Dutch authorities moved around 400 asylum seekers from a makeshift camp outside an overcrowded migrant reception center in the northeastern Netherlands, where hundreds of people were sleeping rough. The move comes after a team from the country’s Health and Youth Inspectorate visited the squalid temporary camp in the village of Ter Apel – near the northern city of Groningen – where more than 700 people have been sleeping rough, many for nearly three weeks. The inspection said there was a “serious risk of infectious disease outbreaks as a result of the complete lack of hygiene” at the centre. A three-month-old baby died this week in a sports hall in the Ter Apel centre. Authorities are investigating the cause of death. Two men were also taken to hospital, one for a heart attack and another for diabetes that went untreated for weeks. “We hope to slowly normalize the situation in Ter Apel,” Leon Veldt, a spokesman for the government’s organization hosting asylum seekers, said on Saturday. The refugees were moved overnight from Ter Apel to alternative accommodation in other locations, Veldt said. Refugees wait outdoors on wet ground at the main reception center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel, the Netherlands, on August 17, 2022 [Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters] Refugee advocates likened the situation in Ter Apel to overcrowded camps in Greece and Italy, which are common first destinations for Europe-bound asylum seekers. Conditions were so bad that the Dutch branch of Doctors Without Borders sent a team there on Thursday, the aid agency’s first mission to the Netherlands. While many towns and cities in the Netherlands have offered accommodation to Ukrainians who fled the war in their country, the welcome has worn thin for asylum seekers from other countries. Most of the people who arrive in Ter Apel are Syrians fleeing their nation’s brutal civil war.
Ashamed
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Friday he was ashamed of the scenes in Ter Apel, and that evening his government announced a series of measures aimed at easing the country’s asylum-seeker accommodation crisis. The measures include temporarily limiting refugee family reunifications and the number of migrant arrivals destined for the Netherlands under a 2016 deal between the European Union and Turkey. The government also said it is working with local municipalities to create more housing for people receiving refugee status so they can move more quickly from asylum-seeker centres, freeing up space for new arrivals. The Dutch military was also tasked with setting up a new camp to house people waiting to lodge asylum claims at the Ter Apel centre. Milo Schoenmaker, chairman of the board of the Central Asylum Seeker Reception Service, welcomed the moves. “With the measures that have been announced, the application center in Ter Apel will hopefully be relieved quickly. At the same time, there are still insufficient places available to accommodate everyone,” he said.
