°Schiphol, Europa
Eleven dead, fifteen injured in the fire at the deportation centre at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. The Netherlands, which has adopted one of the toughest immigration policies in Europe, is in the process of deporting some 26,000 asylum seekers who have been refused Dutch residency. Guards initially ignored reports of a fire and refused to unlock the doors, which in any case cannot be centrally unlocked in the event of, say, a fire.
Eleven managed to escape, three were captured again that night. May they all be safe and free.
An interview with someone from Autonoom Centrum available on the MeltingPot site.
Addendum: Dutch police remove banners protesting the deaths of those at Schiphol. (November 6)
In January, Oury Jalloh burned to death in the police station in Dessau (Germany). More recently, the situation in an around Spain-Morocco is something of a war zone, with police resorting to lethal force to stop undocumented border crossings, and deportations to the desert.
From the 28 September to 6 October 2005 at least 14 migrants died during attempts to cross the border fences that separate the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco. On the 6th October, six more were shot at the border between Morocco and Melilla. The same evening Spain began deportations of non-Moroccan immigrants to Morocco. While migrants from countries other than Morocco had generally been admitted to Spain so far because of the lack of a repatriation agreement, Morocco began mass deportations towards its southern borders, and into the desert. The Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía and the Chabaka network of northern Morocco report that around 14 people have died in the desert from a lack of food and water.
On 30 September 2005, Medècins sans Frontières (MSF) published a report in which it highlights that a large proportion (2,193 out of 9,350) of the people it has treated sought medical help because they suffered the “after-effects of violence”. In over half the cases, the migrants claimed that Moroccan (44%) and Spanish (18%) police forces had been responsible for their injuries, with organised gangs and people traffickers also figuring in the categories of groups which caused injuries in over 10% of cases. The incidents reported by MSF, which it claims reveal “systematic violence and degrading treatment”, include deaths, gunshot wounds, beatings and attacks by dogs when fleeing Moroccan security forces.
European Caravan Against the Fence : European Day of Action (Oct 29th) : Cueta, Nador
Thanks. More, including interview with victim’s girlfriend, at http://dearkitty.modblog.com/core.mod?show=blogview&blog_id=770870
By the way, the Autonoom Centrum disbanded itself months ago.
dearkitty [October 30, 2005 @ 10:10 am]