Writing is fun, but not always. I’m not sure how much of this has gravitated to the international press. Two years ago I wrote about Camp Moria on the Greek isle of Lesbos, which features in my book The Batavian:
Two years on, we have our own version of Moria inside Dutch borders: the intake centre at Ter Apel in the far north, now has all the symptoms of a concentration camp: filth, neglect and utter desperation of hundreds of people. A symptom of a failed Government that for years has cut down the asylum system to the absolute minimum, and now apparently is unfit for dealing with a normal influx of refugees. The lack of housing for those who received their refugee status, the complete collapse of the Immigration Service, local authorities refusing to offer asylum seekers proper refuge, magistrates ordering tents removed that were put up intended as minimal shelter, locals protesting against a refugee centre in their own back yard, everything has contributed to our own Camp Moria, where Médecins Sans Frontières and the Red Cross had to come in and offer basic aid because the State of the Netherlands turned its back on their duty to offer refuge and comply with international treaties which they themselves signed. We are now officially a third world country.
The dismal policy of previous center-right wing Cabinets led by Mark Rutte has made a mockery of the Immigration Service, who suddenly cannot cope with refugees. A queue of heartless Conservative Party (VVD) undersecretaries have unrelentingly removed resources from the Service. Mark Harbers, Ankie Broekers-Knol, Eric van der Burg, all of them exponents of the same hard-hearted right-wing anti-immigrant ideology. Sickness and death reign in Ter Apel - a 3-month-old baby died in the Centre last week, and several people were sent to hospital by MSF. People suffer from scurvy, there are no toilets or showers, nothing. The Cabinet ignored the shameful situation for weeks, until MSF stepped in and refugee support organisations threatened to file a lawsuit against the Government.
Not until Health and Youth Inspectors visited the site on 26 August, the urge was felt by the Rutte administration to evacuate people to temporary shelter. As if those responsible hadn’t an idea of the situation. Finally this weekend, people have been taken away in buses to a safer place.
According to several refugee treaties, we are obliged to shelter people. And don’t think the stream of human wreckage will dry up because Mr Rutte has now instated what he calls a ‘decent reduction of refugee influx’ to cope with the crisis. His measure consist of ... maybe you have read it ... a moratorium on family reunion, flouting every treaty there is on this subject. A shameful policy preventing parents to see their children, or children to see their parents for up to a year and a half. How much damage this despicable idea will cause no one can predict, but we’ll probably see when, in a few years time, a parliamentary investigation will turn up the result - even more people irreversibly damaged. We ignore what happens, because they say there is no alternative. ‘He who cannot is buried in the churchyard, he who will not lies outside,’ my grandmother used to say.
Refugees are used as a weapon by dictatorial regimes - Lukashenko, Putin, the Taliban, Assad, the ayatollahs - to de-stabilise the West, as Lukashenko did at the Polish border last winter. Sending back those who came from a ‘safe country’ is being frustrated by the countries of origin, who don’t want to play along. But that doesn’t diminish our obligation to treat every refugee who knocks at our door with respect and care.
Shall I tell you about asylum seekers? In my town of Leiden (a city of refugees, as the Council likes to boast) we had a large number of refugees FOUR times in about fifteen years, including the recent influx of Ukrainians, who by the way receive preferential treatment and don’t have to submit to the infernal conditions of sleeping outside in all weathers in Ter Apel.
We never had any problem with these people - they are almost invisible. In 2016 a few hundred Syrians were given shelter here. And what happened? A Syrian man giving football training to about a dozen Syrian kids in the park, who had great fun. But when recently there was talk of housing a number of refugees in an empty building not far from where I live, the local newspaper published letters from a few well-to-do people in the filthy rich neighbourhood next to it, who feared all those scary foreigners would start walking through their road to the nearby supermarket. Such is the xenophobic atmosphere in this country, fanned by a number of irresponsible politicians.
I feel ashamed for what my country has come to.
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