There is an epidemic of scabies which is hard to control in Brussels since people, without accommodation, go back to their squat in the evening, or to the street. We also had 17 cases of suspected diphtheria, three of which were confirmed by laboratories. There is a very significant deterioration in the mental health of this public. With prolonged exposure to the street, on top of difficult migratory journeys, punctuated by violence and deprivation. And so, we really see a deterioration in that field, which is also quite worrying.”
At mealtimes, queues form around the so-called Humanitarian Hub, an aid focal point managed by NGOs and citizens’ collectives, in another part of town. The situation keeps getting worse, says one of the coordinators.
“We are providing an average of 1,000 to 1,200 meals a day, against around 800 people a year ago,” says Clothilde Bodson, Operational Coordinator at the Brussels Humanitarian Hub.
“We offer specialized services such as medical checkups, psychological follow-ups, distribution of clothing, etc. There are different responses from civil society and humanitarian actors, but this is not enough. We are actually responding to needs because of the State deficiencies, and this is just not working.”
Hundreds forced to sleep outside
Every evening, aid workers multiply rounds across the city to help the hundreds of people forced to sleep outside. The crisis is such that even Ukrainian refugees, who have a special status in Belgium as elsewhere in Europe, are more and more numerous to be left out in the cold.
Like these women, whom we meet at the Gare du Midi, in the heart of Brussels.
“I have to travel between different places,” says Liubov Skvorets a Refugee From Ukraine. “In order to spend nights in temporary shelters. But the situation is such in those shelters, that you can only spend the night there. And then you just have to take your belongings, and move on to another place”
“When I won my registration,” says Tetiana Makukha, also recently arrived from Ukraine. “Although I confirmed them paperwork certifying I’ve were given most cancers, they gave me refuge for one evening in a hostel within the town centre. Only one evening. I’ve been staying right here on the station for a complete week.”
“The figure we get from the Red Cross is that on average, every day, there are a hundred Ukrainians who arrive here at the Midi station,” says Magali Pratte from Samusocial Brussels. “And out of 100 people, there are about forty or fifty who really need accommodation, who have no solution on their own. And of these 40 people, there are 20 people who are very vulnerable, with children or pregnant women, disabled people, or sick people. But who are now told that there is no more accommodation space left. And so people keep leaving and coming back, leaving, coming back again. That’s how things are these days.”
Applicants for global coverage
The support employees proceed their spherical, this time amongst candidates for global coverage. As right here, on the foot of one of the most lodging centres of the company in control of asylum seekers. The Belgian Red Cross groups also are at the floor.
“We have set up additional rounds, as there are more needs,” says Morgane Senden from the Belgium Red Cross. “We see that people really need more help than we can give them. Because we don’t bring much, just coffee, tea, and a bit of food”
Many sleep on mattresses at the floor, with none coverage. Their makeshift tents are often dismantled by way of the police and teams dispersed.
Here, as within the Netherlands, or in France and within the south of Europe, asylum seekers additionally pay the cost of a failing European migration coverage. Pushed again by way of some EU States, they undergo in others from dysfunctional control of asylum programs.
Belgian state condemned
In desperation, teams of migrants have occupied empty structures. One squat in an enormous development that went from about 200 other folks to greater than 600 within the area of a couple of days.
Marie Doutrepont represents a number of of the occupants of the squat, threatened with eviction, inside a collective of attorneys who’re tirelessly mobilizing for global coverage.
“For a year, Fedasil and therefore through Fedasil, the Belgian State, has been condemned 7000 times by the labour court,” she says. “Who said that it must respect the law and provide accommodation to these people, with judgments to which Fedasil did not comply, or with such delays that it no longer makes sense. The lawyers went to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which has just ordered provisional measures and confirmed this, saying that the law must be respected, and that these people need to be sheltered. And that failing to do so is subjecting them to inhuman and degrading treatment. And even that doesn’t make the Belgian State move!.”
Nasrullah used to be a soldier in Afghanistan. He used to paintings on the Bagram jail. Some contributors of the brand new Taliban executive had been in his custody there, ahead of they took over energy. His lifestyles is now below risk. Just like that of Jean de Dieu, a pastor in Burundi, and human rights activist.
We to find them each once more later, along different partners in misfortune, who got here to participate within the demonstration arranged by way of their attorneys, no longer some distance from the State Secretariat for Asylum and Migration.
“What’s the point of putting on our lawyers’ gowns,” says attorney Manon Libert. “Of working on our files, of going to plead, of winning procedures and facilitating judgments if the State then just tramples on this, and deliberately leaves women, children and men on the street! We are therefore asking Belgium today to fulfil its international obligations! “
The State Secretariat for Asylum and Migration, in addition to the company in control of receiving refugees, became down my interview requests.
Citing a loss of way, the federal government additionally level a finger on the absence of European harmony. Arguments which demonstrators say are untenable, given the emergency.
