This meant that local government – city councils were allowed to have shelters, and even medical shelter, for undocumented people. And it was for unconditional emergency help. The day started with a bike tour through Rotterdam, to reach the detention center. There we showed solidarity with the people inside who are locked up, only because they don’t have papers.
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He took his life because of the situation, being in the procedures for long years with no solution. We want to avoid the risk of any more losses. If it is not positive, the lives of these 148 refugees are at risk on the streets, about half of them have been traumatized because of the situation- depressions and war trauma ( PTSD). The truth for We Are Here is that we don’t need the building. We need a permanent place to start a normal life.
Therefore we go to the Court with a proposal to sit around the table with all parties concerned to find a way out. We have asked the municipality many times to help us with sattisfying our basic needs, such as a simple proper shelter for day and night, but nothing has happened so far. Therefore we have to continue to squat buildings. This morning tuesday 16 may we got the news that the IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Services) will take the time to look at the renewed asylum procedure and the deportation was therefore cancelled. Now we attempt to explain the inhuman conditions that the Dutch government forced on us for the past 17 years, and we want to change the public opinion on the whole situation in general. But also address the negative media attention which feeds this public opinion and therefore our inhuman treatment.
Last September 5 at the celebration of 5 years We Are Here, I spoke and summarized Pim’s speech. It was not published because it contains some of the strategy he would be using in his coming cases. Now, with Pim’s approval, my very simplistic look at 2 branches of the Dutch legal system that the refugees are coming into contact with as an aid to the coming lecture. 7 july 2018, Amsterdam – Refugee collective we are here, who previously stayed in a squat in Amstelveen, took the unoccupied building on the Entrada 600 in Amsterdam-Duivendrecht.
Simon responds that the people from DT&V will be present at Eigenwijks near the Vluchtflat from 13.00, and that people can ask them what happens after 12 weeks in the VBL if people cannot return. All refugees have the opportunity to register from 13.00. The Mayor stresses that the Amsterdam city government has now done everything it could, and so did the Diaconie, HVO Querido and the Salvation Army. The refugees state that thet understand the proposal, but that they do not agree. The Mayor repsonds that if the refugees understand the proposal, he does not understand their letter.
This is how we end up on the streets, again, and again. What we need is permission to stay in the Netherlands. We will demonstrate on Friday the 2nd of September in a march from the Vluchtgemeente to the World Garden of the Protestant Diaconie, where it all started. The group has a court hearing on the 7 of September, which is about evicting from our Residence place (Pieter Calandlaan 1) which is the municipality’s building.
We are a group of undocumented refugees and part of We Are Here.Since 5 years we are fighting for “a normal life”, equal to all other people living here. And even if some of us want to go back, they often cannot, because the country of origin does not allow them. Thus, we continue to live between hope for the paper that opens the gate to a “normal life”, and fear of being arrested, put in detention or getting deported.