Church Council Offers Haven of Last Resort

Huddled in tents, sleeping beneath Red Cross blankets, 18 unwilling campers look like refugees from war or famine.

They are asylum seekers rejected both by the Dutch government and by authorities in their homelands. Living in a legal limbo, they say they have nowhere else to go.

The Dutch tradition of sheltering the needy and persecuted is being pushed down the political agenda in the Netherlands while the government concentrates on strengthening the economy. And, increasingly, it is the religious community that holds out the safety net for the shunned.

In Rotterdam, a Dutch cleric provides warm and dry rooms for local junkies to inject their daily fix. He even started supplying low-cost heroin for some of his guests until local authorities got wind of it and ordered him to stop.

Earlier this year, a Roman Catholic bishop said it was morally acceptable for poor parents to steal bread to feed their children.

John van Tilborg, director of a group that aids people seeking asylum, helped set up the camp for the stateless refugees because, he charged, the government left them to fend for themselves.

“The government has billions of extra guilders and yet they are dumping people at the railway station to rot,” Van Tilborg said. “If I leave my dog in a forest, the justice department will come after me, but the justice department is dumping these people on the street.”

There are some 2,000 people in the Netherlands who arrived without identity and travel documents from countries that disowned them, only to have their requests for asylum rejected in a Catch-22: Without papers, they can’t leave the country--yet they aren’t allowed to stay.

In July, Li Yue, a 21-year-old Chinese mother in that predicament, was deposited by immigration authorities at the Arnhem rail station with her husband and two young daughters.

Now she sits out her days in the tent camp with her daughters, who spend their time playing with toys donated by local families.

“We just have to wait,” she said in faltering Dutch learned while going through the asylum process.

A desire to highlight the problem--and a shortage of volunteers willing to accommodate the asylum seekers--led the Dutch Council of Churches to finance the camp.

“As long as people put these refugees up in their homes, the public knows nothing. These people were invisible in our society,” said the camp’s coordinator, Evert Kraal.

Since mid-September, 18 people have made their home in the camp in a forest clearing at the end of a long dirt track in Dwingeloo, 110 miles northwest of Amsterdam. Seven tents surround a small wooden shed that houses a dining room and kitchen. There is also a small toilet block.

The camp has drawn fierce criticism from the government, which accuses the Council of Churches of offering false hope to asylum seekers.

“This action creates the impression that there is a solution for people who have been rejected,” Justice Secretary Elizabeth Schmitz said.

“These people can go home and get help from us, but they do not want to go back,” she added.

Not so, said Manzar Hashim, a 22-year-old ethnic Bihari from Bangladesh.

After his asylum application was turned down, Hashim said, he personally applied to the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian embassies for permission to live in those countries. All three rejected him.

“Being here is better than being on the street,” he said.

As he spoke, local parishioners arrived with warm coats for the campers, a baby’s high chair and loaves of bread. Chinese refugees were busy preparing a meal of chicken soup in the rudimentary kitchen.

The Council of Churches admits that setting up the camp was a deliberately provocative gesture, but says it was necessary.

“We are just giving these people a roof over their heads which they wouldn’t have otherwise,” said Kraal, the camp coordinator.

But there is also resentment of the immigrants’ presence.

On Oct. 4, 20 extreme rightists from the People’s National Netherlands Movement marched to the camp shouting: “Illegal--end of story!”

There was no violence. Organizers said they were not intimidated and vowed to continue giving the immigrants refuge at the camp.

Over the centuries, the Netherlands has offered shelter to the desperate, among them the French Huguenots; the religious pilgrims who later settled America; and thousands of Jews, including young diarist Anne Frank and her family.

Drawn partly by that reputation, up to 300 people apply for asylum each day in the Netherlands.

The government is increasingly rejecting them as “economic migrants” interested only in the generous benefits handed out to successful asylum applicants. Critics contend it is closing the door to the neediest.