Selam Dehai,
Three Ethiopian women made national news here, in the Netherlands when the city
council where they live refused to cut their social security benefits.
A number of the country's major cities are protesting at the government's
hardline policy on asylum-seekers whose application have been rejected. When
reception centers for refugees were full to capacity the government asked local
authorities to find alternatives housings for the asylum-seekers. Now the
influx has slowed down and there is no longer a shortage of space in the
centers, the government wants to phase out the housings scheme.
The first group to be effected by this new policy are asylum-seekers whose
application have been rejected. The government has orderd local authorities to
stop their social payments of those who refuse to leave their homes. Those who
refuse to leave will have to deal with the Immigration police.
In a letter to the state secretary for justice Elisabeth Schmitz, the city
council of Apeldoorn (North-Holland) has formally refused to enforce the
governments policy. The council says that it not only forces asylum-seekers to
be become illegal aliens and turn to crime to survive. It is inhumane and
impossible to enforce.
Source: translation Dutch newspapers de Volkskrant & Algemeen Dagblad.
Now, there are hunderds of eritrean in the Netherland who are directly effected
by those measures, most of them have been here for more than 4 (others longer
than five years) years and they still live in an uncertainly wether they will
stay or be deported.
Late last year when the Eritrean ambassador to the Benelux (Netherlands,
Belguim and Luxemburg) met with E.S.U (Eritrean Student Union, The Netherlands)
stated that Eritrea will accept deportation of eritreans who entered the
Netherlands before the independance. So what about those who entered a week
after the indepedance?
I think that the eritrean community here can use the energy of organizing
useless parties that end up with fights, to campagne before the parliament and
reach political parties... anything to draw attention to those people who were
forced out of their homes and took refuge at churches and relatives.
HSS
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