Dutch court tells cities to give unconditional shelter
Yesterday the Dutch court told the city of Amsterdam (and the rest of the country) they have to give unconditional shelter to rejected asylumseekers, if they have no other place to go to. This is the first significant step towards justice for Dutch asylum rejectees.
It was a roller coaster two years, with small victories, unsolvable problems, big setbacks, two funerals and lots of frightening incidents, all rolling over us, sometimes in ultra techno beat. But we somehow held together, amassed support from everywhere, and now the general trend is upward.
The movement we support, started almost three years back with 4 African people from different countries and religions, in a single improvised protest tent in the muddy potato fields next to a remote Asylum shelter. Authorities laughed at them, assuring them that nobody would notice. Five tent camps and 12 squat on, they truly almost brought down the Dutch government. They are now around 300 asylum rejectees, with their protest all over the national media day in day out, already for weeks now.
The coalition government (liberal-cons going brown on this issue, and social democrats panicked by poll-decimation) narrowly saved their pluche asses by compromising a shelter in 4 cities only for 4 weeks, and only for those who want to go back. This 'solution' all starts from the governments ongoing denial of the 'Asylum Gap', in which the refugee always gets blamed and punished for his unreturnability. So the biggest news of the month was all about refugee-shelter, and yet it was irrelevant for most of the We Are Here-refugees. But yesterday the court (inspired by previous victories of our group in European institiutions) scratched the 'work on return' condition from the shelter. So now it does start to be something.
The government compromise to save their "Starve them into volunatary return" strategy is now in unglueable shatters. And though the shelter is currently no more then night shelter plus two meals, it is a hell lot better then where we started 3 years back.
Much credit goes to the Fisher-lawyer group, choosing to almost go bankrupt on starting hundreds of pro deo court cases in Amsterdam and Europe. In Europe they won, expanding basic rights for all homeless in all European countries. In Amsterdam they lost most initial cases, but with the European verdicts now on the table, they start to win appeal cases.
Most of the We Are Here group are now housed in two adjacent squatted office blocks in Amsterdam West, battling not just injustice and repression by national and local politics, but also the resulting bewilderment in the minds of some of their comrades.
They will be thrown on the street again starting 29th of this month.