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Refugees: Tightening the Screw 115
subject of threats and complaints. At Büren, the ‘Schaukelfesslung’ treatment has
not even been outlawed or excluded from being used in the future.
... people have committed suicide while detained prior to expulsion.
There have also been several rebellions, some of them ‘veritable insurrections
lasting for weeks’, in which especially Kurds and Algerians were
involved, and there have been hunger strikes at airport detention zones.
The FASTI conference was also told, by a participant from Zurich, that in
Switzerland 5,000 people were detained in 1995 for varying lengths of time
in prisons prior to deportation. In 1997 a special centre for deportation prior
to removal was opened. People in this centre were ‘subjected to big
pressures’: ‘They are beaten to make them confess what country they come
from and what their true name is. We know of cases where people have been
shoved onto aeroplanes, bound with wire and drugged.’ Sweden has kept
asylum seekers in detention on ships, as Britain did Tamils in an earlier
period, and confines some refugees on tents. By 1997 it had four detention
centres, in which people may be held for eight or nine months. In the
Netherlands, according to Rens den Hollander of the Autonoom Centrum in
Amsterdam, more than 1,000 detention cells have been created in special
prisons for refugees and ‘irregular’ foreigners. Two new ‘mega’ prisons were
being built, and there were plans for an expansion of capacity to 2,000
places. Normal prison and police stations were also used; the latter have no
facilities to receive visitors. And there are reception centres at the airport and
at land frontiers, where decisions are made in 24 hours and may be followed
by transfer to detention. In addition, although moves to surround reception
centres, or open camps, with high fences were thwarted by protesters, every
effort is made to deter asylum seekers from going out; if they do, they are
electronically monitored. There is no time limit to detention. This, and the
lack of any organised activities or adequate medical attention, leads to disorientation
and depression among detainees. ‘Once’, said Rens den
Hollander, ‘I brought a dead leaf to a detainee to give him the sense of
seasons’ passing that he had lost. Not allowed! Regulations!’ Standard
punishment for any form of protest is two weeks in an isolation cell. Many are
released, with no change in their circumstances and sometimes after many
months in detention. Rens den Hollander commented:
These detention centres are part of a real exclusion machine. For detention is an
instrument of deterrence much more than it is an efficient means of control. In the
Netherlands, 50 per cent of detainees are not removed from the country but are simply
thrown onto the street, where they find themselves once more in a condition of
illegality, after spending months and months in prison. The period of detention is
unlimited. It is a kind of administrative detention. This detention of refugees and
‘irregulars’ is supposed to send a signal to potential immigrants – ‘Don’t come here’
– and to the governments of their countries of origin, to apply diplomatic pressure on
them to take back their nationals.