MPs react shocked to the death of the baby in the sports hall at the registration center Ter Apel. GroenLinks and the PvdA want State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) to provide clarification about the baby’s death by letter. That request is in any case supported by Volt and coalition parties D66, CDA and ChristenUnie.
The groups want “clarity as soon as possible about what happened and what the exact cause of death is,” explains Kati Piri (PvdA), who submitted the request together with GroenLinks MP Suzanne Kröger. PvdA, GroenLinks and Volt also want a quick parliamentary debate with the SP.
Because the asylum policy of the cabinet “is screaming out of the claws”, SP MP Jasper van Dijk submitted a request for a parliamentary debate on Wednesday. The immediate reason for Van Dijk is the more than 700 asylum seekers who had to sleep outside on the grass in Ter Apel last night. In addition, the death of a three-month-old baby. “The misery is only increasing.”
GroenLinks and PvdA want – in addition to clarity about the death of the baby – from the State Secretary how he views the living conditions in the shelter in Ter Apel. According to Piri, the chaos around the application center is “only getting bigger” and solutions for “humane reception are still nowhere in sight”.
Structural solution
As far as SP’er Van Dijk is concerned, the State Secretary must come up with a structural solution to the asylum crisis as soon as possible, instead of constantly taking ad hoc “panic measures”. He is referring, among other things, to passing the municipality of Tubbergen by granting the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) a permit to open an asylum seekers center in a hotel in Albergen.