The evacuation of the Ter Apel center for asylum seekers took place overnight from Friday to Saturday. The center was overwhelmed with requests and hundreds of people were waiting outside in conditions described as “inhumane” by several NGOs.
About 400 asylum seekers have been transported by the Dutch authorities to five destinations in the Netherlands where they can finally be accommodated, even if it will only be temporary for two of these reception places. Since Thursday, there have been two successive inspections of the youth and health services which concluded with “the health alert”, reports our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet.
The Red Cross and the Dutch branch of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) had warned of the impending humanitarian emergency at the reception center in Ter Apel, a village near the city of Groningen. MSF notably compared Ter Appel to the Moria refugee center on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Of the hundreds of migrants slept on boxes in front of the buildings of the COA (Centraal orgaan opvang asielzoekers), the reception organization for asylum seekers. Some had been there for two weeks with only dirty portable toilets at their disposal. The inspections were triggered after the death on Wednesday of a three-month-old infant in the gymnasium where asylum seekers also sleep.
Mark Rutte admits shameful scenes »
The COA had already sounded the alarm bell last October in the face of the structural lack of reception facilities in the Netherlands. Firstly, reception capacities were reduced during the pandemic, then the massive influx of Ukrainians, finally and above all the generalized shortage of housing in the Netherlands.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte admitted that there were ” shameful scenes in the center and that mistakes had been made, promising a “structural solution” to the problem.
On Friday evening, the Dutch government announced measures to deal with this crisis, blamed on the lack of staff at the COA and the housing shortage in the Netherlands. Some 16,000 people whose asylum applications have been approved have no accommodation and are forced to stay in the centres.
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