The Building Wanderers of Amsterdam
Hossein from Libya in the room he shares with seven others
Rejected asylum seekers who refuse to leave and cannot do so, even if they wanted to
In North Amsterdam, just across the river from the central station, there is a neighbourhood of shipping containers. These containers are mostly used for storage, with the exception of a couple of crunchy (hippy?) design firms. One of these containers, on a quiet street at the edge of the neighbourhood, houses over thirty men.
As I walk in, one of them shakes my hand and offers me an apple. Another one, Hossain from Libya, is happy to answer my questions. As I pull out my camera, he says: “Wait, don’t take a photo yet. I must arrange my things nicely.” He sits on his mattress, one among nine others on the floor of a room the size of a LUC single, “I must look like a good refugee.”
Held Captive in Europe
Over 100 refugees were evicted from “de Vluchttoren” on September 30th, another abandoned building they had been squatting in for four months. After packing up their belongings and cleaning the premises, the group walked to City Hall demonstrating for change in the Netherland’s flawed asylum-seeking procedure, leaving the latest of their past fourteen temporary homes behind. A number of them found shelter in this container.
Twelve thousand asylum applicants were rejected from the twenty-five thousand who applied in 2014. These thousands of rejectees have fallen into a grey area of Dutch law, and are now homeless and without means of earning a living.
A common room where residents share meals
Pretend you are an asylee. After being rejected, you will be told that you are not to work and rent or buy property in the Netherlands. The key legal document which defines if you can be called a refugee, your rights and the legal obligations of states to you – the UN Convention Relating to Refugee Status – also prevents the Dutch authorities from deporting you back to your home country if the situation there is considered dangerous to your race, religion, membership in a social group or political opinion.
The Netherlands deported 4,400 people last year, while 4,110 left voluntarily, the Volkskrant reported.
At this point, you may want to travel to another country to try your luck at asylum there. With your papers or lack thereof, your travel is limited to Schengen countries. You soon learn that the Dublin Agreement – a regulation under the Geneva Convention that applies to all EU countries – bans you from applying for asylum in other EU countries if you were fingerprinted on arrival to the EU, which is the case for most asylum-seekers. Local municipalities insist that providing you with housing is not their responsibility either. You end up trapped in Europe, unable to work or find yourself accommodation, stuck in a system that seems to perfectly create an illegal immigrant.
The Authorities Are Lost Themselves
Last November, the Council of Europe admonished the Netherlands for failing to provide basic amenities for rejected asylees who have not or cannot leave the country. Dutch policy makers scrambled to create a policy called Bed-Bath-Bread (BBB). The program began by turning an unused prison in Rotterdam into an accommodation centre. It lasted six months before evicting residents with a 48-hour notice.
The program has since revamped itself into two night accommodation centres in Amsterdam. The individuals I interviewed found these centres restraining. BBB residents enter the centre at 5pm and have to leave at 9am the next morning. Their night activities are restricted and they cannot leave the building between those hours. It also only has a capacity of 135 people. If a BBB resident fails to show up for more than two nights in a row, they stand to lose their spot and have to re-register.
We Are Here
In 2012, a mixed group of a hundred asylum-seekers and rejectees named themselves “We Are Here” to form a stronger collective voice. The group gained national attention when they set up a makeshift tent camp in Amsterdam’s Diakonie gardens in 2012, but attention quickly waned and newspapers moved on to “fresher” topics.
Since then, We Are Here has found a loophole to put to good use in Amsterdam, their temporary solution – squatting in abandoned buildings. Squatting, or ‘Kraken’ in Dutch, was made popular in the housing shortages after the Second World War. A vacant building could be turned into an official squat by placing three things which signal domestic occupation: a bed, table and chair. Squatting became de jure illegal in the Netherlands in 2010.
“They come and knock on the door but when they see us, they know we are refugees,” said Ahmed Omar, a former Vluchttoren resident who came to the Netherlands from Somalia seven years ago. The authorities seem to have developed an unspoken relationship with members of We Are Here and tend to turn a blind eye to refugee-filled squats. “They know it is better for us to be in here than out on the streets with normal people and tourists.”
Ahmed and many other Vluchttoren residents wandered the streets of Amsterdam before finding another building to squat in. “We have moved from house to house, building to building, street to street. I may know Amsterdam better than my home country”, he said.
