Deadlock over asylums as protests escalate

-- Interior Minister Patrick Dewael has refused to give ground despite the escalating protests by illegal immigrants demanding official residency in Belgium.

The protests involve a demonstration in La Louvière, a church sit-in protest in Kortrijk and a hunger strike at the asylum seeker centre Klein Kasteeltje or Petit-Château in Brussels.

"We don't want the law to change, but want it applied more efficiently and quicker so that people without [official] papers don't have to live for years in uncertainty," Ghent bishop Luc Van Looy said on Sunday.

The Sint-Antonius church in Ghent is one of three Flemish churches that are being occupied by illegal immigrants. The others are the Sint-Michiels church in Kortrijk and the Egidius community monastery in Antwerpen. --