IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Wanneer: 04/02/2015 - 20:33

While the City Council of Amsterdam, encouraged by a penal court, is moving to create a solution for adequately sheltering rejected refugees, the mayor tries to blast the council away from the refugees...

The mayor of Amsterdam today refuses to talk with Wij zijn Hier-refugees about adequate shelter, even after the court almost ordered him to do more then night only shelter. The Mayor insists in strong wordings on continuing a shelter that will evict all refugees every morning, against international rulings, and also against the wishes of his own city council.

Why ?

The mayor himself last week said that 60 out of the group of 159 can to his opinion go back. (The real number is far lower, and I disagree with any form of forced migration, but for this argument that is irrelevant.)

In his argument that 60 can go back, mayor Van der Laan also accepts that 99 can not go back.

Van der Laan said that he does offer 24/7 shelter, but only for those who agree to work on going back to their countries. He is against 24/7 shelter for all, because then, nobody would go to his Go Back To Your Country Shelter.

So Van der Laan wants to deny 24/7 shelter even to the 99 refugees for who he accepts they can not go back, (plus 200 more in similar situations in Amsterdam alone) only to force the other group of 60 to accept his Get Out Of My Country-shelter.

This is so wrong.

The city council, including his own social democrat PvdA ,understand this moral anomaly, and therefore they openly disagreed with Van der Laan on this point.

One problem for Van der Laan is that he does not know which 60 can go back or not, because its a wilde guess, based on faulty information combined with invalid arguments, brought up by the ministry of justice. Van der Laan does know, but does not want to be remembered, that secretary of state mr Teeven's initial brag was, that at least 150 of the 159 could go back. This is proven totally wrong even in the mayor's own version. Still he continues to use the information from the ministry as the only and whole truth.

We hope the solution will now come from the City Council. They might actually, if they have the courage not to feel intimidated: two similar motions need to come together and then have a large majority in the council.

Pieter Smit.