Ahmed said he fled Somalia after being threatened by Al-Shabab for refusing to join their military forces. Upon hearing that Ahmed was in danger, his childhood best friend, a German citizen, gave Ahmed his passport which Ahmed then used to fly to France while pretending to be his friend. Ahmed applied for asylum in the Netherlands but was rejected shortly after.
Vluchtgemeente
Ahmed came to LUC last month with other We Are Here members to screen a documentary about their situation. He volunteered to give a tour of their current squats – they are spread out through three squats in Amsterdam.
The “Vluchtloods” group lives in a container office in Amsterdam Noord, close to IJ-Hallen flea market, the Smaragdgroep moves from church to church, but most members stay at “Vluchtgemeente”.
“Vluchtgemeente”, or refugee town, is a large building just a stone’s throw away from Amsterdam Lelylaan station. Ironically, the building was formerly Amsterdam North-West’s City Hall. The width and structure of Vluchtgemeente is similar to the LUC building, but three storeys tall.
Women live on the ground floor in rooms that were formerly offices. Volunteers use the main conference room to conduct Dutch language classes, and large fundraising dinners happen in the cafeteria.
Men, who form the majority of residents and refugees coming into the Netherlands, fill office cubicles on the second and third floor. Most residents have grouped their rooms geographically with the Sudanese staying with the Sudanese, and the Iraqis with the other Iraqis.
Volunteers from the surrounding neighbourhood have stepped in to lend refugees a hand in setting up their living spaces. We Are Here has an active Facebook page that they use to request food donations and provision of other basic needs. Ahmed recalls an elderly retired electrician coming into the building in the first days to help the group wire the building and tap into the electricity. Others have donated mattresses, blankets and hotplates. Piles of donated bread and vegetables line a tabletop at the entrance and are a free-for-all for the Vluchtgemeente residents. At the moment, the residents are trying to set up Wi-Fi in the building.
Food is often pooled together and meals are communally cooked then shared.
Katy, a volunteer with We Are Here, says that things are more stable now. She remembers when the BBB program ended and refugees were out on the street. “It was in the winter and it was cold,” she told LUC students at the documentary screening. “I took someone into my house who kept trying to commit suicide because he was driving the rest of the group to suicide as well.” Katy has recently started studying basic administrative law to give her more autonomy in helping refugees with paperwork.
Political Expediency
The Netherlands is getting crowded. Some 24,000 refugees arrived in the Netherlands in 2014 and the Dutch cabinet expects 50,000 refugees to arrive this year. Feeling a strain on finances, the ruling coalition of the VVD and PVDA passed an agreement last month to reduce social security benefits for refugees and remove them from social housing priority lists.
“Blame the immigrant” rhetoric and capitalising on fear is a political trick that is working to the favour of anti-refugee far-right Freedom Party (PVV). PVV, who won 15 seats in the most recent 2012 elections, are shooting up the polls amid the refugee crisis. A survey by daily De Telegraaf states that PVV could command up to 35 seats in the 150 seat lower house, if elections were held today.
While Germany has agreed to take 40,000 refugees, France 30,000 and the UK 20,000, the Netherlands has agreed to 9,000, a figure proportionate to the population but does not account for a shrinking population of youth and a fertility rate below replacement ratio.
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Reading this article again, truly feeling sorry those refugees in Netherlands. Staying in another country far away from homeland is already sad. They need to start from scratch, could imagine their situation living in a foreign facing a lot of hinders such languages, cultures and so forth. The sad state of refugees living in Netherlands is really bad. The Netherlands has had a reputation as a humanitarian haven, with refugees and immigrants as the situation in their country isn’t safe enough. But entering as refugees they ended up living in empty offices, as room . The government authorities failed to provide basic amenities for those rejected ones who have not or cannot leave the country. The refugees are stuck in a system, were call as an illegal immigrant. They wandered in the streets of Amsterdam, moving from one place to another left in the cold winter. Lucky enough they have volunteers helping them supplying blankets , foods for them. Hopefully the authorities could do more to help those refugees out there and the situation right now has improved.
Thank you Melissa for sharing this .
Thank you Melissa for sharing this report on refugees in Netherlands.
