An avalanche of some two thousand people who tried to cross the border fence from Morocco to Spain on Friday through Melilla, the Spanish autonomous city in African territory, caused the death of 18 migrants, according to Moroccan authorities. Human rights organizations denounce, however, that the death toll amounts to 27.
President Pedro Sánchez described it this Saturday as “a violent and organized assault by mafias who traffic in human beings to a city that is Spanish territory.”
A few days before the NATO summit is held in Madrid, where the new defensive strategies for the countries that make up the Alliance will be defined, Sánchez acknowledged that “it was a violent attack on the territorial integrity of our country (Spain).”
Some home videos show the bodies of those who wanted to cross into Spain piled up, some motionless. The attempt to jump the fence left more than 300 woundedabout 190 between Spanish police and Moroccan gendarmes who resisted the stampede to stop it.
Moroccan security forces stand guard in front of the fence that separates that country from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Photo: AFP
cross at any price
There are versions that assure that the Moroccan authorities were warned about the bullfight of the almost two thousand people that at dawn on Friday they came down from Mount Gurugú, on the north coast of Morocco, ready to cross into Spain at any price.
Some 500 migrants managed to approach the fence that separates Melilla. Of them, 133 managed to go to Spain breaking down a border control fence Chinatown, the most unprotected. They are currently in the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants (CETI).
“Many of these people have been beaten with sticks and batons, while in detention, by the Moroccan Gendarmerie,” said Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International in Spain.
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights denounced a inhuman treatment towards the immigrants who tried to jump the fence on Friday.
“This will continue to happen if we do not fight effectively against these mafias that traffic in the desperation and legitimate desire of so many people to improve their lives,” said José Manuel Albares, Spanish Foreign Minister.
In May of last year, Ceuta, the other Spanish autonomous city in African territory, was overwhelmed by the entry of 10,000 Moroccans whom the Rabat government did not prevent from crossing the border.
Was the reply, which became several days of uncontrolled arrival of immigrants to Spanish soil, to the “humanitarian gesture” that Spain had made in April 2021, when it allowed the entry into its territory, under a false identity, of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, an enemy of Morocco.
The Polisario Front is a Saharawi national liberation movement that militates to end the Moroccan occupation in Western Sahara.
The border crossing of Barrio Chino, in the autonomous city of Melilla, in front of Morocco. Photo: EFE
Decolonization
In a surprising change of posture, Spain stopped supporting the holding of a self-determination referendum for the Saharawi people to decide on their political future.
Like the Falkland Islands, Western Sahara is considered by the United Nations (UN) a “non-self-governing territory” in which the decolonization process is still open.
According to Chapter XI of the UN Charter, these are “territories whose peoples have not yet reached the fullness of self-government.” They are populations that do not govern themselves and that remain under the control of an “administrating power”.
Fifteen years later and to the astonishment of Algeria, enemy of the Moroccans, Spain surprisingly finds the plan that Morocco proposed in 2007 for the autonomy of the Sahara viable: a certain independence in the administrative, fiscal, cultural, environmental and resource exploitation fields.
But the Moroccan State would always have the last word in matters of sovereignty, currency, religion, national security, defense and territorial integrity.
Madrid. Correspondent
CB
