Belgium deports Palestinian asylum seekers to Egypt

The Belgian authorities deported to Egypt last week two Palestinian men from Gaza instead of Greece where they have refugee status, the Jesuit Refugee Service Belgium (JRS) human rights organisation has reported.

The rights watchdog said that the two men have told teams who visited them while in a detention centre near Brussels Airport that they had struggled to find accommodation in Greece, could not work as they did not speak the language and were not receiving the necessary support to integrate.

According to JRS official Ruben Bruynooghe, the two men used “false documents” to be able to leave Egypt and it is likely that they will be detained upon their arrival there.

Bruynooghe criticised the decision by the Belgian Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) to deport the men to Egypt instead of Greece, where they have been granted “international protection”.

Belgium examines asylum applications while detaining applicants in a closed centre near the airport. People who are refused entry are usually deported within four weeks back to the country where they came from by the same airline. In this case that should have been Greece, not Egypt.

According to information available to JRS, the number of Palestinians seeking asylum in Belgium has increased since the start of the Israeli war in Gaza last October, but most of their applications are rejected.

The Rafah Border Crossing is the only way for Palestinians from Gaza to leave the enclave, but it has been closed since May and is now controlled by the Israeli occupation army.

Israel’s military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza has killed 42,000 people since October, mainly women and children, and wounded almost 93,000 more. An estimated 11,000 Palestinians are missing, presumed dead, under the rubble of their homes and other civilian infrastructure destroyed by Israel, which faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The apartheid, occupation state denies the allegation.

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