THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The Dutch leader said he was ashamed that hundreds of asylum seekers were forced to sleep outside an overcrowded migrant reception center in the sweltering heat, as his government on Friday announced measures to provide more accommodation. was announced. Limiting residence and temporary travel.
“What’s going on in Ter Apel is awful,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte expressed, alluding to the middle in the northeastern town of Ter Apel.
However, he said: “I think we have found an exit from this issue together.”
Among the measures announced by Rutte’s four-party ruling coalition were steps to temporarily halt family reunification of migrants who have been granted refugee status, whose asylum requests have been honored, and to quickly return people from those countries. More accommodation was provided to be repatriated and processed. . Considered safe.
Part of the current crisis is that people who have been granted refugee status are stuck in asylum-seeking centers because they have nowhere to go amid a nationwide housing crisis.
The minister in charge said the Netherlands will also temporarily stop accepting migrants sent to the Netherlands this year and in 2023, as part of the EU’s 2016 deal with Turkey amid the EU’s wider migration crisis. Migration and Asylum, Eric van der Burgh.
Authorities moved 150 migrants from the overcrowded Ter Apel asylum seeker center to two sports halls in the central city of Apeldoorn on Thursday night, easing the suffering of those camping in the open air. The city said it had provided short-term housing to ease the crisis and that asylum seekers would move to another location after four days.
Van der Berg said the Dutch army would help some people find a place to sleep in Ter Apel.
Hundreds of migrants are sleeping in squalid conditions just outside Ter Apple because the shelter there is too full for them. The situation is so dire that Doctors Without Borders sent a team there on Thursday, the first time the agency has launched a mission in the Netherlands.
Rutte acknowledged that despite the new measures, some asylum seekers will continue to sleep outside the Terre Appelle complex on weekends.
A 3-month-old baby died this week at a Terre Appel center and authorities are investigating the cause of death. Two men were taken to hospital on Thursday, one with a heart attack and the other with diabetes, which had gone untreated for weeks.
“These are 700 people sleeping rough: no rain, very poor facilities, no health care,” Judith Sargentini, the Dutch director of Without Borders, told The Associated Press of the situation in Terre Appel.
While many Dutch towns and cities have offered space to Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country, asylum seekers from other countries have been less welcoming. Most of those arriving in Ter Apple are Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war.
