There is such a poverty of reception places in Ter Apel that refugees sometimes have to sleep in an IND waiting room for days. The Red Cross comes to the rescue. “They catch a cold on the cold ground.”
It looks quiet at the refugee shelter in Ter Apel. Very different from last time when the Red Cross came there to help. Then the emergency aid organization set up extra tents as sleeping places. Now nothing seems to be wrong.
Appearances are deceiving: for the second time the Red Cross has to intervene in inhumane situations in Ter Apel. It is the kind of intervention that you actually expect in a distant and poor foreign country. Because the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) has so few reception places available for refugees that the waiting room for registration of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) is used as a night location.
On Saturday evening, the Red Cross already handed out blankets, pillows and sleeping mats for people in that waiting room. Shower units were delivered on Sunday, but they have not yet been connected. In the waiting area, volunteers have placed some toys and other items to pass the time. “The maximum ‘sleeping capacity’ of 135 people has been continuously reached in recent days,” says Anna Strolenberg of Refugee Council.
Five nights on the ground
But a waiting room with fluorescent lights and plastic chairs is not a bedroom. When two families walk off the IND grounds from the waiting rooms, their faces are relieved. A father carries his son on his neck, a mother holds her little one in her arm. They are on their way to a better reception location.
“It became especially distressing for families,” says Strolenberg. Vluchtelingenwerk, together with the COA, raised the alarm with the Red Cross. The situation became too colorful, especially in the past week. “Some people had been sleeping on the floor for five nights. Even someone with a hernia and small children. They had not been able to shower for five days. People felt trapped. They slept in a chair or on the cold ground. They caught a cold.” During the day, some asylum seekers had to stay outside in the cold.
Conditions are improving slightly with the arrival of the Red Cross, but asylum seekers still have to spend the night in the IND waiting rooms.
This has been the case for two months, says IND spokesperson Britt Enthoven. “It started with one night that had to be bridged, but last week the flow was so bad that people had to spend several nights in the waiting room. This poses practical problems: a waiting room is a small space. You have no place to shower or brush your teeth. Spending one night here is very annoying and not the intention, but several nights is really problematic.”
No more sleeping outside
Silent and smoking, two security guards in yellow vests stand in front of the entrance to the COA, right next to the IND grounds. They point to the lawn where, at its peak, 700 refugees had to sleep outside last summer. “They won’t let that happen again this year,” says one. “I don’t think so either,” responds the other. “It freezes at night.”
But what the COA does allow is overnight accommodation in a waiting room that is actually only intended for registration of new refugees. “There are simply no more places, and we cannot leave those people outside,” explains Jolanda Bolt of COA. ‘Vector portals’ in Ter Apel, Assen and Amsterdam, where unregistered refugees wait for a first interview, are also full.
Bolt: “We are not going to let people sleep outside. We are working with all our might to find more places.”
Sandra van Houten of the Red Cross does not dare to say how long the Red Cross’s help will be needed. “As long as the demand is there and we can offer help, we will continue to do so.”