Asylum migration is the hottest political topic in recent years. What is it like when you sit in the House of Representatives as a former asylum seeker? Mpanzu Bamenga from Eindhoven fled as a child with his mother from what is now called Congo. It took thirteen years before he received a residence permit. He now sits for D66 in the House of Representatives and hears many negative statements about asylum seekers. “It only motivates, I stand for a different Netherlands.”
Bamenga is the fourth guest in ‘Brabant Kiest de Podcast’. In that series, Arjo Kraak and Ilse Schoenmakers talk with prominent politicians, often from Brabant, about their motivations and ideals and about the elections of October 29.
Bamenga is again a candidate for D66, he is in position 10 on the candidate list. You don’t have to dig very deep to find his political motivations. “I am in politics to tackle injustice,” he says. “I have experienced that firsthand. As a child I wondered: why am I treated differently? We were allowed to go to school, but not to go abroad and not to work. We had to report to the police every week and had little money.”
Yet the young Mpanzu found his way in the Netherlands. “Thanks to people who wanted to give me a chance,” he emphasizes. He gives an example: “I was looking for an internship, but without papers that is actually not possible at all. He walked into the Dynamo youth center in Eindhoven and he was accepted there. “They saw something in me and gave me a chance. I have never forgotten that,” he says. And it shows: last week he presented his book “Dreams of my sister” in the same youth center in Eindhoven.
“It makes me angry when people are reduced to the color of their skin.”
In that book, Bamenga tells how he found his place in Dutch society as an immigrant. But also how difficult that is sometimes. A turning point was when he and others were extra checked by the military police at Eindhoven Airport in 2018 based on skin color. “All white Dutch people were allowed to pass through, I felt humiliated.”
He was now a lawyer at the time and decided to fight the case all the way to the highest court. After five years of litigation, he was proven right, this so-called ethnic profiling equals discrimination and is not allowed according to the constitution. For the past two years, he has been working on a bill to enshrine a ban on ethnic profiling into law.
“That is important, because it is stated in the constitution that it is not allowed, but it still happens, you also saw that in the benefits affair. It makes me angry when people are reduced to their skin color.”
‘Brabant Kiest, the podcast’, with Mpanzu Bamenga can be listened to here:
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