A sad reality of living in a first world country, sad for them. The poor security situation in some parts of the world has caused an increase in the number of refugees in Europe. I have read in other articles too regarding those living conditions which are terrible. Living in empty offices, as room and several people clamped in a room. Some of the refugees were fortunate to have mattresses, blankets and so forth ,donated by some kind souls at their neighbourhood. Its wonderful that the government and local authorities are doing their best to help them after the human rights groups brought up this issue. …the sad state of refugees.
Migrant workers and asylum seekers have so much vulnerability. We need to be kind to refugees.
In my opinion we cannot turn away the refugees irrespective of how much “threat” we think they will give us. This apprehension of “threat” again stems from our over indulgence of the “I”.
Of course it will be tough to bring in tens of thousands of foreigners to our country. They have different values and cultures. They have different faiths and beliefs.
There must be efforts to assimilate them into our society. They may have to be re-trained or re-educated with the new ways and cultures. It will not be an easy tasks at all as many old ways are hard to change. However efforts have to be put in to do so. Then as they live on and slowly gets accustomed, a new generation will emerge. This new generation will be no different from the rest. Efforts towards this must be made for the simplest reasons. Help others to help ourselves.
Thank you Melissa Leong for sharing your personal experiences with us. Looking forward to more of your stories !
It is really heartbreaking to know of the way the Netherlands government is treating asylum seekers.
It is really cruel of them to evict them from an abandoned building, a building not even being used and they still evicted them, deprived them of a roof over their heads and chose to let them suffer out in the harsh cold weather.
To make matters worst,they rejected twelve thousand asylum applicants denying them of a legal paper to stay in the Netherlands.
Couple that together with the many laws put in to place over the years, the asylum seekers are literally counted as illegal.
It would be so much better if the Netherlands Government would lift the laws they put in place and allow the asylum seekers already in the Netherlands to be citizens.
It would benefit both sides as jobs such as street cleaners or etc could be filled by them the asylum seekers and in turn they could earn money.
Thank you Melissa for sharing an insight in to the current situation at the Netherlands!
What Pastor Shin has displayed in her blog article “That asylum seekers has become not just an issue but a crisis, as the EU countries struggle to cope with the influx as well as trying to resolve the division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people,” seems correct and clearer now. All we can further hope and earnestly pray for is that, through the excellence of whatever white virtue there are in Samsara and Nirvana, may all be auspicious for those asylum seekers as mentioned therein, be freed here and now from all further misfortune and hardships, and thus enjoy a glorious perfect virtue of goodness earnestly! Om Mani Padme Hung.
Thank you Melissa for sharing this report on refugees in Netherlands.
It is heartrenching to hear the treatment of this asylees in Netherlands. They are trapped due to unsympathetic regulation that stop them to get a safe place and a living. Situation is worsen when political move to stop the BBB programme and ask the refugees to leave without any shelter in the winter.
Nevertheless, I am glad that there are so many people who volunteered to help the “Vluchtloods” group and offering them the basic necessities.
This article again serve as a reminder for me to be always be contended with what we have and help those we are in need.
Lastly, I hope the government will provide a solution to the refugees soon as it is difficult to sustain based on donation and help by volunteers alone.
With the new Dutch EU presidency, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Europe’s first priority on refugees was to improve efforts to curtail the flow of asylum-seekers arriving into the EU, which reached record numbers in 2015. By that he means that the numbers have to come down very much, very considerably.
On 16 December 2015 in Geldermalsen near Rotterdam, police fired warning shots during a riot by thousands of protesters opposed to the opening of a refugee center to accept 1500 asylum seekers. More recently in Cologne, Germany, police are investigating 31 potential suspects, of whom 18 are reported to be asylum seekers, one of them a 14-year-old Syrian boy seeking asylum in the Netherlands on suspicion of sexual assault. The accusation stems from an alleged New Year’s Eve attack on two girls, aged 14 and 15.
Asylum seekers has become not just an issue, but a crisis as the EU countries struggle to cope with the influx, as well as trying to resolve the division in the EU over how best to deal with resettling people.
There are many initiatives for migrants and refugees in the Netherlands, and the Dutch Council for Refugees has 6.000 volunteers and 600 paid employees. However, this does not help the rejected or illegal asylum seekers much who fall among the cracks. Like what we read in the article by Melissa, these rejected asylum seekers often disappear into illegality and live a virtually invisible and disenfranchised existence: they can not work, can not go to school, have little or no access to health care and have no right to adequate shelter.
