DUTCH CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Mansour Ben Mohamed,  a 29 year old North African has spent the last 18
months of his life in Holland.    He has no residence permit  and like many
others in this country is considered "illegal".     Mansour lived a
peaceful life with his  friend, did odd cleaning jobs,  attended a school
full time,  ironically to learn Dutch, until his little world shattered
before him during a police check.    Apartheid is a Dutch word and despite
progress in South Africa,  the forefathers of the Boers have reintroduced
apartheid in heavy  policing techniques and detention centres.   only for
foreigners.  Mansour was dragged from the street one morning to cells
incidentally less than mile from the International Court of Justice, thrown
in one of 40 cells reserved for "foreigners" in the bowels of the Hague.
His telephone call for help to friends, was bugged.    He was interred with
junkies, who screamed in convulsions, shivered and coughed up blood
throughout the night,  in daylight he was interrogated  by the Dutch
"Foreign police",  a special unit  with historical links with the NSB
collaborators  empowered to hunt down the Jewish communities many of whom
in the late 1930's were not Dutch citizens.   Help came in the way of an
attorney  who couldn't even converse in decent  French.   He had committed
no crime and still hoped to be released. Meanwhile he became dirtier and
with no procedure to deliver clothes to "foreigners" without risking the
"interrogation due to association" by the Dutch police.  He was dragged in
a filthy condition from one foreign embassy to another, his feet bleeding,
his socks hardened in blood,  paraded before embarrassed consular staff.
No-one recognised him as a "citizen".

After 9 days detention without trial Mansour was transferred to a Lager
known as Koning Willem II,  Internment Camp, in Tilburg.  This detention
centre is not a prison, it is a spartan military barrack complex.  More
than a thousand  inmates, 80% without any defence attorney are interred
there.  The regime is the harshest in the Dutch prison service,   there are
no  Dutchmen interred there.  Most inmates are cut off from any contact
with the outside world,  mail is destroyed or returned if not accompanied
by a complicated letter in Dutch explaining the relationship between the
correspondent and the prisoner....few ever manage to communicate with
friends (if they have any)  and the public pay phone, albeit if you have
the money, is conveniently bugged.   Detainees are denied any personal
property, no books or newspapers or magazines are allowed in.   Food is
meagre and no arrangements exist for those of different religious
persuasions,  dead pig for all...like it or not.   Arson suicides and
hunger strikes have taken  place.  All  hushed up by the "liberal" Dutch.

On 16 January 1996 Mohamed Ben Mansour appeared before a Dutch civil court
in Den Bosch   charged with no crime. He had received no written
explanation in the way of a detailed summons, he still has not been
informed officially of the verdict, even though he has been condemned under
newly revised "Foreigner Laws" to indefinite detention.   These events have
happened in western Europe, not 

Only international pressure can persuade the Dutch to discontinue this type
of detention, a modern day apartheid, and help return Ben  Mohamed Mansour
to normal life.  While the prison regime is under investigation by  HRW a
US based Human Rights Organisation, you can help by writing (quoting
Mansour Ben Mouhamed @ the Koning Willem II Internment Camp, Tilburg)  the
Minister of Justice,  Mrs.  W.   Sorgdrager,  PO Box 20301, 2500 EH, The
Hague, Holland  or fax a letter to help free Mansour to +31-70-3647702 or
establish contact condemning the discriminatory prison regime and request
Mansour's freedom via the world-wideweb keying:
http://www.dds.nl/overheid/pdc/800/16/22/01622cnt.html
complete the template  and express  your comments on this particularly
nauseating type of injustice in the comments box!........Mansour once
said.... "Is there anybody out there?"