In an interview with Binnenlands Bestuur, Groningen Mayor and Chairman of the Groningen Security Region Koen Schuiling expressed worry and disgust about the conditions asylum seekers are kept in at the Ter Apel reception center.
Schuiling called the living conditions at the center “disturbing” and added that the administration should be ashamed.
The mayor visited Ter Apel at the beginning of April and was deeply affected by what he saw. “Children play among the rubbish. There are infinitely better sanitary facilities on a festival site. It’s a different category of people or something, I don’t know. We are breaking the law on all sides. It’s embarrassing” he told Binnenlands Bestuur.
The visit was particularly shocking to Schuiling considering the significant efforts he is witnessing recently when it comes to finding shelter options for Ukrainian refugees. With “municipalities tumbling over each other” to offer good placements, the situation in Ter Apel is even more shameful.
Where before there was reportedly no room for refugees, now 30,000 places came out of nowhere, of which 20,000 have already been occupied. Empty office buildings have already been made available for Ukrainian refugees and the Holland America Line cruise ship Volendam will dock in the Merwehaven for four months for the purpose of hosting more people.
Even more upsetting for Schuiling is the fact that, while many of his colleagues in other Safety Regions around the country are rightfully calling out Ter Apel’s conditions as inhumane, nobody seems interested in extending a helping hand, even where the resources are available to do so.
It is not the first time that Koen Schuiling rings the alarm bell about Ter Apel, the only registration center in the country. As reported by RTV Noord, the situation was already untenable in October, when it turned out that more than 650 asylum seekers were staying in the night shelter that was built to host a maximum of 250 people. At the time, after trying to increase pressure on the government by making the situation known to the media, the Groningen Security Region finally managed to get the cabinet involved, including Prime Minister Mark Rutte, but no immediate intervention was put in place.
Following the October crisis, the Security Region considered closing the facility, until the municipalities of Groningen, Pekela and Leek made thousands of new crisis emergency shelter places available. Since March 2022, the situation has gone back to extreme overcrowding.
In the Binnenlands Bestuur interview, when asked about solutions to the crisis, mayor Schuiling called out municipalities, like Alkmaar, that do everything in their power, even resorting to legal proceedings, to avoid doing their part in hosting asylum seekers and refugees. At the same time, he speculated whether The Hague’s idleness could come from the fact that Groningen feels very far from the administrative and political center of the country, and extended an invitation to Dutch political leaders to come to Ter Apel and witness the situation first-hand.
