Seconds after Mohammed set foot on Spanish soil, he turned to see how his friends had coped along the three-meter-high fence that cut off the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco.
“It was awful,” said the 20-year-old from Sudan. “It was a bloodbath; many of them looked dead and many were injured. “
Moroccan state television reported that 23 people were killed when about 2,000 people, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, tried to cross one of the EU’s two land borders with Africa last Friday.
Local NGOs say the death toll could be higher. “We have confirmed 37 deaths in the Melilla tragedy,” Helena Maleno Garson of Walking Borders said earlier this week.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described the mass crossing as a “violent attack” and an “attack on Spain’s territorial integrity.” He accused “mafias that trade in people”.
Mohammed, who was one of 133 who managed to cross into Spain, denied this. “There are no mafias, we have no money to pay them. We organize ourselves, “he told RTVE.
He left his homeland three years ago, crossing five African countries to reach Europe. He finally arrived in the EU, but the trauma left him awake. “We don’t know who died among our friends – we don’t know who was wounded, alive or dead,” he said.
After the tragedy, more than 50 groups called for an investigation. Among them was a group of about 50 migrants and refugees who have moved to Melilla in recent months.
“Why does Pedro Sanchez say we’re mobsters?” A young man named Hussein told El País. “We didn’t pay anything – we just used our brains and came up with a good plan because we suffered so much.”
A significant number of those who tried to cross last week were asylum seekers fleeing the conflict in Sudan, the Spanish Refugee Commission said, suggesting that the violence had stopped people eligible for international protection from reaching Spanish soil. .
The photos of the deadliest day at the border in the last memories caused horror. “Video and photos show bodies scattered on the ground in puddles of blood, Moroccan security forces kicking and beating people, and the Spanish Civil Guard firing tear gas at men trapped in fences,” said Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch.
On Tuesday, state prosecutors in Spain said they had launched an investigation into the death.
Beyond the border, Moroccan authorities have launched crackdowns, persecuting 65 people involved in the charges of arson, security forces and facilitating illegal border crossings, according to Reuters. Hundreds of migrants were also expelled from the border and released at various points in the interior of Morocco.
The Moroccan Human Rights Association accused Moroccan officials of trying to cover up the deaths, noting that no autopsies had been carried out six days after the tragedy and no efforts had been made to identify those killed.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to concerns about border developments. “I am shocked by the violence at the Nador-Melilla border on Friday, which led to the deaths of dozens of migrants and asylum seekers,” he wrote on Twitter. “The use of excessive force is unacceptable, and human rights and the dignity of people on the move must be a priority for states.
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Earlier this week, the UN Office of Rights told reporters it had received reports of “migrants being beaten with batons, kicked, pushed and stoned by Moroccan officials as they tried to cross the barbed wire fence.”
The deadly group crossing was the first since Spain and Morocco patched up relations after a year-long dispute over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony annexed by Morocco in 1975.
Sunderland said the tragedy underscores the need for a “serious restart” of relations between Spain and Morocco.
She added: “More broadly, unless there is a rethinking of EU migration policies, which are currently based on deterrence, externalization and outsourcing to third countries such as Morocco, Libya and Turkey, this is almost inevitable. happened again.
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