#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #BELGIUM #STEENOKKERZEEL #GettingTheVoiceOut #News #Journal #Update - [gettingthevoiceoutnewsletter] Hunger strike at the #127bis detention center. The double punishment is still in effect.

 

Hunger strike at the 127 bis detention center. The double punishment is still in effect.

nl , fr , engl : https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/hunger-strike-at-the-127-bis-detention-center-the-double-punishment-is-still-in-effect/

 5 September 2022

 

Co-detainees alert us and are very worried about the state of health of Mr A.

 

A has been on hunger strike for 17 days in the 127 bis detention centre in Steenokkerzeel to demand his release.

He has the same profile as dozens of other detainees in Belgium’s detention centres.

He arrived in Belgium 13 years ago. He was young and applied for a family reunification with his brothers and sisters who live in Belgium because his father and mother died 

 

Like some other people in the centers, he once went to court for “disturbing the peace” and was convicted. Following this conviction and his sentence, the state locked him in a detention centre with the aim of sending him back to his “country of origin”.

 

The Office is once again carrying out the “double punishment”: the possibility of expelling a person in exile who is defined by them as a danger according to “their” public order after he has served his prison sentence has existed since 1980. 

This was integrated into circulars in the 90’s, then “improved” in 2005 and again in 2017: a new racist circular currently allows, without being adequately heard to expel him, to expel him even if he was born here, and was legally staying in Belgium. https://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/double-penalty-or-banishment-a-peculiar-method-of-racism/

 

There are dozens of them stuck in the closed centres of Bruges, Merksplas, Vottem, 127 bis, Holsbeek for several months, even a year. The Foreigners’ Office is unable to expel them and is holding them hostage. Indeed, several countries refuse to take back these people who are, according to the State, “delinquents” and do not issue a pass that would allow them to be deported.

 

In the words of detainees:

“We have served our time, we have paid for our bullshit. Why are we, of foreign origin, doubly punished?”

“This is torture, madam.

“They are tyrants!”

 

This racist and discriminatory double punishment is trivialised. No one reacts, no one denounces; people are locked up for months and then released. 

 

 

 

STOP TO CLOSED CENTRES

NO TO DOUBLE PUNISHMENT

NOBORDER