A 17-year-old transgender girl from Russia has died at the Ter Apel refugee detention center in the Netherlands, the organization LGBT Asylum Support reported on Monday.
According to human rights activists, Alisa Serova applied for asylum in the Netherlands at the age of 16. Despite rules prohibiting the placement of minors in the facility, she was housed in the Ter Apel center alongside adults. Within her first month there, she was allegedly raped. Serova struggled with drug addiction and her death was reportedly caused by an overdose.
LGBT Asylum Support reported that Serova passed away on March 27. However, the Russian news site Vot Tak, citing a source who knew her, stating that she died on March 29 in the ICU of a local hospital, where she had been placed on a ventilator after her overdose and never regained consciousness.
Another resident of the facility said that shortly before her overdose, Serova had expressed suicidal thoughts, though those close to her did not believe she would act on them. “On the day it happened, the child bought 10 packs of some substance. She was depressed, took all of it, and overdosed very quickly. She started suffocating, and the Arabs who lived next door heard her and called for help. But the camp administration apparently just ignored it,” the resident told Vot Tak.
According to Vot Tak, Serova’s death is the sixth known case of a Russian LGBTQ+ refugee dying in a Dutch refugee center since February 2022. Approximately 700 Russian asylum seekers currently reside in refugee centers in the Netherlands.
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