The asylum centre that shames the Netherlands: baby death and tent chaos prompt soul searching

Next to a quiet Dutch road surrounded by wind turbines and sparse green fields four large beige tarpaulins shelter hundreds of asylum seekers hoping to start a new life.

They were pitched after the Asylum Registration Centre, where all people seeking shelter in the Netherlands must go to start their application, became overwhelmed.

Flanked by a row of filthy portable lavatories and mobile medical centres set up by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Red Cross, it is like a scene from a war zone.

Inside the centre, which has an official capacity of about 2,000, there are men, women and children. Outside, hundreds more men sleep under the tarpaulins and in their own tents. On Wednesday in the sports hall, which is being used as a makeshift shelter for women and children, a three-month-old baby died in the bed he was sharing with his mother.

Yesterday, several asylum seekers outside the centre, in the north near the village of Ter Apel, said they thought the baby was Syrian. Dutch authorities are investigating and refused to comment.

 “I was there the morning it happened,” one man said. “The mother fell asleep and when she woke up her baby was not breathing. People say there was blood in his nose and mouth. I saw the woman, she screamed and she went with the ambulance.”

Speaking between treating a line of men, mainly for skin infections, Monique Nagelkerke, who has worked for MSF on and off for 30 years, summed up her shock at what is unfolding there: “People know Doctors Without Borders for working in war zones, horrible places where there’s fighting and rebels and now we are here, and had to put up a hospital.”

The charity has been on the ground since Thursday. Portable lavatories were cleaned that day and increased to 19 from eight, but by Saturday they were disgusting again.

Nagelkerke said: “This is unprecedented to be in a European country with conditions like this, unprecedented that people have to sleep outside and we can’t take care of them. This is not a refugee camp. The whole of the EU and the world is looking at us. The government got caught with their pants down and must feel really embarrassed.”

Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, admitted there were “shameful scenes at the centre” and that mistakes had been made and promised a “structural solution” to the problem.

Late on Friday his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) announced measures to deal with the crisis, which it blamed on staff and housing shortages.

A migrant deal with Turkey to take on 1,000 asylum seekers a year has been suspended and families of successful applicants can only be brought across once housing outside reception centres has been found.

Many asylum seekers whose applications have been approved remain in about 140 reception centres because there are no homes available.

On Friday the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) assessed the situation at the camp as the Red Cross and MSF warned of a looming medical and humanitarian emergency because of “inhumane” conditions.

The intervention led the centre to organise buses to pick up migrants from the site late that night and take them to shelters. More than 50 refused to go, worried they would lose their places waiting to get into the centre.

According to Nagelkerke, many returned to the camp before 10am on Saturday after sleeping in a “big white tent with green foldable stretchers” in Stadskanaal, a town ten miles away.

By midday there appeared to be at least 200 people outside the centre again, including many women and children. People waiting are from countries including Somalia and Cameroon as well Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Turkey. They were queuing for sandwiches, yogurts and apple juice being handed out through the fence.

One of the volunteers handing out food was a 37-year-old Syrian man who said he had slept outside for 21 days before getting in five days ago. He said his wife and two children were in Syria and he hoped to bring them over.

“I left because people wanted to kill me in Syria; if you don’t want to kill people you are an enemy there,” he said. “I have friends in the Netherlands and they said the people are nice and always happy and it’s a good thing to get your children here. In Syria they grow up with guns and always think about blood and killing, I don’t want this for them.”

Tamara Sohl, 38, from Damascus, was walking in the sunshine with her three children aged 12, 11 and six. “I was here since August 12. I stayed one week in the gym and then we are sleeping in a room now,” she said, “It’s so bad actually . . . they are not allowed to go to school. We are waiting for our interview.

 “It took us 40 days to reach here. I was looking for the best place to raise children and my friend advised me to come to Holland. I wasn’t expecting such a crowded place or conditions like this. They told us it was easy, nice place to live, everything is fine, you get a house.”

Sohl, a pharmacist, was at the centre when the baby died. “The mattress is not big, and she was sharing with the baby,” she said. “She woke up and the baby had already passed away. She cried so much, she was shouting and screaming. It is very shocking and upsetting for people.”

The Netherlands gets an average of 22,000 people a year seeking asylum, with roughly three quarters granted status, according to Leo Lucassen, director of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

“This was a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “There is a lot of anger this is now such a mess, and people are ashamed. There’s also anger by people who don’t want asylum seekers, and say they are criminals.”