Refugees fight for their right to exist in the Netherlands
First you saw the banners, enclosing the area like a fence. One is big, blue, with white lettering: “In memory of The Hague, city of freedom.” Others were smaller, the writing washed away by the rain. Then there were the flags, mostly black ones, with the symbol of the Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) of The Hague. Between them, a rainbow one with Pace, the Italian for “peace”, written on it. Those flags were popular in Italy in 2003, when people were protesting against the war in Iraq. Here, it is a symbol for another protest: that of the refugees against the Dutch State and its immigration policy, a fight “for solidarity, against exclusion,” as a yellow banner states.
Sahba, 21 years old from Baghdad, was one of the people who set up this camp near The Hague’s Central Station. He was also in the front line of the demonstrations the refugees have organized in the past three weeks, marching behind the banner: “No man is illegal.” He looked like a tough guy, a long wooden bar in his pierced earlobe and a small tattoo on his hand. He came to the country by himself, but he did not want to say how he reached the country, or give his full name: “It’s dangerous to tell things.” He has been living for four and a half years in the Netherlands and speaks good Dutch, like everyone else in the camp. He became homeless in May: “If you live on the streets for this long, or have been in prison for nothing, you become desensitized.”
As the law stands now, once refugees receive a negative advice on their staying, they have to go back to their home country. While most of the refugees in the camp come from Iraq, this policy affects also people from Angola, Iran, Afghanistan; virtually any person requiring and overstaying a visa becomes illegal. According to a 2008 Amnesty International report, in 2006, between 75,000 to 185,000 migrants and asylum-seekers were illegal in the Netherlands; it also estimates that 20,000 people a year are detained in about 3,000 cells.
Bawen is also 21, but he came from the Kurdish part of Iraq. He came to the Netherlands with his parents when he was nine. “I lived in refugee camps all over the place: Limburg, Groningen, Zwolle, and even then I managed to finish my secondary school. But once you turn 18 you can’t study any longer. You are finished, you are grown up. I don’t have any documents, I am illegal.” Bawen’s mother is going back to her parents in Iraq, but Bawen is staying. “For how long? Until we can. We don’t have another place.” While he talked, some other refugees came, observed, listened silently, and then left again.
Life in the camp, which hosts about 40 refugees, is uncomfortable, but some people have shown solidarity and provided supplies, like mattresses and blankets. They were hanging on improvised hangers to dry. A barber was offering his services for free, and a line of men was waiting to get their haircut.
A Twitter account, a WordPress blog and a Facebook page called “Right to Exist”, tells the outside world about the refugees’ needs and their protest. The messages are then spread online by other organizations supporting a more humane asylum policy, like Occupy The Hague, No Border, Anti-Fascist Action. Another Facebook page, “We stay here,” followed the protest since the beginning in Ter Apel, a small city in the North-East of the Netherlands, where the Immigration and Naturalization Office is based, through Sellingen and Zwolle, until it reached the bigger cities of Amsterdam and The Hague.
While the Amsterdam camp has disposable toilets and military-style tents, the one in The Hague lacks such luxuries. The Hague’s mayor, Jozias van Aartsen, did not show much sympathy towards the refugees, and initially prohibited the overnight stay due to safety concerns, but, following a lawsuit, he was overruled. Security is ensured through camera surveillance and police checks. The refugees can only use party tents with transparent walls, as to see what is going on inside.
The tents do not offer much protection from the wind, but Akied Hussein Maho insisted on bringing chairs into the tent to be warmer. He is from Mosul, Northern Iraq. He was 30 years old, but he looked older than that. He was well dressed: jeans, a shirt, a sweater, a coat. His wallet was that of a typical Dutch person: an ING bank card, a transportation card, even health insurance. He vehemently repeated he did not want to leave the Netherlands. “They say we should go back to Iraq, that Iraq is safe. Iraq is not safe. I do not even know where my family is. Maybe they moved house, maybe they are dead. Our house was in a street that got destroyed in an air attack.” He worked on the roads for a while: “I built the streets on which Dutch people walk, but I am not allowed to do the same,” he said, with a bitter laugh.
As Akied talked, a man parked a stroller in the tent. He unfastened his daughter, who was holding a pink balloon and immediately started running around the camp. She was the only one there who had little to worry about, at least for another fifteen years.
Just Words 