The death of a baby puts the Government on alert while MSF provides direct medical assistance for the first time on Dutch soil
Aug. 26 () –
The Netherlands has been the scene of a night of protests over the crisis unleashed at the reception center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel, on the border with Germany, between complaints of serious unsanitary conditions and, above all, the death of a baby in a gym that served as a makeshift shelter for refugees, in a center “overflowing and unable to meet basic needs,” laments the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The European Commission has asked the country’s authorities to thoroughly investigate the death of the three-month-old baby, the trigger for the protests that gathered several hundred people in front of the center due to a crisis that the Government has already begun to treat as a priority issue. “Right now we are not focused on anything else,” said the country’s prime minister, Mark Rutte, who has described the situation as “terrible.”
Protesters carried banners with slogans such as “We want Ter Apel back!”, “We’ve had more than enough trouble” and “Genuine refugees fine, rioters out.” Others carried inverted Dutch flags, already seen in recent farmers’ protests, reports the Dutch channel NOS.
The president of the Dutch Council for Refugees (COA) Frank Candel, assures that the Ter Apel crisis has nothing to do with an increase in the number of refugees, but with the budget cuts of the Immigration Service and the closure of asylum centers , which have caused a lack of accommodation and an increase in application processing times.
As a first measure to alleviate the situation, the COA has moved 150 refugees from Ter Apel to a sports hall in Apeldoorn in an attempt to alleviate chronic overcrowding at a facility that has now housed more than 500 people.
MSF, in a statement of denunciation published this Friday, has lamented that the situation in Ter Apel, “increasingly inhumane”, has forced the direct medical intervention of the organization on Dutch soil for the first time in the 50-year history of the NGO.
“The center is completely overwhelmed and does not have enough capacity to meet the most basic needs of the newcomers,” laments the NGO. “All of them are living in inhuman and unworthy conditions,” adds its general director for the country, Judith Sargentini.
“However, our intervention is a temporary measure. The Dutch government and local municipalities must urgently improve the living conditions of all these people and take responsibility for providing them with medical care,” according to Sargentini.
“In addition, there must be a structural solution, such as the creation of more reception centers and that these be much more humane. This is something that society has been asking the Government of the Netherlands for years,” he added.
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