“Very difficult, a devilish dilemma.” That is what Mayor Renze Bergsma of the municipality of Coevorden says about the decision to refrain from housing fourteen minor refugees. The girls would be housed in the Tuindorp district in Coevorden.
According to the municipality of Coevorden, they were girls between the ages of 15 and 18, but residents of Tuindorp do not believe that and say that there are also “traumatized boys”. This week dozens of people set fire to cars and supporters and threw windows. Due to the unrest there is an emergency regulation in the neighborhood.
“As a mayor I have to weigh everything and safety is at the forefront at all times. And it is precisely these vulnerable girls who deserve a safe home. We simply cannot offer that in Tuindorp at the moment,” says Bergsma about why the municipality is abandoning the arrival of the minor refugees.
The mayor realizes that the relationship with the residents of Tuindorp has not been restored immediately. “I know that in this neighborhood confidence in the government is brittle and vulnerable. And I think we should not underestimate the residential file. It causes a lot of frustration if your child still lives at home at the age of 28 because there is nothing to be found.”
“But I also know Tuindorp as a working -class neighborhood where togetherness is great. In general there is a lot of social bonding and people also live there with great pleasure. For the future of Tuindorp we will have to talk to each other. We have to invest in each other. I made an appointment that we will again be around the table with a delegation of the neighborhood after the summer.”
Bergsma hopes that the decision of the municipality does not create a precedent. In other words: that other dissatisfied citizens try to push their way through riots. “I am really allowed to hope so it is important in this case that it also penetrates national politics that the asylum file really has to be done. Two cabinets have since fallen on it.”
It is not yet clear to the mayor what will happen to fourteen refugees. “Of course we have a task as a municipality and we will also give substance to that. But where exactly, we will first have to discuss that. That daycare can be in Coevorden, but also somewhere else.”
Despite the decision not to place the refugees in Tuindorp, according to Bergsma, the emergency regulation will remain in force until next Wednesday.