Katja Schuurman has stayed in an asylum seekers’ center for PR purposes, but is that really useful? In any case, she hasn’t slept, the actress admits. “Yes, it was a very restless night.”
Most Dutch people want the asylum influx to decrease and the current government is also committed to this. And that is against the sore leg of Katja Schuurman, who advocates a warm welcome for refugees. That’s why she spent a night last weekend at Hotel AZC, a replica asylum center in the canal belt of Amsterdam.
Five star hotel
With this fake mini-asylum seeker center, the Netherlands Council for Refugees wants to draw attention to the circumstances that refugees face in the Netherlands. “They built this because a lot of people think: those refugees come here and immediately get a five-star hotel,” Katja tells Show news.
A ridiculous assumption, says Katja. “Reality and facts no longer really matter, it seems.”
Syrian refugee Alaa sits next to her and says that the conditions in Dutch asylum seekers’ centers are ‘inhumane’.
Criminals
Katja wants better facilities for refugees. “They have to flee, then they come here and then they are treated almost like criminals. The conditions are really… Yes, below par. I don’t understand that, it breaks my heart.”
She continues: “I really want us to act from our hearts again, from our human capacity for empathy, we are all the same, we just happened to be born in a different place.”
Restless night
How was Katja’s night? A morning later she says: “It was a restless night, I can’t say anything else, and that was mainly due to the noise. Incredible. It doesn’t stop. Babies crying, phones going off, people chatting. People who can’t sleep and are on their phones. That’s what I actually thought…”
“You can actually put me anywhere. If I’m tired, I just sleep on the floor, but that noise that you really can’t escape… You can’t turn the switch off. That’s really claustrophobic actually.”