Early November, about 100 refugees were evicted from a squat in Zeebrugge. Refugees used it as shelter in anticipation of the dangerous journey to the UK. Right after eviction, the squat got demolished.

That police decided just now to act heavily is most probably not coincidence. On the one side there is the new coalition agreement, where the hunt on refugees was set as a priority. On the other hand, there was a documentary about this squat on commercial television only a few weeks ago. In the documentary was shown in which horrible circumstances the refugees were living.

That there is not at all a humane policy towards refugees is definitely not a concern for this government. It even wants to make it more difficult to them. In this way the government tries to deny that there is a problem. The government is clearly annoyed that it is not possible to deport these refugees. As almost all of them come from Afghanistan and Iran, and the Belgian government doesn't have an agreement with these countries about deportation.

On Wednesday night, about 50 of the refugees gathered in front of a church in Zeebrugge. Entry of the church got denied by the local priest, who was under political pressure. Locals heavily critisized this, solidarity grew heavily and a lot of them tried to help out where possible.
On Thursday afternoon, the refugees at the church were violently arrested and got all locked up in the closed refugee centres of Bruges, Vottem and Merksplas.