Undocumented migrants who had squatted for days in a camp near the Ninove Gate in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean are to vacate the area on Sunday afternoon, Belga News Agency reports.
The group plans to march to the Immigration Office at about 14:00 and set up symbolic tents there, the Union of Undocumented Persons for Regularisation Movement, announced on Saturday in a press release.
The roughly 150 persons had set up a camp near the Ninove Gate around the middle of last week to press for the regularisation of their status. Molenbeek Mayor Catherine Moureaux refused a request by the State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Sammy Mahdi to ban the camp, saying she would grant the undocumented persons "a few days."
On Saturday evening, the collective announced that "in keeping with the agreement concluded with the mayor," the squatters would leave the camp and organise a peaceful march to the Immigration Office "where we shall symbolically set up our cardboard tents, loaded with our slogans and hopes, to denounce this unjust policy on migration."
The occupation movement was led by the "Zone neutre" (Neutral Zone) collective, which had been squatting since August at the former KBC Bank on Avenue du Port. A housing project is scheduled to begin soon on the premises.
The members of the collective, most of them migrants from North Africa who have been working in Belgium for years, had been given until 31 March to vacate the old KBC Bank site. They moved to Molenbeek at mid-week.