There are sympathisers, for example a Dutch owner of an area in Slootdorp that was once a village for Jews fleeing the Nazis, he has offered the land to house refugees from Syria and Iraq, following a heated debate over the arrival this year of at least 26,000 Middle Eastern migrants.
However, there is only that much that sympathisers can do. The members of the public need to help press for a solution from the governments as voluntary organisations and individuals don’t have enough resources to support the asylum seekers long term.
It is so sad to read about these refugees who are not welcomed in the country. They have nowhere to go, no way of making a legal leaving and worrying when they can have the next meal or when they will be evicted again.
Thank you, Melissa, for highlighting this and it’s good to know that despite their difficulties there are still good, caring local people around who are willing to come forth to help these refuges to make their lives a bit more comfortable.
Thank you to Melissa for documenting the status of refugees in Netherlands. Thank you to Rinpoche for sharing this article.
That’s shown there are so many refugees at Europe seek for asylum. Its good to know that the local people are volunteer to help to setting up the live space for the refugees. That always have good people around us. I pray that they can find the asylum successfully.
One cannot help but to feel sad and sorry for the “refugee” after reading this article. As asylee, they are are being rejected and restricted from entering any employment, meaning no means to make a legit living, and deprive of basic amenities. This is a very sorry state of affair for adults, leave alone for children and the elderly. The conditioning Dublin Agreement and the EU system confine these asylee to just European countries with no way out. Life is very tough for them.
Something positive that I notice is how they hang on to their dignity. This statement by one of them almost brought tear to my eyes:
“Wait, don’t take a photo yet. I must arrange my things nicely.” He sits on his mattress, one among nine others on the floor of a room the size of a LUC single, “I must look like a good refugee.”
This is a strong message for me to bring away. The living condition of a person is not the definition of ones’ dignity.
Another point for me to ponder from this article is how sheltered we are, oblivious to the many suffering happening in other parts of the world or even in our own backyard. We are used to the rosy pictures from mainstream media (unless they want to make a statement otherwise) as well as the glorified lifestyle our friends and families are living through social media while the thousands who suffered without a voice will never see daylight; e.g. these refugees or Dorje Shugden practitioners. They were left to fend for themselves until an occasional mention in media. This is very sad.
Therefore I would like to say thank you to Melissa Leong who brought to light the plight of these refugees. And thank you Rinpoche for sharing this article with us.
Humbly, bowing down,
Stella Cheang
Thank you Melissa for this report of the situation of the refugees in Netherlands.
Its is pleasant to see that some of the local people and even some of the authorities are trying to help them as they could despite of the rules set by the government. This shows that they are compassionate towards these unfortunate people who are forced to leave their countries. I hope that more people will have compassion towards them and understand their situation instead of just blindly direct their anger and dissatisfaction onto them.
Chris
Thank you for documenting the plight of these refugees in the Netherlands. I pray that their attempts to find asylum will be successful.
Melissa Leong : in 2014 .. While Germany has agreed to take 40,000 refugees, (((((intersting shows how CHANGEs are progressing )))))______________________________________________________________________specialy as connected with Mandziuśri!TSEM TULKU &RINPOCHE before publications do.pls.RELAY ON REALITY(NOW?) even on estimated.______ We Are Here ____It’s 2016 after(annual) new year’s ~~”celebrations”~~ on germany’ streets.
Thank you Melissa for your report on the status of refugees in the Netherlands. Many refugees suffer because they are not wanted in other countries and they are not priority in their agendas. Many governments oblige themselves to take them in because it is a social responsibility of not seeing others suffer. However, this can be a very costly affair if not properly planned. And many governments are not keen to take on this humanitarian project.
What is disturbing is that the Netherlands allow themselves to drag on their internal bureaucracy at the expense of refugees suffering more because it is a financial burden. They don’t realize that all refugees want is a chance to better livelihood that their countries could not provide. So if the government can invest in assimilating them in to the Netherlands and have them join the working force, the new citizens can contribute back to the Netherlands when they pay for their income tax. The longer they delay the assimilation process, the more costly it is to have them reside in the country.
European countries are supposed to be developed countries and democratic, which is supposed to be the most effective and efficient form of government. So why are issues like this so difficult to resolve? Sometimes, too many people involved in giving their opinions can cause unnecessary delays, resulting in unnecessary sufferings.