Following Thursday's fire at the Palais 48 building in Schaerbeek, where hundreds of asylum seekers who have been rendered homeless are seeking refuge, the mayor of the Brussels municipality has once again expressed her concern.
While Thursday's fire on the third floor did not lead to any casualties, the Schaerbeek mayor Cécile Jodogne once again rung the alarm bells regarding the deteriorating situation in the building, where up to 1,000 asylum seekers who were rendered homeless after they were denied reception they are legally entitled to are residing.
"This building is not suitable for an occupation of this size. The alarm was sounded a long time ago about the inhumane living conditions and the situation is getting worse by the day, which requires concrete and rapid action from all levels of power concerned," Jodogne noted on Thursday evening.
On Friday, she issued a decree to block access to the entire front part of the third floor of the building only. "This part of the building is now totally uninhabitable."
Gone on for too long
The number of people housed in the derelict building has grown significantly since the end of last year. The fire is the latest incident to occur at the so-called squat, with one inhabitant losing his life following a drug overdose and another dying in a stabbing incident.
During an unprecedented medical inspection, doctors and nurses identified several cases of tuberculosis, "worrying" cases of cutaneous diphtheria (non-respiratory clinical manifestation) as well as a very large spread of scabies "with a risk of superinfection within the building."
In December, Jodogne already expressed concern regarding the situation in the building, and her frustration as a mayor regarding the situation as the direct handling of the crisis at the root of the issues is a Federal Government competency.
"This catastrophic situation has been going on for too long and it is crucial to be able to empty this building quickly. This must start with rehousing the asylum seekers who are under the responsibility of [Belgium's Federal Asylum agency] Fedasil." The agency has faced thousands of convictions for failing its legal responsibility to provide shelter.
For months, asylum seekers have been sleeping rough due to the government's failure to provide them with shelter. Credit: Lauren Walker
Fedasil is now working to remove people with a right to shelter from the premise, an announcement welcomed "with relief" by Jodogne, who already made a request for this to happen several weeks ago. The agency will work with Samusocial (which provides emergency medical and psychosocial assistance to homeless people) and speed up the process of identification at another location.
"That is good news, but richly overdue," Vluchtenwerk Vlaanderen's policy advisor Thomas Willekens told The Brussels Times. "For us, the question of these people's status is a non-discussion, all those people find themselves in a precarious situation and need to be helped, regardless of their status."
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He explained that the situation in the building is the direct consequence of the reception crisis, which is still not solved and for which there are still no solutions in sight. "So in that sense, this is actually a self-inflicted problem of the government, and that fire was just an incident waiting to happen."
"Alongside other NGOs, we have been sounding the alarm for weeks about the situation here, and still we find that the authorities are bogged down in discussions about who exactly will take responsibility in this." He added that, as there are still no concrete solutions, the tragedy will continue if the group is forced to leave the premises.
"We do not know where they will go and there is a good chance that they will settle somewhere else or on the streets, and the human dramas will continue," Willekens concluded.
