The village of Drenthe on troublesome asylum seekers: “The approach fails” | Domestic

EMMEN – Frustration is growing in Nieuw-Weerdinge over the “failed approach” towards asylum seekers from Ter Apel. The council of the Ribbon village, which borders Ter Apel in Groningen, writes this in a letter to the outgoing State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum). According to the committee, villagers are more likely to “arm themselves” against the group of troublemakers and there is a risk that residents will also find themselves confronted by police and law enforcement officers, for example, for “impotence and frustration”.

The village council wants Van der Burg to intervene and take measures “to prevent the situation here in the area from getting completely worse”. It is proposed, for example, to close the area of ​​the Ter Apel asylum seeker center every day at 6pm until the following morning.

‘More than a year’

Residents of Nieuw-Weerdinge, which is part of the municipality of Emmen, have long said they have been harassed by so-called safelanders, who have little or no chance of obtaining a residence permit. Several cases are now known in which “residents have taken the law into their own hands”, the mayor of Emmen wrote to the city council in November. He stresses that this is not allowed, “but the fact is that the inhabitants of Nieuw-Weerdinge have been dealing with accidents and inconveniences caused by Safelanders for more than a year.”

The letter that the local interest association Nieuw-Weerdinge sent to Van der Burg this week is therefore not the first cry for help. President Wim Katoen says this has happened before. This led to two conversations with Van der Burg, he says, during which Katoen noted that the secretary of state was “very involved”. “But the announced measures don’t work,” the president said.

The police cannot always act

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice and Security said it had received the letter but could not yet comment on its contents. Late last month Van der Burg wrote to the House of Representatives saying that the Nieuw-Weerdinge incident is “absolutely unacceptable”, but that sometimes the police are unable to intervene immediately because it is not always a crime . . In his conversation with the villagers, the Secretary of State stated that “the police are ready to intervene if necessary” and that he and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) are committed to “a more proportionate in the country, so that less inconvenience occurs.”

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2024-01-09 14:12:42
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