By Imane Rachidi
The Hague, Oct. 16 (EFE).- The Dutch government, which includes the far right, announced Wednesday that it is studying the possibility of deporting asylum seekers from African countries who have exhausted all legal avenues to stay in the Netherlands to Uganda.
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, the far-right Reinette Klever, announced during a working visit to Uganda that her colleague, Minister of Migration and Asylum Marjolein Faber, is working on the plan, which is still “in its early stages,” and that the Ugandan government is not opposed to the idea and will be offered financial compensation in return.
The plan is to deport asylum seekers from African countries who have already been rejected in the Netherlands after all legal channels have been exhausted and to house them in Uganda before being sent back to their country of origin from Kampala.
“Ultimately, we want to curb migration. For the government, it is important that those who have exhausted their legal remedies return to their country of origin. And that is where the situation sometimes gets stuck,” said Minister Klever.
According to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Uganda hosts more than 1.5 million refugees, mostly in areas close to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many refugees come from.
Conditions in Uganda’s asylum-seeker camps are “bad” and “there is not always enough food and water” for the people sheltering there, mentions the Dutch State Department’s detailed overview of the security situation in Uganda published in August.
It also warns that LGBT people seeking to travel to Uganda “could face severe punishment, including the death penalty.”
It is unclear whether the plan by the Dutch government, in which Geert Wilders’ far-right party has a majority in a four-party coalition, would also see deported asylum seekers become refugees in the same camps.
Wilders has welcomed the plan because it will mean “fewer asylum seekers and more Netherlands,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Diederik Boomsma, a member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Party NSC (another government partner), was open to the idea of so-called return centers in countries outside the European Union, recalling that many countries in the Ugandan region do not cooperate with the return of their citizens.
However, he made his party’s support conditional on respect for human rights of asylum seekers, admitting that Uganda does not have a good reputation in this regard.
The other two partners have not yet made their position clear.
The farmer’s party BBB is the minority partner and has often sided with Wilders’ PVV on migration issues.
The VVD liberals say they will only comment when the government presents a proposal to parliament.
The opposition has been very critical. Jesse Klaver of the Green Party GroenLinks called it “the umpteenth diversionary tactic” by the Dutch cabinet, which he said showed that “they are not getting anything done, they are not building houses, they are not keeping hospitals open,” nor solving the country’s other problems, he lamented.
He urged the two far-right ministers to “make agreements” with citizens’ countries of origin, which “is very complicated, but it is real politics.”
Progressives in D66 call the plan a “symbolic policy” and consider it “totally unworkable and ill-conceived”, recalling that other countries such as Denmark and the UK have already tried it and managed to send “zero people to Africa.”
This announcement by the Netherlands comes a day after the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed to EU leaders to study the idea of developing “return centers” for illegal migrants outside the EU, as she believes that “lessons can be learned” from the experience of the agreement between Italy and Albania. EFE
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