Can trust be restored? ‘No!’, it sounds in the council chamber of Tubbergen

Albergenaren Helen (54) and daughter Maud (29) consider the upcoming council meeting standing on the square in front of the town hall in Tubbergen, as more tufts of people do. “Did you know that they now have asylum seekers in most of the Van der Valk hotels?”

Tonight the municipality will meet on the subject that has occupied them and their fellow villagers all week: the arrival of an asylum seekers’ center. It attracts too many interested people for the council chamber, with space for a hundred inhabitants. About three hundred others can watch live on a big screen in a hall of ‘t Oale Roadhoes.

A week ago, the municipality of Tubbergen, to which Albergen belongs, was attacked by a phone call from State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asiel, VVD). Tubbergen is the first municipality in the Netherlands to be obliged to accommodate three hundred asylum seekers in hotel ‘t Elshuys, just outside the village. What follows is a week of protest for the hotel. On Sunday, about four hundred residents of Albergen joined in a silent march. Likewise Maud and Helen (they don’t want their last name in the newspaper).

No, they are ‘absolutely not’ against the reception of asylum seekers. But three hundred, that’s out of balance in a village of 3,600 people. “And what is arranged for those people,” says Maud, “there is absolutely nothing to do here.” She hopes to find answers to those questions.

Arms crossed

There is coffee in the room. All seats except the front row are occupied. At the back of the room is a large group of people with their arms folded. The balcony is also full. An acquaintance joins Maud and Helen at the side of the room. She doesn’t want to be mentioned by name, but she’s part of the “core team” of protesting neighbors. And she is emotional. When Van der Burg begins to speak, her tears come immediately.

He wanted to come earlier, he says. But the church wanted it this way. In a public setting. In the first two hours, it is mainly a debate between Van der Burg and a number of concerned local residents, the council does not get involved. Councilors are only speaking in the last hour.

The attendees did not think highly of Van der Burg. When he asks for tea, there comes a sneering ‘aah’. There is sometimes mocking laughter. “Some local residents are so emotionally devastated that I speak for them,” says Hennie de Haan, spokesperson for the hotel’s neighbors.

The mistrust of her and other residents of Albergen in the government is getting bigger and bigger. Her most important question: does the State Secretary want to ‘press the emergency button’ and adjust or withdraw the plan? The “core team member” wipes the tears from her face. When De Haan is finished, there is a huge applause.

Van der Burg is clear. “I’m not here to negotiate with you,” he says. The hotel has been bought. First there will be status holders, after a renovation it will become an asylum seekers’ center for a long time. The intention is: two hundred people in the hotel, and one hundred in the area around it. “Everything that is imposed on you does not contribute to support”, Van der Burg also knows. But the situation is so pressing that it simply has to be.

He teaches the attendees about asylum reception. He explains how it is possible that he bypasses the municipality, and why he uses the means of coercion, but not why exactly that is happening in Tubbergen. He talks about the obligations that the Netherlands has, that people have to sleep on the grass in Ter Apel. “The ministry is looking for places for asylum seekers,” he emphasizes, not for status holders. He thus responds to the argument of various councilors: that Tubbergen already accommodates the latter group. When he says that other countries don’t just take back ‘safelanders’, and that until then they also have to live somewhere, there is a disapproving buzz in the room.

He explains why the purchase of the hotel has not been announced. “Then communities have the opportunity to invest money and buy proposed locations themselves.” And then there will be “no azc”.

walking the dog

Speakers are not happy with it. “Where is the role of local residents?” says De Haan. “My mother-in-law does not dare to walk her dog in the garden anymore!” Later respondents share this fear for safety. Van der Burg says that fear of the same “thunder” as in Ter Apel is unjustified. Things go very, very often in asylum seekers’ centres, very well.” Again there is scornful laughter in the hall. “Asylum seekers are not thieves and looters,” says Van der Burg explicitly. That is not what the attendees want. “We have one police officer,” the acquaintance says aloud next to Maud and Helen in the hall.

Those present are not told, and the question is not asked whether the hotel has already been negotiated and whether the municipality could therefore have known that the asylum seekers’ center was coming. The municipality said in a press conference not, Van der Burg previously indicated that he had been in talks “for some time”.

In regional consultations, there had been warnings for weeks about coercion from the central government

Party chairman Christel Luttikhuis (CDA) is submitting a motion on behalf of the entire council, calling on the state secretary to involve the council. “We will have to work on restoring trust,” says Van der Burg. “Will that work?” he asks rhetorically. No! say the people in the council chamber. No! Says the audience in ‘t Oale Roadhoes.